Hunter channels FDR

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/22/9551/86182/147/518517

No, I mean Rove.

Or something.

Hunter writes:

There can be no doubt, now. The election results in MS-01 and other places are clear: the Republicans are in a world of trouble -- even in their own strongholds.

This can only mean that the usual avenues of Republican victory -- finding some imagined threat to the flag and apple pie, and goading all sufficiently gullible GOP believers into a state of panic over it -- are becoming stale. This is remarkable, as the list of threats to America grows with every election cycle: if current trends continue, by the year 2080 the GOP will have launched advertisements blaming the problems of America on every individual American citizen, by name.

(elide description of candidate threats to America)

Actual Goats: Have you ever met an actual, real-life goat? There is a reason the term "scapegoat" still remains relevant today: whenever something on a farm is not as is should be, the odds are nine in ten that the blasted goat was responsible. A rope chewed in half? The goat. A tree stripped of bark? The goat. Canvas chewed, leather straps eaten down to the buckles, hoofprint-shaped dents all over the hood of the car? The goat. Did someone sneak onto your computer one evening and purchase a full-sized ocean kayak, which was then delivered to your door a week later, every member of your family denying that they were the one who placed the order? Blame the goat. Goats can stand a towering one hundred centimeters high at the shoulder. Their hooves and tongues are not just prehensile, but posthensile and extrahensile: for any moment in time when you are not looking directly at them, they have opposable thumbs. At least twelve of them. Stop blaming scapegoats for America's problems, and take a cue from rural Americans nationwide: blame the actual goats.

Flag-Burning Polar Bears: The old scapegoats not working, and no new ones are doing the trick? Well, get creative. Combine old, well-loved scapegoats to make new, updated ones. Perhaps polar bears are burning our flags. Perhaps illegal immigrants are sneaking across the border in order to turn our children gay. Perhaps Muslims want to raise your taxes to pay for polar bear abortions -- how would America feel then?

There is nothing more Republican than the ability to take any problem, botch the solution spectacularly, and blame the resulting mess on some group that has little to nothing to do with it. Recognizing that all Republican failures are not actual failures, but cruel sabotage by normal everyday Americans, or by sneaky ethnic people, or clever but evil animals, or devious environmental or biological processes: now that is one of the highest forms of patriotism.