I took a busload of students to New Hampshire last week to observe the Republican primary campaign process up close and personal.
Alright, alright, I know what you must be thinking: “Damn, Green, you sure must be a dedicated professor to do that!” As it happens, you’d be partly right and partly wrong. In fact, the students are great, the trip is fun and a little unpredictable in nice way, and there really still is a wee bit of genuine candidate accountability remaining in the New Hampshire retail politics process.
That said, however, it’s absolutely true that the field of GOP candidates is stunning in its sheer capacity for selfishness, dishonesty, and plain old meanness, and that listening to them for too long without wearing noise-cancelling headphones could surely burn off both of your ears. It’s the political equivalent of staring at the sun, and the cult-like gaga-bots one can observe among these audiences seem to have spent quite some time doing just that. If you know just a bit about history, just a bit about context, or just a bit about the dark arts of rhetorical legerdemain, listening to a speech by Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney will leave you wanting to pop up just about every half-sentence and loudly disclaim “That’s a lie!”, “That’s wrong!”, or “That’s complete bullshit!” It’s a truly painful experience in that regard.
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