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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Palin-Santelli

Careful readers of my last post just below may have deduced that I don’t have a real high opinion of Rick Santelli, the CNBC reporter who treated viewers yesterday to a lengthy tirade on the outrage of Barack Obama trying to help “losers” who can’t pay their mortgages. It’s fine by me if anyone wants to disagree with Obama on housing policy, though I’m not sure why CNBC thinks it’s okay for a “reporter” to indulge himself with a hyper-ideological tirade from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. But what I find despicable about Santelli is his puffed-up sense of moral superiority towards millions of people he knows nothing about, and who are already suffering from personal economic misfortunes that I rather doubt he could imagine.
In any event, I regret to report that Santelli’s receiving not only approbation, but instant folk-hero status on the political Right. At National Review, aside from Larry Kudlow’s “moral hazard” lecture playing off Santelli’s rant, you’ve got an interview with Santelli himself, wherein he modestly appraises himself as just a red-blooded American saying something that everybody he knows agrees with, and then a mocked-up “Palin-Santelli 2012” campaign poster published at The Corner by Kathryn Lopez. Joe the Plumber must be green with envy.
I don’t know what’s more disturbiing about this festive treatment of Santelli’s expression of the Rage of the Trading Floor: that so many conservatives seem to identify with him, or that they seem to think his is a point of view that could soon sweep America, where the main feeling about the economy is that people who aren’t doing well deserve it.
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One comment on “Palin-Santelli

  1. James Vega on

    The same visceral, near primeval anger which made Palin’s rallies so disturbing are once again on display in the reaction to Santelli.
    “God damn it, it’s THEIR god-damn fault. THEY are the reason for everything that’s gone wrong. THEY messed everything up, not me. It’s about time somebody had the guts to tell THEM the TRUTH.”
    Psychologically speaking, there are a substantial number of people who must see themeselves as invariably good and others as inherently evil. The more dramatically reality contradicts this notion, the more pathologically furious they become.

    Reply

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