Think GOP’s morons can’t win midterms? Think again

Keith Olbermann knows Republican candidates are funny. He airs clips of their boneheaded declarations so that we who lean left can laugh, in an incredulous way, at how grotesque the right wing has become. We are indeed amused, but this year it looks like the morons might have the last laugh.

What rough (and headless) beast... slouches towards Washington, D.C., to be born?

Last week Olbermann mocked Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer for her poor performance in a debate with Terry Goddard, the Democrat running for governor, and for stirring fears about illegal immigration by falsely claiming that headless bodies had been found in the Arizona desert. Watching the show I wanted to say yes, Keith, Gov. Cactus Face is a liar and a bigot, but these facts don’t matter to her fans.

Sharron Angle, the Nevada Republican tea-bagger candidate for the Senate, believes abortion causes breast cancer, defends citizens who might resort to “Second Amendment remedies” (bang, bang) to get rid of federal officials they don’t like, and has opposed use of the color black (it’s evil) in high school football uniforms. She is kooky as well as stupid, and has been justly ridiculed by Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and other liberal commentators. And yet, as of Sept. 3, Angle was still running neck-and-neck with Harry Reid, the Democratic incumbent.

I could pick on many other ridiculous Republican candidates. The point is that supporters of Angle and her ilk aren’t likely to see the light and vote Democratic even if, by some remote chance, they happen to watch Olbermann’s TV show. They’re the same geniuses who think Barack Obama is a Muslim and Sarah Palin is qualified for national office.

More importantly, dissing the wackos isn’t likely to change the minds of so-called independents who are leaning toward not voting or voting Republican. Not because independents think the Republicans are competent, but rather because they want to express their anger at Obama and the Democratic congress for not taking bold steps to fix the economy. As for why independents would let anger get the best of them, to the point where they’d help elect candidates who would make the situation worse… well, that’s as much a mystery to me as it must be to you.

Update: Obama on Labor Day unveiled a $50 billion jobs plan directed at upgrading the nation’s infrastructure. Too little and way too late. If Obama had an ounce of political sense or nerve, he would have announced aggressive jobs creation plans in the first year of his term. He would have repeatedly condemned cynical Republicans who, as a bloc, fought to block any legislation that would have brought down the jobless rate.

Maybe Dems will succeed in salvaging a slim congressional majority by funneling the lion’s share of campaign funds to candidates who have the best chance of winning. I doubt it. This year “the best lack all conviction,” as W. B. Yeats wrote in an oft-quoted poem, and the worst are waiting for their savior.