The Fanboyification of the GOP

A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”

– Roger Simon at Politico

I think I’ve finally figured it out — it’s the fanboyification of the GOP. Just as Hollywood over the last 10 years or so has increasingly molded its big budget event pictures to slavishly pander to the wet-dream fantasies of a socially retarded group of comic book fetishists, while ignoring the more mundane desires of the vast majority of its movie-going audience (such desires including but not limited to a comprehensible plot, actual characters, witty dialogue, perhaps even a genuine human emotion or two), so the GOP continues to drastically narrow its message until it seems to be speaking almost exclusively to a small tribe of embittered fringe-dwellers, unhinged conspiracy theorists, and xenophobic survivalists.

So from Hollywood we get Watchmen, The Spirit, Speed Racer, all of the Star Wars prequels, 300, and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (to name but a few), while recent blockbusters from the GOP include Sarah Palin, the Tourette’s-like repetition of the word ‘socialist,’ Dick Cheney’s nostalgia tour, the effort to drum out of the Republican party so-called moderates such as Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, the Tea Parties, and the doubling-down on the defense of torture.

Obviously it’s going to take a few more box office bombs on the magnitude of the 2006 mid-terms and the 2008 general election before the GOP leadership is prompted to take a second look at the projects it’s been greenlighting. In the meantime, expect more of the same.