The Republican faithful is comfortably dumb enough to worship at the bully pulpit
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Version 0 of 1. “We go through some of the same sort of issues sometimes.” Florida governor Rick Scott said that at a children’s museum this weekend, introducing New Jersey governor Chris Christie in front of a phalanx of the Republican faithful, who had been busy waving prefabricated “handwritten” signs. The conclusion felt peculiar less than 100 hours before Election Day, because the things these two politicians share most are massive ethical investigations by the government. But it makes sense. Rick Scott has never not been embattled, and Chris Christie craves battle. No matter how much the rest of the potential 2016 presidential candidates may try to distance themselves in 2014 from Christie’s tough-guy demeanor by citing some amorphous civility below the Mason-Dixon, there was an almost palpable yearning, among these aging southerners here on Saturday afternoon, for the bully. The swells of the political right came to see a beating. This gathering of economically comfortable white people – the Republican in-crowd, the historic beneficiaries of that vaunted southern civility, disinterested in sharing a “good day” even with interlopers asking questions – only became really amped up at the prospect of a bully verbally abusing someone in public for at least the second time in a week. The Scott supporters got righteously stern-faced and tut-tuttingly murmury at the ethical shortcomings of Charlie Crist, which were pointed out by his opponent, whose company was assessed the largest fine for Medicare fraud in American history, and by another sitting governor, who might be indicted any second now. Even Christie acknowledged that this faithful Florida demographic wanted to hear the bully slam Crist, that he knows the GOP’s biggest fans like him for being intemperate: they like the bully because he is a bully. At his most poetic, Christie said, “There are two types of people who go into politics: those who want to do something, and those who want to be something.” He barked marching orders for Tuesday morning at the crowd; of Crist, he said: “give him the title of Loser.” That got the sign-wavers going for the first time all afternoon. Well, since the “DOWN WITH MARIJUANA” moment anyway. Naples is one of the few places in Florida that looks like the Florida tourists imagine, which is to say it’s hardly Florida at all. Palm trees run down medians in the middle of well-preserved roads. Mildew is conspicuously absent. Naples looks like the sort of municipality that ensues when a homeowner’s association goes overboard on amenities and zoning. It’s also over 93% white, which, like a good homeowner’s association, proves that we can all pool our resources to have nice things ... so long as we’re sure the not-nice people can’t have them. Naples presents the comfortably conservative antithesis to the “press 1 for English” nightmare of Miami lurking just 120 miles across Alligator Alley. It’s also a great place for the best southern political cynic’s game: spot the people of color at the Republican gathering who are not service employees. I’m briefly excited to see a Hispanic woman, but her bag of telephoto lenses gives her away as a journalist. It’s too bad, because she was in her mid-20s, which would have lowered the event’s median age from 55. Instead, almost every one of the 100 people assembled this afternoon at the Golisano Children’s Museum looks to be late-middle-aged or comfortably retired, all confirming the old Orwell aphorism: “At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.” Aside from a few tautened and silicone-injected grotesques, the face is this: an older white person who just realized the elevator doors are closing and they are trapped in there with the fart deposited by whomever just left. I ask a senior citizen in pearls and a nicely tailored pantsuit why she’s here supporting Rick Scott. “Governor Scott created over 640,000 private sector jobs,” she begins, and I have to fight my brain tuning things out, because this is Scott campaign boilerplate, which later this afternoon a state senator, the lieutenant governor, Scott and Christie will all reiterate. (It’s also pretty misleading.) “Under Charlie Crist, we lost over 830,000 jobs. We can’t afford four more years of Charlie Crist because we can’t afford to lose our jobs again.” I gently ask if she herself lost a job, because it looks like she’s retired rather well. “I’m not worried about me,” says the retired woman in the pantsuit. “I’m worried about my grandchildren.” I walk up to a pair of other older women, who have observed this exchange at a distance. “We don’t want to talk to you,” says one wearing that closely coiffed haircut that hides thinning hairlines and a pair of oversize sunglasses that she could bought in the mid-1980s when they were last in style and retrieved in the last year when they became fashionable again. “We’re here to see our friends.” Any political gathering has the potential to look like a social club, but this feels private enough to be the weekly meeting of the Rick Scott Ladies Auxiliary. On a macro level, lefty journalists like to talk about the GOP suffering epistemic closure, but on the ground that just as easily manifests as these senior citizens excitedly greeting senior citizens they know and have evidently known for years, encountering only young people dragged here by families, and having the same conversations that are comfortable both for the repetition and for zero risk of ever being gainsaid. That’s a problem in the long term when you start losing friends to speak to and stop generating new ones, but in the short term it just means that it’s easier to see which people are unwelcome, to wave them away. Maybe just by standing there but certainly whenever I open my mouth, I am the fart in the elevator. On the way inside the museum, there is a pause as the members of the Rick Scott auxiliary club reach the second floor and see a tall young black man wearing a Rick Scott sticker, an Oxford shirt and a sweater with the sleeves tied together across his chest, like he went to the Carlton from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air outlet store just this morning. The young man merely stands next to some kind of registration materials, but people take pictures of him anyway, one supposes to prove to friends that he is real. Christie’s plane has apparently been diverted to an airfield in Fort Myers, and state senator Garrett Richter tells us that Rick Scott’s bus “isn’t here just yet”, which is odd, because it drove past me on the turnoff from Immokalee Road: Oh gross. pic.twitter.com/qtPwcJcyJg I was a high school drama and debate coach and judge off an on for about three years, and Garrett Richter is easily one of the worst extemporaneous speakers I have ever heard. He attempts to lead the crowd through a rousing acrostic, but he doesn’t get their attention when he says what the words he is spelling out actually are. All you can hear is him saying “E is for...” then backtracking and reexplaining, and each explanation sounds like the preceding one, so God only knows what letter we’re on. Later, I figure out that his acrostic is: Leadership Education & Economy Taxes & Spending Working It’s November No, really. Each letter is introduced and explained with a tortured list of synonyms and tautologies. Leadership is for the ability to lead. I’m not sure “Taxes & Spending” are conservative talking points, but it turns out this guy is against them. Many of the definitions include “free enterprise” for some reason. Finally, we’re instructed that W and I stand for “Working It’s” but we “have to flip them” to “It’s Working”. Not only is “It’s” somehow “Working” for everyone, but Florida is working – also, I guess, because free enterprise? Richter then asks if we’re ready to meet our “next governor”, then corrects himself, before reminding us what the N stands for. It’s November, when we have to do some things: “A) Reelect Rick Scott.” The crowd cheers. “B...” Richter begins, before drawing a huge breath: “DOWN WITH MARIJUANA!” The crowd breaks into its loudest applause yet – along with isolating whooping. It is an odd enthusiasm, since two thirds of the crowd are about a block away from death’s door and just a few houses down from chemotherapy, radiation therapy and a serious need for some medical marijuana. But this is what happens when drugs-’n’-thugs are hardwired as synonyms. Almost certainly – even if Florida’s Amendment 2 is defeated, or if similar midterm marijuana ballot initiatives lose in DC and Oregon – when geriatrics like this do a J from some nephew, they won’t think anything they’re doing is illegal. I can’t tell if Rick Scott repeatedly makes eye contact with me because I’m tall and don’t have osteoporosis or if I’m the only one actively listening. The governor, who’s been spooked enough by polls showing a dead heat to tap into his personal fortune again (despite saying last year he would not), goes on a bizarre aside, encouraging everyone to vote because, “Mitt lost because we didn’t get the early votes in.” Of course, the GOP-controlled Florida legislature shortened early voting days from 14 to eight, and Scott refused to expand early voting hours on Election Day in 2012. Watching a guy who was forced out of his own business under a cloud of fraud allegations hand off the mic to someone who could theoretically be arrested by federal agents tomorrow for shutting down one of the busiest bridges in the world for political purposes – it’s surreal enough as it is. It’s weirder when the second guy’s job is to verbally punish a third man for the naked avarice of switching parties. Christie delivers his final verdict on Scott and Crist, the former Republican Florida governor, by offering an alternative that isn’t one at all: “The way you can evaluate a governor is his character and integrity. And that’s why this is the clearest choice in America.” He might as well have said that Charlie Crist has no respect for urban infrastructure or traffic flow. A trio of cheerleaders attempt a “Rick! Scott!” chant and again fail, and people begin filing out, interrupted by photo-op attempts crowding the exit staircase, as Pharrell’s “Happy” and Aloe Blacc’s “The Man” improbably play at an uncomfortable volume. In the glacial, geriatric pace, I have ample time to think about what I just saw. I wanted to ask Scott’s senior ladies auxiliary about why people concerned with voter fraud applauded when Richter encouraged them to vote repeatedly. I wanted to ask why people cheering red meat about law and order apparently had no passion for law or order when it came to the two governors in their presence. I wanted to ask why people blasting hip-hop to provide a former CEO burning through a $68m TV ad budget with some ersatz charisma, people who claim to have a plan for everybody, seemed so surprised to see a black guy at the door. I wanted to ask about all these things, but the air started growing close and thick. It was the first truly cold day in South Florida, and South Florida doesn’t do climate control well unless it’s blasting air conditioning. Everything became sweaty and started to stink like hot wool. Going out the door, I got hemmed in like ninepins with a bunch of short older men fairly swimming in older-man cologne. It was like being dunked in a cauldron of Mitchum, Vetiver and English Leather. I reeled out the door, past the museum’s large interactive exhibit on the Everglades, which is probably meant to show the kids how the river of grass works. In a pinch it could be converted into a historical display of the natural marvel that used to be there before Rick Scott and his pals drained, bulldozed and subdivided its periphery while laissez fairing the remainder into an industrial toilet. But that’s the thing about Chris Christie’s “shut up and sit down” schtick: it is the Republican party’s bully id turned up to eleven. Jersey bosses, ex-Republicans, thugs with weed, other people with weed, regulators trying to stop you from pumping millions of gallons of fertilizer runoff into the Glades – they’re all just nails. That Chris Christie is a hammer, and that everyone whooped at the thought of seeing Rick Scott swing it, was the least surprising thing in the world. |