In Defense of Nut Picking

Although I feel I am a bit late to the game, because of the relative smallness of my blog and slowness of my traffic, I don't mind being late to a thing or two, if I think I still have a thing to add. So it goes with the nut picking argument, which as a snark-leaning blog, goes right to my meat and potatoes, if not my low-hanging fruit and especially fallen mangoes.

To give a quick summary of the original hypothesis--the "GOP lawmaker" configuration of lefty blogulations tends to point to extremely fringe examples of insignificant so-and-so's of the right wing that aren't necessarily impact players and aren't necessarily representative. This was countered by contentions from respected bloggers that, no, sometimes these "GOP lawmakers" who say fringe things, aren't really of the fringe, but are just crudely stating things that the party in general does represent, without saying so as crudely. In a nutshell, if you will, that's part of the reason I go a-nutpicking--when some rando from Shithouse Falls talks about whether some girls rape easily or whether birth control is for losers or whether bicycle lanes lead to world domination and the abolishment of golfing and guns, they are playing on fantasies that might just get them into office (no, I don't always think they even mean the things they say) and once in, their relative name-recognition could well grow. Next thing you know, you've got the crazy filtering upward into the US House and Senate, and once it's there, like cat pee or drunk puke, it is hard to rinse out.

I feel mean as hell pointing to Michele Bachmann as a prime example of this, but you go ahead and tell me that her upward mobility was in spite of, not because of, her nutty goodness--her "Jif-rence", if you will. Not a back-bencher at all, but the second-runner-up in the GOP 2012 Goat Rodeo was my former Senator Rick Santorum, who has a plethora of pull-quotes of unbelievable nutaliciousness. Or take, as an observation I don't make happily, the ascendancy of the deluxe mixed nuts of 2010, which included possible 2016 Goat Rodeo participant Rand Paul. Or the possible success of the nutty in the form of Paul Broun--another case where because of, not in spite of, would pertain (not according to all polls, but still). 

It is a known thing, I think, that Democrats just don't historically come out in droves for your midterm elections. There's young, minority, and women voters who might just not take the time that your mostly white and old and male (the GOP demographic trifecta) voters do. So maybe there is value in scaring the bejesus out of the otherwise not especially motivated by suggesting that the opposing party is, actually, batshit mad. Maybe they could be scared into thinking there is value in voting as if their life and ability to vote itself depended upon it. And I don't even think that is necessarily so idle a threat.

Now, I do truly wish indeed that I could count upon any Democratic candidate in any hoot or holler, even Shithouse Falls, to actually run as a Democrat and positively state a good reason for voting blue. But if pointing out the bastids is the most constructive thing I can find to do--that's my job then.