"Yeah, pretty much" (aka "Let them eat cake")

As a follow-up to my memoir post below--actually, sort of a lead-in to the next installment, here's George Will from Sunday's roundtable on This Week with George Stephanopoulos:

"I think this is a center-right country and [McCain's economic] proposal was a center-right proposal. Mr. Obama correctly said, 'McCain is offering us a 'You're on your own society.' To which John McCain should say, 'Yeah, pretty much.' We believe we are the party of individual responsibility and individualism."

The topic was bailouts, of mortgage-holders and financial corporations, and Will demonstrated a stunning level of contempt for bilked ARM-holders. He observed, derisively, (paraphrasing) "it's right there in the title, adjustable rate."

This is where we are in 2008, a party led by men (mostly, and almost uniformly white, and probably cigar smokers to boot) who feel contempt for the middle class and poor. They are getting worse about disguising the fact, as their populist rhetoric about God and gays--a fig leaf that covers the real agenda--no longer fans the flames of passion. It was inevitable: as the imbalance of wealth shifted ever more precariously to the top 1%, eventually poverty would affect enough of the bottom end to force a political correction. Whether that correction happens this year, as I expect, or later, this kind of comment makes it ever more likely.

You can only tell the poor to go Cheney themselves for so long before they Emma Goldman the rich.