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Every sci-fi movie buff knows this story line. The mad scientist creates the monster but they can't control the monster and inevitably the monster comes to destroy them.
Republican leaders are now confronting the monster they helped create. Teabaggers, tenthers, birthers, or whatever they call themselves this week are a creation of Fox News and GOP think tanks who saw some advantage to stirring up dissent against the Obama administration.
It was a cold calculation - that presenting a media circus would ultimately translate into a general perception that President Obama and his moderate agenda was somehow extremist and unpopular. But they miscalculated the general public's distaste for these angry fringe group's behaviors and more importantly they underestimated the fear and anger of those they stoked and couldn't imagine that anger turning against them. But it has.
By invoking a mistrust of government they seem to have forgotten that they as Republicans also participate in that government and bear some responsibility for it's accused excesses and abuses.
This week we saw staunch conservative Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) heckled, booed and called a traitor at a town hall in his home state of South Carolina. In his career Sen Graham has enjoyed the highest ratings among conservative activist groups and some of the lowest among groups like the ACLU. A military JAG officer and a close ally of the party's last presidential nominee now finds himself attacked as somehow disloyal to the conservative movement.
It seems irrational. But monsters have never been and may never be known to behave rationally. That's why rational people and responsible parties avoid creating monsters in the first place.
- Jeff Farias
