Saturday columnist Charles Blow is not happy about Republican Scott Brown's shock victory last week in the special election in Massachusetts, "Mobs Rule [1]." Blow sees the Mass. vote not as a sign of conservative resurgence among voters, but the right-wing leading a bloodthirsty mob fired up by fear and dread.
Welcome to the mob: an angry, wounded electorate, riled by recession, careening across the political spectrum, still craving change, nursing a bloodlust.
Blow used a scene from the movie "Gladiator" to mock America during the Bush administration as "too many too easily manipulated. But people grew wiser and restless. And they revolted." But alas, the salad days have slipped away:
Unfortunately, many now see Barack Obama as a left-leaning version of George W. Bush: just another out-of-touch emperor. It seems as if Obama and the Democrats made the mistake of believing that a heart once won was forever won, that people would be patient, and that the mob would accept their reasoning for lack of results.
They were wrong. The mob is fickle. And it's back with a vengeance.
While the left slept, the right saw a void and leapt in. They feted the fearful to a steady stream of dread and circuses, and now the pendulum of enthusiasm has swung in the other direction.