Wither the angry white guy

IT IS BECOMING increasingly uncomfortable to watch. Still, like a ghastly car crash, it's hard to avert your eyes. Make no mistake: We are witnessing the last throes of the Republican white power structure, the current surrogate for the vestiges of pre-Civil Rights Era America. They are the "dead-enders," to use the Rumsfeldian phrase, who reject the nation's evolution and refuse to believe that most Americans (including moderate Republicans) have refused to follow them back to 1954 and Old Virginny. I give you Sean Hannity, a sort of modern-day "Bull" Connor in sheep's clothing, who huffed: "America now deserves Barack Obama.” Panicky Hannity should have stopped there. But, like an out of control child, he couldn't:

"Just barely over 50 percent looked at [Obama's] pathetic record and decided they wanted more of the same. I’m not sure exactly why they arrived at that judgment, I think it’s a bad judgment, but we are a self-governing country and the voice and the will of ‘We the People’ have now been heard. America wanted Barack Obama four more years. Now you’ve got him. ... Good luck with that.”

Only FCC obscenity rules prevented Hannity from flipping America the bird after that last sentence. With Obama's decisive reelection and Democratic gains across the board, America has effectively told the GOP to take its Mad Men Era dogmas and shove it. The good news is that "severely conservative" Republicans are on a steep, slippery slope to irrelevancy (see this week's voting results), one of their own making. The bad news is that these angry white guys won't relent we pry their "Father Knows Best" Betamax cassettes from their cold, dead hands.