Solomon Bundy

Cliven Bundy
Mooched on Monday
Went on Hannity on Tuesday
Had a militia fest on Wednesday
Scared the feds away on Thursday
Went on Hannity on Friday
Gave a speech on Saturday
Disowned by Hannity on Sunday

The Cliven Bundy saga has transformed from potential tragedy to ongoing farce albeit with the remaining potential to yet turn into a tragedy. I suppose that's a relief.

Bundy's remaining supporters say that he is a good and decent man, a man who only wants what's best for everyone.  For African Americans, or "the Negro" to use his term, this amounts to a useful skill set in the form of picking cotton and guaranteed employment as slaves.

It's quite entertaining to see Republicans, including former BFF Sean Hannity, lining up to denounce Bundy.  You would think that someone holding those appalling views was as rare as the ivory-billed woodpecker among aging, rural, angry white males -- you know, the people the GOP decided to double down as their key to victory following the fifteen minutes of soul-searching that came on the heels of botching the last election.

This strategy is looking like it may pay dividends in the mid-terms.  But seriously, if your core voting block is made up of the kind of elderly relatives who send you emails wondering about Barack Obama's birth certificate and comparing our first black president to a chimpanzee, isn't it likely that more than a few of them have a pretty racist take on modern American life?

 There is, in fact, a kernel of merit in the issue that ginned this whole episode up in the first place.  The federal government owns an enormous amount of land in the West, and a credible conservative case can be made that more of it should be in private hands.

However, if this ever happens, don't expect the land to simply be handed out to ranchers based on dubious ancestral claims.  Instead, it will be auctioned off to the highest bidder.  Bundy, who apparently is too broke to pay the relatively modest federal grazing fees, would seem to be an unlikely candidate to win such a bidding war.  So instead he would be forced to pay rent to whatever large agribusiness wins the prize.  And since grazing fees are about ten times higher on private lands than on public lands, he and his rancher buddies will be in a worse financial spot. Except this time without the Fox News cheering section.

All of which points to the continuing unstable marriage keeping the GOP on life support: Nostalgia for a lost and "simpler" American past (reflected in Bundy's outré racial comments) and an uncompromising devotion to privatization, property rights, and laissez-faire capitalism that cannot sit comfortably alongside that myth.