After a couple months of non-stop blunders, more than a few people have joked that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was supposedly the electable one (though I think he could still win due to Republican efforts to suppress the vote). But nobody likes Mitt. In retrospect, the decision to choose Romney will be viewed, I think, as the result of a conservative movement that became completely isolated and out of touch from the rest of the country.

A year ago, tens of millions of Americans were willing to make common cause with a bunch of people sleeping in a park, to align themselves with a movement containing anarchists, to overlook their cultural dislike of the ‘usual protest suspects’. The anger then and now towards an economic elite that through its actions evinced a complete disdain for most working Americans was palpable. The belief that the rentier class (even if that term wasn’t often used) was shafting the public is widespread.

How did the Republicans respond to this climate? Leveraged buyout specialist Mitt Romney (President Obama certainly has been blessed with incompetent, if vitriolic, enemies). The only thing dumber than nominating someone who reminds people of their ex- is nominating someone who reminds them of their boss. The boss who screwed up the business and then fired you. Actually, Romney doesn’t remind people of that guy, he is that guy.

Conservatives are so deep in an ideological bubble, they couldn’t even realize the basic climate they’re in–in other words, they’re suffering from epistemic closure. It leads to ads like this, where all the Democrats have to do is let Romney speak:

Barring electoral fraud or voter suppression, this is game over.