Those 'Magic Nincompoops' of the GOP

As we travel from the vast obscenities of the exiting Bush administration to the narrow hilarities of the incoming RNC leadership, my only guess is that the universe is struggling to restore some balance -- that things got a trifle out of control under George W., but now, it's making up for lost time.

I mean, how else can we explain the Republican National Committee's laughable circus of irrationality: its solemn -- and, I graciously presume, sober -- defense of one of its chair candidates for having disseminated "Barack the Magic Negro" CDs.

Don't you just love it when they go all politically incorrect? When they advertise their offended outrage at the offensively outrageous armies of excessive propriety? When they turn their startling stupidity into what they call the media's goo-goo sense of overreaction?

Well, if you don't, I do. In fact, I love these stellar guys and gals of the RNC more and more each day, because more and more they're showing their true colors.

First some brief background, via the Politico: "The controversy surrounding a comedy CD distributed by [former Tennessee GOP chairman and] Republican National Committee chair candidate Chip Saltsman has not torpedoed his bid and might have inadvertently helped it."

Now how could that be? Simple. "Some of those officials [whom Saltsman has been courting] are rallying around the embattled [candidate], with a few questioning whether the national media and his opponents are piling on."

"When I heard about the story I had to figure out what was going on for myself," said the chairman of the Maine Republican Party. "When I found out what this was about I had to ask, 'Boy, what’s the big deal here?' because there wasn’t any."

And an Alabama committeeman is quoted as saying that Saltsman's CD "didn’t bother me one bit," even as he proceeded to note the CD's bothersome-ness; "Chip probably could have thought it through a bit more," said the committeeman. On the other hand, Saltsman "was doing everyone a favor by giving us a gift," he added.

And with all that, and in one fell swoop, the RNC's mossbacks deliberately but bizarrely marginalized their party even more, something previously regarded as quite undoable.

Forget for a moment the adolescent tastelessness of Saltsman's distributed CD -- what the atavistic Alabaman was so pleased to call "a gift." Because its tastelessness is, to every civilized mind of the 21st century (or 20th, or 19th), a given -- a cultural fact recently re-confirmed by Rush Limbaugh's re-promotion of "Magic Negro" on his Web site. Whenever you want to know what is culturally dead or at the very least dying, just look to Rush.

So just put that aside. What fascinates, however, is the politics of this unexpected delight. And to me, the RNC's growing number of Saltsman boosters says just one thing: They intend to go down swinging, assuming they can lift their hairy knuckles from the pavement.

For countless postelection days the speculation was, as they say, rampant: What would the Republican Party do, now that its smallest-of-circus-tents mentality had been so resoundingly rejected by an increasingly multicultural, multiethnic electorate?

This much had become a mathematical certainty -- that this party of angry white guys could no longer demographically compete; it had to change its ways, change its rhetoric, change its image.

From Tim Pawlenty to Jeb Bush to Bobby Jindal, the party's national aspirants were self-flagellating for all to see, remorseful as hell but on the other hand cocksure that the deadly plague of their image problem could be cured. You just watch, you just wait and see, they said with uniform confidence.

And then, almost right out of the gate, they have the humiliation of a "Magic Negro" donnybrook dropped on them -- intentionally and by their own people, a select group closest to larger Republican groupings of the hinterland.

A select group either oblivious to or scoffing of the political realities of cultural shifts. And it is this group -- not the GOP's Jindals or Pawlentys -- that will in its arrogance and obstinacy make the headlines and therefore continue to mold and reflect the party's image.

In short, just as the Young Turks struggle to rise above the old ways, the Saltsmanlike clan will bring them down. Which leaves the GOP with one of only two options: organic housecleaning or organizational suicide.

The "Magic Negro" flap portends far more than just a momentary flap.