I’ve been focusing a lot more on the Republican primary over the past few days, which means that I’ve been trying to get inside the collective head of Republican base voters – whom John Rogers, aka Kung Fu Monkey, so hilariously (and, as would later turn out time and again, accurately) named “the Crazy 27%."
In expressing my views, analyses, and speculations, I’ve used terms like “the Crazies,” “the Orderlies,” and “the Asylum.” And I’ve suggested that a lot of these voters are motivated by sheer meanness, a desire to be the biggest, baddest, toughest prick on the block. But I have also made the claim that neither I nor anyone on the Left that I can think of actually demonizes Republican base voters.
It occurred to me that some of my characterizations might be seen as undermining my assertion “we don’t demonize Republican voters,” so I thought I’d try to explain a little more fully (i) who I’m actually talking about, (ii) what I mean by my “non-demonization” claim, and (iii) why this is a fundamental difference between the Liberal base and the Conservative base.
