The Archetypal Quest

Have a vague idea, sort of a psychology of parallelism: What happens in one party then happens in the other. In some sense the public views the two races in the same way --or as the same. If Hillary and Obama are neck-and-neck, then the Republican race will also become two candidates neck-and-neck...?

The idea is that there is a zeitgeist. The nation as a whole can have opposite views, but not views only subtlely different. If the views aren't strikingly in opposition, they tend to merge and become the same.

I'm thinking of the two contests. Opposite views would be where one party has a known successor, and the other party has a contest. "Subtlely different" would be where both have a contest but where the dynamisms are different. What tends to be lost within the melding of the zeitgeist are the subtleties of the dynamism.

The emotionally really powerful race is the one between Hillary and Barack. That's because over the last fifteen years the Clinton personality has infused every personality in America. Barack is attempting to take down an Established Power. "Change" is revolution, it means to upset the given order of things. It's like taking down the King and the Queen and forging a new state; new, even if unknown yet in detail and unimagined. It's the force of a revolutionary people in mass movement against a passe regime, confronting shrill ambition, saying a forceful no to entitlement and corrupted age and the sharp scent of decadence to come. It's romance. In concept it's historical, epochal; it's myth and legend and story. The glorious awaits. It's riveting.

And on the Republican side you have politics.

But I don't think it can stay that way. I think the Republican race will soon be viewed through the same prism as the Democrat. That's an immensely false similarity, but I fear that's the way it's going to be viewed. There will be corruption, an old order, and a call to sweep it all away with the new...

Unfortunately, if that happens, the old and the corrupt is McCain, and the new is Romney.

God, what a disgusting thought. Billy-Clinton-Romney as the new romantic hero of the Republican revolution!? It's insane, but that could be the zeitgeist.

The question is: Can the old order hold? McCain is the old order. The proof is that he works with Democrats. The new Prince is Romney, the proof is that he says he won't work with any body, not if they're in Washington... The true rebel is Huck, but he waits in the wings, his forces too small yet to take on the Black-Prince-faux-White-Knight. But the false prince must fall. Can The Huck summon his scattered forces soon, and defend yet the Old Codger King?

What drama.

Unfortunately I think it's something like this that we may be seeing. The average voter can't possibly know all the ideas and forces and groups that are now battling within the Republican party. There has to be something that can be seen in simpler terms, and those terms are now set by the emotionally charged battle of Obama against the Corrupt Queen. That battle is archetypal, and I'm afraid the Republican battle is going to be framed in the same terms.

I wonder if that means Rudy will fail entirely? He really doesn't fit into the script.

So: McCain and Romney really close. Huck some distant back in third, and Rudy with not 5% of the vote. I give the war, the final conquest, to McCain, because at some point the forces of Huck will join his, but I perhaps do not give him this battle. If the parallel is to hold Romney must stage an upset. He probably will, but it will be by a small margin, simply because he doesn't have his own massive private legion. The only way he could be stopped is if The Huck suddenly surges as the champion of Neither of the Above. It could happen.