Republican presidential hopefuls are tripping over themselves in their race to the reactionary bottom, where, it so happens, right-wing bottomfeeders -- also known as "the base" -- appropriately enough reside.
Throughout presidential primary seasons this frantic competition in pandering to the most authoritarian, regimentally minded and Jesus-loving among us is a normal, GOP ritual-by-necessity. Candidates go "hunting where the ducks are," to use Barry Goldwater's memorable phrase -- meaning the scattered swamplands of hypernationalistic and compassionate-less conservatives.
It's the only way to survive Round One, after which the victor just as frantically careens to the center in preparation for Round Two: the general election, in which, occasionally, some semblance of reason reemerges.
But these are not normal times, especially for the GOP. And it's the numerous hopefuls' struggle to ideologically outdo one another to the right and thereby survive Round One that almost assuredly will k.o. the victor in Two.
Because in this particular election cycle they're mired in the granddaddy of all political paradoxes.
Mr. Bush is the personification of what the base wants in a candidate: that is, to repeat, hypernationalism and compassionate-less conservatism. Yet as The Politico succinctly characterized John McCain's ills, his "campaign is bleeding out because of its ties to President Bush's policies." And with the immigration bill now legislatively deported, "Bush's policies" are reduced to one: the Iraq war.
But wait. McCain supports Bush on Iraq. If Bush is the personification of what the base wants, and if the Iraq war is this decade's joystick of hypernationalism, then why is McCain bleeding out because of his love affair with Bush & Iraq?
Because, it would seem, McCain was merely foolish enough to be loudest on an issue that the base knows is going to bury its candidate in the fall of 2008. The bottomfeeders may be authoritarian, regimentally minded and Jesus-loving, but they ain't completely stupid. They can see that given the country's Iraq hangover, John McCain's too conspicuous saber-rattling would plunge him into a general election inferno.
Yet to pile paradox on paradox, as McCain bleeds and fades away, his (soon erstwhile) competitors will be expected by the base to pick up the hypernationalistic slack. Because the base just can't help itself. Martial triumphalism is what makes its bloodthirsty day. It's what drives the joyful juices from its brass balls to its soft head. And the urge to revel in it during the primary season's here-and-now, against later electoral logic, will endure.
So at candidates' rallies the base's demand for rip-snorting nationalism will go forth -- to support not so much the unpopular war in McCain's brazen fashion, but its tribalistic-warlord commander in chief, who is nevertheless dripping in and defined by the war. The candidates will be obliged to oblige, of course, since each is trying his best to out-wing the others rightward.
And every vulgar, primordial minute of it will be captured on video tape; to be replayed endlessly in the general by the Democratic candidate, and on every broadcast outlet but Fox, and to the horror of the less-than-militaristically enthused general electorate.
Oddly enough, it's that RNC-newsletter nonsubscriber and Shiite unholy man, Moktoda al-Sadr, who is blazing the only strategic way a Republican could possibly win in 2008: He has, of late, "re-emerged with a shrewd strategy that reaches out to Iraqis on the street while distancing himself from the increasingly unpopular government."
Yet just as oddly, and just as paradoxically, that's the one and only guaranteed way for a Republican to lose the primaries.