My immediate response to the news stories this morning that Paul LePage had hinted that he might resign was that I'd believe it when it happened and his replacement was in office. This afternoon The Shame of Maine is walking the idea back. Looks like I won't be making that celebration cake just yet and I'm not saving up eggs for one, eventually.
With Paul LePage you have to understand that the man has no morals, no sense of honesty, no sense of responsibility, no sense of decency and no fear that his core supporters will care. He has no fear of any Maine media holding him responsible. Almost all of it is owned by Republicans or controlled by them -Maine "Public" Broadcasting, for example.
They are, essentially, the Republicans who will vote for anyone with an "R" after their name and such louts with an "I" after theirs who might as well have an "R" there. A minority of those are the traditional Yankee Republicans whose ancestors joined up during the Civil War if not before but I suspect they are a minority of his supporters. His supporters are unvarnished fascists who want a right-wing bully boy, strong man as a leader. He is only one of a series of Republican governors you could say the same thing about, Scott Walker in Wisconsin, the openly fascistic Rick Snyder in Michigan, such people as Meldrim Thomson in New Hampshire in the past. What sets LePage apart is that he has no governor on his mouth. I've heard from people who knew him that he is a mean drunk of an alcoholic, which might account for the periodic eruptions of foul-mouthed racist filth that issues from him. He was never fit to be Mayor of Waterville, he was never fit for anything but a bouncer in the kind of seedy dive you wouldn't consider going into. Only he's a coward as well as a bully so he wouldn't have done that.
There are a whole host of things in his past, his stint in Canada as a draft dodger, his Canadian family which is never mentioned, etc. Those would have made him unacceptable to Republicans of the 60s or 70s, though with the steady march of Republicans to fascism, there is no bottom beneath which someone can be found unacceptable, no hypocrisy too massive and foul for Republicans of the kind who will vote for a LePage or a Trump, Walker, Snyder, Cruz, .... to not do it.
The fact is all of this is a product of a media which will serve money and tell any lie. The media was talking all summer about a pivot in the Trump campaign after which he would stop with the trash talk. Well, the pivot was made and it was the media that pivoted to making believe that Hillary Clinton did it too when she doesn't, that it doesn't matter that Trump is Paul LePage writ large on a national and world stage. Like those Maine Republicans who elected him, twice, the national media has no real sense of moral responsibility that would stop them from doing what they are. People who ask how LePage could happen in Maine had better keep an eye on things because if you don't think it can happen nationally, there were people here who didn't believe LePage could win.
No comments:
Post a Comment