And the Award for Uncanny Prescience Goes To...
Frank Rich, Salon, November 2012: Ever since the days of Barry Goldwater, many liberals have assumed - or naively hoped - that each national defeat would teach Republicans that they had overreached, and pull them back from the extremes. Instead, the opposite has happened: The lesson of every loss, even the routs, has been “we were not conservative enough.”
Hello folks. Yes, it's been awhile, but I've popped in because I think credit is due when someone so accurately predicts the future. I was thumbing through the archives when I came upon a post I wrote almost four years ago.
Times were different, back then. For one thing, Salon still had Joan Walsh and was still sane. We'd just re-elected President Obama and hopeful liberals were once again talking about maybe the GOP learning its lesson, prompting this piece by Frank Rich, which in turn inspired me to come here and ask the question: "So Republicans -- What's Next?" "I have to tell you," I said to the GOP, "you've been marching to the right for so many years you're on the verge of stepping off one hell of an ideological cliff. Are you going to openly embrace the genteel racism of Charles Murray? Are you going to openly work to limit the vote only to people of a certain income level? Is the aim going to be disenfranchising large portions of the public and telling the rest, 'vote for us or we'll fire you?'
Little did I know that the answer was tucked discreetly, like a half-hidden Easter egg among the comments, and it would come from Oportet who would post, on November 11, 2012:
"The next step? When you start seeing Trump 2016 stickers, you'll have your answer."
A hearty round of applause everybody (or at least, everybody who's left)! Disenfranchisement? Threats? Racism? With Trump it's all packed into one dandy package. How could I have missed it?
Anybody else see this coming?