Right Wing Nut House

Mid-winter in the Midwest is a dark and dreary season. Where once the prospect of snow brought a tingle of anticipation at the prospect of reviving memories of childhood play and the excitement in the changing season, it now breeds a sense of dread; a depressing realization that soon it will be time to haul the snowblower out of the garage and brave the wind sweeping across what remains of the prairie in order to clear the sidewalks so that the snow Nazis ensconced in local government don’t cite you for failing to be a good citizen.

This used to be a free country. You used to have the perfect freedom to be a rotten member of the community and not shovel a snowflake the entire winter. Used to be all you’d get would be dirty looks from your neighbors. Now the protective nannies in local government will issue you a ticket and slap a fifty dollar fine on your backside for being an unhelpful neighbor.

Next thing you know, they’ll be publishing the names of “Snow Removal Scofflaws” on the front page of the local paper in order to shame you into action.

Another aspect of enduring a long winter is that since most of us don’t go to Florida or Arizona for relief, one’s mood makes the journey south for us by taking a turn for the worse right about this time of year. Midwesterners get so tired of dealing with Old Man Winter that they become snippy and short tempered. Their natural persnicketiness morphs into a grumpy gruffness so that trying to carry on a conversation becomes an exercise in monosyllabic futility:

ME: Hi
Next Door Neighbor: Ummph.
ME: Yea?
NDN: Pftttt!
ME: Sheesh!
NDN: ARRGH!
ME: Unhuh.
NDN: F***!
ME: Nosh*t?
NDN: Hellyeah.
ME: Seeya.

After all, it’s hard to carry on a conversation when you’re wearing 20 pounds of outerwear to ward off the cold. You try saying anything when you’re burdened with two mufflers, earmuffs, a ski mask, and that shawl that Aunt Josie crocheted for you wrapped around your head . I guarantee you’ll want to keep the chit chat to a minimum.

In addition to our being vulnerable to this seasonal grumpiness, we become rather insular about our politics. Are the streets plowed? Won’t someone come out and fix these goddamn potholes? Do they really have to use so much salt? Politicians then have long realized that the dead of winter is not the time to approach Midwesterners and ask for their support for much of anything. This is why the President’s State of the Union speech pretty much fell on deaf ears out my way last night. It isn’t so much that we aren’t interested in what’s going on in Washington, it’s just that most people are so heartily sick and tired of the mud wrestling that politics has become that they find it almost as wearisome as dealing with the winter. One gets the sense that they blame the Republicans for many things but see the Democrats as unreasonable obstructionists.

At bottom, there is a general feeling of unease at the direction the country is going but they can’t put their finger on it. The see the economy doing fairly well but fear for the future of their jobs and businesses. They see the war in Iraq going badly and wish it was over but are fiercely protective of their sons and daughters who are fighting it. They worry about their health insurance - if they have any - and are genuinely afraid of catastrophic illness. And many wish social issues like abortion would just go away; not because they don’t have opinions on them but rather they see them as too divisive.

And that is the nub of the Midwestern critique of the state of the nation; the partisan food fights that dominate the news are confusing and depressing. They look to the President for leadership and, like all Americans, see what they want to when examining the person of George Bush and project their own fears and hopes on to his Presidency.

One thing I’ve noticed is that you don’t get the sharp edged extremes in opinion here than you would in other places which only goes to show that we here in the Midwest tend to be a little more realistic about Bush than his base of opposition in the east and his base of support in the south and west. Being an eminently practical folk, we like the man’s common sense but worry about his certitude at times. It used to be called “putting on airs” but is now likened to arrogance. This goes down well when Bush talks about national security, less so when speaking about domestic issues. Trust in the President has worn a little thin but when talking to people about the War on Terror, they seem grateful that Bush is making what appears to be a good faith effort to protect the country. On the war in Iraq, the President is in better shape than pollsters and analysts think. Ask people here any of the standard questions on the war and you get the boilerplate Democratic talking points in response; Bush lied, the war isn’t worth it, we never should have gone in, etc. But unlike pollsters, if you keep talking to them, a slightly different answer emerges.

There is a huge reservoir of support for the men and women in uniform. Everyone knows someone - a family member, a friend, a neighbor’s son or daughter - in the military. And while they are desperately worried for their safety, I can’t find a single person in the groups I run in (most of them can hardly be described as “conservative”) who believes they should come home until the job is done. And they have their own definition of victory that matches up pretty well with what the President has been saying although the feeling that some kind of timetable for withdrawal should be established is pretty popular.

In short, while agreeing with the Democrat’s critique of the war, they disagree with their prescription for ending it. There is also general agreement that the media is deliberately withholding good news from Iraq. They know this because they get letters from the front telling them of an improving situation. And - bad news for Democrats - even registered Democrats think that their own party is being defeatist on the war. Some independents I’ve talked to are even disgusted with what they see as the left playing politics with the conflict.

This is about what you’d expect from a district with a Republican Congressman who regularly gets close to 70% of the vote. But I think even the Democrats I know would agree with my assessment of their opinions. There is none of the rabid Bush hatred among Democrats that I know although there is certainly a strong dislike for his personal style and his policies. In other words, horns but no tail.

From a practical political point of view, the President is in trouble but not overwhelmingly so. Republicans however, are in a real pickle. There is so much disgust with their spending habits, their perceived arrogance, the corruption (Note to Kos; corruption is a bi-partisan issue in the heartland), and a “business as usual” attitude that some long time Republicans I know say they’ll never vote Republican again. This seems to be reflected in recent polling that suggests unless something happens between now and election day to change the political climate, Republicans may wake up to a huge surprise the day after the election.

This Washington Post - ABC News poll shows the Democrats ahead on a generic ballot by 12%. It is unclear how that translates district by district. But I suspect that at the very least it brings more seats into play for the Democrats. And that can only spell trouble for a party that may have a hard time energizing its base to show up and support it on election day next November.

If the Democrats had their act together, I suspect they could play upon this uneasiness felt by voters and turn it into a huge election issue. But since the party can’t even agree on where the bathroom is, it’s hardly likely that they will be able to capitalize on this opening granted them by Republicans.

In the end, as it stands now I suspect that the Republicans will barely hang on to the House and may come very close to losing the Senate. And if things go south in Iraq or some economic crisis is precipitated by an oil shock caused by the Iranian crisis, all bets are off and we could very well end up with a Democratic majority - one that would move for impeachment of Bush within 60 days of the new Congress being gaveled to order.