Skipping Down The Boulevard of Butthurt Broken Dreams

I delayed commenting on the Presidential Election — henceforth to be known as the Great Conservative Hyperkinetic Projectile Bed-Shitting of 2012 — because at first I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing.  I refer not to the re-election of One-Term-President Barack Hussein FourMoreYears Obama; that writing had adorned the wall for some time.  What’s truly astonishing is the Right’s response to it.

Not only is there no joy in Wingnutville, there’s shock, sputtering disbelief, bewilderment and utter confusion.

I was a little surprised myself as I took the temperature of the DarkSyde on election day.  Despite all the predictive science to the contrary, all day long right wingers delirious with dumb hubris brayed about the imminent crushing defeat of the MuslimKenyanFetusBully.  Drunk on their own bombast, pundit after pundit, blogger after blogger (and their commenters) ebulliently predicted a landslide victory for the doomed GOP ticket, even after the returns started coming in and it was obvious to everyone else that the shit-hammer was coming down hard.  It was surreal: Baghdad Bob came to mind.

No wonder they’re so shell-shocked: they really thought their man Mittens, once so despised and mistrusted, would cruise to an easy win on Tuesday.

For once, this reality deficit can’t be blamed on Low Information Voters being played by people who know better.  The delusion was top-down: so confident was Team Romney of a romp to victory that they broke with electoral tradition and didn’t even bother to prepare a concession speech:

“This is a big day for big change,” Romney told staffers and volunteers at a Cleveland-area campaign office.

On his campaign plane in between flights, he worked on his speech. He said he hasn’t written a concession speech, though he acknowledged the results might not come out in his favor. “Nothing is certain in politics,” he said.

That last point was certainly driven home on election night, eh?  No wonder conservatives are reeling: being so overconfidently sure that you’re right must make it all the more humiliating to be Wrong.

Since then, there’s been a lot of talk in quiet rooms and other places about the downside of ideological purity, changes of direction and GOP soul-searching.  (If you doubt it, google “GOP” + “soul-searching”.)   But there’s been just as much ominous chatter about hunkering down in fortified bunkers with lots of ammo and MREs.    Un-following, un-friending, disowning and even divorcing any Democrat.  Eventually one way or the other will prevail, but bear in mind that Humiliation and Butthurt are less likely to evolve into realistic pragmatism than the kind of aggrieved resentment that characterized Teabuggery.

Republicans have a right to be angry, but not at Democrats or the voters who returned them to power.  If they should be angry at anyone, it’s the hermetically-sealed, airtight Fox News/Limbaugh/right-wing-blogosphere Information Bubble that failed them so awesomely, so spectacularly, during this election campaign.