Obama Derangement Syndrome is terminal: The GOP is going to make the next year a living hell

www.salon.com|Eric Boehlert

It didn’t take long for conservative commentators to start hurling childish insults at their television sets last night during President Obama’s State of the Union address. As he mapped out his vision for America, he was called a “crapweasel president,” a “shameless snake” and a “bad man” giving a “stupid shit” speech.

Viewers disagreed, of course, and gave Obama’s address sky-high marks last night.

If you follow these regular vile eruptions you can’t be surprised. Over the yearsduring Obama’s annual, thoughtful national address, his feral critics have excitedly denounced him in real time as an “arrogant,” “flippant” “jerk.” He was “fake,” “thin-skinned,” “cocky and snide”; “patronizing,” “demagogic,” “unpresidential,” and really, really “arrogant.” And he often gave a “stupid,” “Castro-like,” “evil speech.”

One of the more predictable tropes on the left side of America’s political dial is the notion that the culture wars are over, that Christian conservatives are in retreat, and that the far right is breaking up due to its irrelevance. This happens periodically, whether Democrats have recently won or lost an election, and it happens especially when liberals and progressives win a victory on policy. For some reason there is a great propensity for liberals to declare that they’ve vanquished the right for all time, only to get sucker punched by a conservative in mid-high five.

The Ben Carson phenomenon is a case lesson in how some really smart, impressive figures in certain fields should never talk about politics. Carson is now an official presidential candidate, representing a subset of grassroots conservatives who enjoy being played. This is not an insignificant number of people. He is, to the horror of the people who run the Republican party, polling viably. No would-be candidate has a more dedicated corps of volunteers supporting him. Whether it’s CPAC or the First in the Nation Summit in New Hampshire, the Carson people are everywhere, handing out stickers and buttons and t-shirts and assorted other tchochkes from dusk till dawn.