Lefty pundit Amanda Marcotte grants that so-called political theater usually dovetails with the beliefs of the politicians and activists who perform it. Among the exceptions: some Republicans’ insincere, “comically overwrought meltdowns” over the Iran nuclear deal.
Those histrionics, Marcotte declared in a Wednesday Talking Points Memo column, are meant “to stir up irrational fears to be harped on for the rest of the election season…Pointless obstructionism for the sole purpose of sticking it to the Democrats and mindless demagoguery about the nefarious Middle Eastern threat to convince voters of your manhood…are joining together to create a massive, misshapen beast that represents everything that’s gone wrong with politics in the 21st century.”
From Marcotte’s piece (bolding added):
[M]ost political theater is in service of ideas that people, both on the left and right, actually believe in…
But as Republicans have comically overwrought meltdowns over Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, it’s hard to shake the sense that, for a lot of them, this is pure political theater, being conducted not because of any serious convictions about the deal itself but simply to stir up irrational fears to be harped on for the rest of the election season…
…[T]he clowns are spilling out, honking their noses and trying to get attention by screaming about how we’re all going to die now…[A] veritable who’s-who of unserious but self-important demagogues…descended on D.C. [for last week’s rally against the deal] to impart their collective wisdom about diplomacy, which appears to amount to implying that the president’s testicles aren’t big enough.
…[T]wo of the worst Republican traits of the past 20 years—pointless obstructionism for the sole purpose of sticking it to the Democrats and mindless demagoguery about the nefarious Middle Eastern threat to convince voters of your manhood—are joining together to create a massive, misshapen beast that represents everything that’s gone wrong with politics in the 21st century…
It’s no secret why Republicans love portraying Democrats as weak and treacherous when it comes to foreign policy, and particularly when it comes to hostile Islamic countries. It feeds right into the base’s worst instincts for empty masculine posturing and fear-based politics. It’s particularly salient to conservatives now, as painting Hillary Clinton as some kind of weak-willed surrender monkey, mostly by dropping the word “Benghazi” a lot, is clearly going to be the centerpiece of the anti-Clinton strategy.
