alternate realities

d'ya remember when john sununu said the republican party wasn't going to be bothered by "fact-checking"?

it seems to be a defining characteristic of the present-day formation of the republican party.

for instance, the denver post complied some interesting election predictions from republican commentators, which all had romney winning.

that was worth a giggle to me, because the site i follow and it's conservative data-driven counterpart both predicted an obama win at 303 electoral votes with a couple states still up in the air.

most of the election coverage i watched was from fox news, "america's election headquarters", where the implication, i guess is that if you're not a fox news follower, you're not a real american.

...which is sort of the impression you get from todd akin's concession speech, in that "americans believe" as he does.





but the thing i loved abotu the fox coverage watching karl rove insist loudly as the returns came in that this was all good news for governor romney and that the loss of pennsylvania didn't hurt his chances of winning at all because obviously everything else was falling into place just as they planned, which i think smacks of not letting facts get in your way.

but then the awesome moment came when fox news decided to go ahead and call the election for obama and karl rove exploded.

never mind the amazing failure to grasp actual facts, but let's address this: fox news was not awarding the election to anyone. they were simply reporting the news and even though fox news very much likes to deal in things that aren't true, at some point you can't continue to declare romney the winner as the actual facts keep coming in.

then there began fox new's awesome backpedaling and their attempts to explain away the loss:

romney lost because he didn't spend enough money.
he lost because he had bad campaign advice.
he lost because he was a victim of negative ads.
he lost because obama spent more money.
he lost because he didn't moderate his message early enough.
he lost because hurricane sandy gave free advertising to obama.
he lost because of liberal coverups.
he lost because some fact checkers ruined it.

there was no mention that he may have lost because enough of the american people just didn't like him, his politics, or his messages. there was very little talk of how the republican party might come more into the mainstream and not be so frightening to many of us. there was very little talk of the republican party's steady alienation of black and latino voters. there was no mention of the republican party's anti-woman agenda and how maybe those things aren't working for them.

their approach to politics is very like their approach to science: let's make up some stuff in line with our world views. we will not examine our world views if things go wrong, but we will insist louder than ever that we hold reality itself in contempt.