The GOP Fever Dream Delusions:
Because the fever from a virus that made him puke and shit until he's pretty sure his stomach lining came off was so intense, the Rude Pundit's not sure what he saw and heard actually existed or was just some series of nightmares. Drenched in sweat and watching the Republican National Convention, he saw wave upon wave of whiteness, stretched like an albino ocean, speckled with an occasional black or brown floater. He saw people worshiping at an altar for a fake idol. He saw images and words appear and disappear in the ether above the podium. It was, for lack of a better word, weird.

He thought he saw Clint Eastwood on the stage, looking like an ancient, effete waiter, the tough guy roles never seeming so much an act, saying things like about election night 2008, "And it was dark and outdoors and it was nice. And people were lighting candles. And they were saying candles -- I just thought, this is great. Everybody's crying. Oprah was crying. I was even crying." Dirty Harry is another little weepy bitch? No, this can't be true, he thought. And then the Man with No Name talked to an empty chair, as if his speech was some kind of exercise in an improv class. "You're giving a speech at the RNC and you have to talk to the President, who's not there. Aaaand...go" The delegates, hand to God, looked as if they were coming and shitting on themselves at the same time.

Then, he thought he saw one of those floaters drift onto the stage to talk about how his father had been a bartender, about he had been raised by dirt poor parents who escaped Cuba, about how people like him and people like Mitt Romney were essentially the same. That can't be, the Rude Pundit thought. No one could actually say such a thing and be believed. But believed he was, and cheered, as if his injection of a phrase in Spanish was all the coloration needed in, all the coloration desired, a flourish of orange in a field of sun-bleached red, white, and blue. Marco Rubio offered, "A few years ago, during a speech, I noticed a bartender behind a portable bar in the back of the ballroom. I remembered my father who worked for many years as a banquet bartender." Did he get to know the bartender? Did he give him an extra big tip? We don't know because he didn't tell us. The Rude Pundit's father was a semi driver, but if he thought about the old man every time he passed a big rig, he'd go insane.

Finally, the main event, after Clint Eastwood asked if the food was okay and Marco Rubio asked if his drink needed refreshing. He saw Mitt Romney, his hair perfectly sculpted, his eyes given just the right amount of moisture to look on the verge of tears, his vague, patronizing smile positioned in a way that said, "I am trying so hard to hide how vastly superior to you I am."

He thought it was the fever, for sure, because such things cannot be real. Indeed, such monsters with such huge foreheads are usually chased into windmills with torches and pitchforks. But he's checked the transcript and the video, and it was, dear God, it was. And the Rude Pundit doesn't understand how anyone could speak these words and still be seen as trustworthy.

Romney tried, goddamn he tried, to make himself into more than a money-generating monster, more than a robot. He told the crowd about his dead mother and then asked, "Don't you wish she could have been here at this convention and heard leaders like Governor Mary Fallon and Governor Nikki Haley, Governor Susana Martinez, Senator Kelly Ayotte, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice?" Strange, the Rude Pundit thought. We don't know your mom, Mitt. She might have been a total bitch. If we were given such a wish, it would have nothing to do with reanimating your mother's corpse.

On and on it went, with lie after lie, with absence after absence. "[E]very president since the Great Depression who came before the American people asking for a second term could look back at the last four years and say with satisfaction, 'You're better off than you were four years ago,' except Jimmy Carter. And except this president," and ignore George H.W. Bush, or George W. Bush, who got reelected even though things were worse off. In fact, the word "bush" was not uttered once last night, not even in reference to shrubbery, the depilation of the Republican Party being completed.

Romney spoke to us, the Obama voters, in soothing tones, cooing to us, seducing us gently, whispering, "The black man didn't fuck you the way you hoped he would. Come back to me and I'll fuck you so sweetly that you'll forget that we cock-blocked him every chance we got." But when you ask him how he'll fuck you, he only says, "Don't worry. It's just a fucking you'll love. Trust me."

That people are actually considering doing so has to be a fever dream.