The Transition Era; Part 8: Muir Begins To Grumble About The Republican Candidates.

As I said, Muir started 2008 shilling for Fred Thompson, who many on the Right were hailing as the natural-born savior for a faction whose party that looked like it had gone gummy on them.  They spoke of his natural charisma -- he was an actor, they stressed, just like Reagan! -- his folksy manner, and his rock-solid positions. He was, they insisted, the perfect candidate. Muir bought it completely.

Thompson flamed out in January, an awkward, stiff mess who was utterly out of his depth.

See, that's the thing about Muir. For all he likes to pose as a strong-willed original thinker, he's actually a pliable puppet who will buy just about any nonsense once it slips through his bigoted, reactionary priors. If people he trusts tell him a guy is amazing, his brain will immediately tell him he's seeing someone amazing, and I'm betting how he was able to keep convincing himself Trump was really with it makes sense now doesn't it? In essence, Muir bought into Thompson, because people told him this was a can't miss bet... and the bet busted.

Did this cause any self-awareness? Hell, no.

It did however leave him in an uncomfortable state of ideological orphanhood. Of the two remaining major candidates... well, let's start with Huckabee. Muir didn't like him for two reasons. Firstly, Huckabee's weak 'compassionate conservatism' pitch made Muir suspicious that he might be for something other than the 'cut taxes for the very wealthy' that Muir had been convinced was the best economic plan possible. Secondly, Muir was still very much the smug Rand follower at heart who viewed religion with personal suspicion, even if he was willing to keep those beliefs on the downlow because he believed evangelicals were an  important part of the great wall against evil liberalism. (He would change to being religious in the vague Right Wing way that lacked any real religion in the years ahead.)

And then there was John McCain, the eventual winner, and...

Well, there were two Republicans in the Mystery Business(tm) Era that Muir had a passionate dislike for. One was Trent Lott, who let him lash out at an establishment he resented, while convincing himself this was more proof he wasn't racist.

The other was John McCain.

Now, Muir's hatred of John McCain was both complicated and simple. Complicated, because he was always finding new things to hate about the man, and simple, because it all traced back to him being told to hate him by the Right Wing bloggers he followed for one reason. McCain, while fundamentally a conservative, had  a history of bipartisan action, and the most significant example of it was the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which sought to limit corporate money and sizable donations in elections. Muir hated this and regurgitated arguments he read on why it was bad, arguments it was clear he did not actually understand. Like I said, a pliable puppet who will buy just about any nonsense once it slips through his bigoted, reactionary priors. When the primaries started, Muir thought that clearly Republican voters would repudiate this unworthy heretic.

They did not. McCain cruised to a relatively easy victory, in part because this was probably the last Republican primary which saw a significant moderate voting presence. And as Muir adjusted to his growing unease,  the Democratic primaries were likewise seeing his priors being undermined...

The Transition Era; Part 7: Muir Begins With Assuming Inevitable Victory.

 And now we reach the opening of the 2008 campaign, and right from the start, something will become obvious--Muir opens the year blithely convinced of one thing, that the presidency is the Republican Party's to lose. Despite the disaster of the last three years, despite Dubya's popularity collapsing into a black hole... he thinks it's in the bag.

Now, this is not going to be his consistent frame of mind. Muir will have moments of doubt, moments where he acknowledges that, yeah, things aren't looking good. We will deal with what brings them on in due course, because, yeah, it's going to be a surprise. But by and large, this is going to be his base setting. It is not going to take much for Muir to get bullish on the Republican's chances in 2008. And this raises the question... why? What gave Muir this tendency to assume that obviously things were going to go his way?

The simple answer is, he just hadn't adjusted his priors.

You will recall that Muir spent nearly all of 2006 chortling at the Democrats thinking they had a chance of winning. To Muir, the post-Gingrich "Revolution" Congress was as much the natural property of the Republicans as the Presidency. The victory in 2006 was met  not so much with outrage initially as befuddlement, a bizarre freak that he couldn't quite wrap his head around.

The Democrats of the very tail end of the Late Mystery Business(tm) Period of the last Era, and the Hardware Store Period of this are, like so much of the strip, in an odd state of transformation. They are not quite the Cabal, those shadowy masters of intrigue who despite their degeneracy, rule from the shadows. But they are not quite the ineffectual jokers that they'd been previously.

Not quite, but still mostly. In essence, Muir treated the Democratic Congress as a mass of frauds and crooks who'd tricked and lucked themselves into power. They were a bunch of lightweights traipsing about in things that didn't belong to them, destined to be removed like the jokes they were. While Muir was starting to hint at their sinister connections to malevolent forces, he still largely saw them as a joke. Everything that had happened did not change his beliefs.

This is an important aspect of Muir's overall psychology. Any success by his faction is viewed as total and completely vindicating, no matter how partial and how many qualifications it has, or how quickly it turns to dust. Any success by his opponents, no matter how impressive, is treated as a technicality and frequently a fraudulent one. In Muir's mental universe, he is never ever wrong. No matter what happens. And his opponents are never actually right. Again, no matter what happens.

And so, from that starting point, Muir thought he had a pretty good idea what was happening. His party would triumphantly rally around the conservative politics the nation loved, pick an appropriate Presidential candidate--he was quite fond of Fred Thompson, something we'll explore in more detail in the future--and then go on to teach the Democrats the lesson they should have taught them in 2006, if the Democrats hadn't cheated somehow. (Muir was vague on this somehow at this point. It involved the press, and also, he was starting to grumble about George Soros, though not as much as he would later.)

Now, this was an incredible amount of delusion. George W. Bush was not the triumphant, vindicated figure Muir had long imagined--he was looking at one of the lowest approval ratings in polling history. The policies that Muir had long championed were despised by most of the public, and there was very little mystery why--they had failed. No one but an absolutely blind partisan looked at this Administration as anything but a millstone for the GOP in the upcoming race. Likewise, only a fool assumed anything but that the party would need a drastically retooled message for the upcoming election. But for Muir, his admittedly nebulous philosophy could never fail, only be failed. Muir might turn on something he'd supported, but only years later, and frequently from a set of premises that were close to what he'd started with. He remained convinced that everything he believed was wildly successful and popular. Just ignore all that pesky evidence.

All of which left him in a very uncomfortable state as the GOP primaries began...

The Transition Era; Part 6: Muir Prepares To Lash Out At An Old Foe.

As the thin pretense of DbD being a gag strip with some politics continued to give way during this period, we will find ourselves dealing with politics more and more in the personal lives of the characters. Not quite to the 'We are besties with President Trump" level of later years, but... more. Increasingly plots were going to be driven by what was happening in politics--or what Muir perceived as happening. Which makes this an excellent spot to look both back and ahead at a figure who Muir would be preoccupied with for much of the opening months of 2008.

The Clintons have always held a position of extreme hatred in Muir's mental universe. For a man who seems to have latched onto the political Right early in his life, they represented the unraveling of what had been the axiom of most of his life, the almost effortless dominance of the presidency by Republican Party. For Muir, a majority of the nation deciding they wanted to move on from Reaganism was not simply the world changing, it was a betrayal of the natural order, and possibly a conspiracy. And this was something he still had bitter feelings about from the very start of the strip.

However, Bill Clinton was not Muir's primary target of the pair, even in the early days. While Muir would snarl about the man every now and then, he seemed to understand the man was old news. Oh, he saw Bill as a permanent stain on the nation, but still, one whose time had passed, and whose designated successor had been thwarted by the glorious, sure-footed political hand of Dubya. An evil but--again, in the early days--a defeated evil. But Hillary... she was another matter.

Hillary was in the Senate, and still had an ongoing political career. She was regularly ventured as a potential presidential candidate in political commentary. And she had been just viciously disliked by the Republicans during Bill's presidency, the subject of even more grotesque rumors and conspiracy theories than her husband. All things Muir had absorbed like a sponge. Now Muir wouldn't delve deeply into that particular brand of crazy during the Mystery Business(tm) Era or the early periods of the Transition Era. Again, getting published was always the goal at this stage, and those accusations were not something that even a sympathetic paper would let you mention in a comic. But this was something that was going to lurk in the background, even then. On top of which, Muir's misogyny may not reached its present fever pitch, but it was there.

And so, the Clintons were featured quite a bit in the early years, and they were among the few Democrats to get some actual level of characterization, to be something other than a name attached to a generic caricature of Muir's interchangeable dimwitted Democrat crooks. Now, neither was a deep characterization. In fact, both were at heart just nastier versions of the pop culture slams of the pair, Bill as a corrupt degenerate horndog, and Hillary as a cold, ambitious, mannish shrew. But DbD's take on Hillary had something extra in it. 

Muir genuinely tended to see Hillary as the 'boss' of the Democratic Party, and this produced something somewhat fascinating. It was not something he showed with any nuance--Muir was fairly ignorant as to how the Republicans ran as a party, much less the Democrats. No, Hillary was generally played with the energy of a 1980s' Saturday morning cartoon "boss" villain. Somewhat cleverer and more dangerous than the minions, who she treated with boundless contempt, but still fundamentally a clod created to lose. Muir was already setting the scene to it again in 2007, as the Mystery Business(tm) Era wrapped up, and was keeping it going as the Transition Era started, as he prepared for the 2008 presidential election...

Texas! It's A Whole Other Country Of White Morons.

It's All Our Yesterdays! Because time to die!

And now Captain Mitty is a descendant of Davy Crockett.

A Democrat. Ahh, Muir, when will your ignorant worship of an imagined past stop being amusing? Hopefully never.

"Wha...? I Mean, Yeah, Sure."

It's All Our Yesterdays! Because Amelia Earhart!

Actually, the Repubs are more the 'sullen teenage jerk' party. But love the awful sexism, Muir.

Yeah. Lots Of People In Masks!

It's All Our Yesterdays! Because Banana Republic!

Yep! We're going to win! The Dems are fooling themselves!

The Dems Can't Be Winning Because They're Popular!

It's All Our Yesterdays! Because hoosegow!

Yep. That's what did McCain in. The conspiracy of ACORN and the left wing media. Not his dismal performance, VP-candidate Space Princess Caribou, and belonging to the same party as George W. "Commodus" Bush.

Worst. Song. Parody. EVER.

It's All Our Yesterdays! Because there's tomcats up there.

Muir's a real MORAN MAN,
Living in his Moran land,
Screaming out his Moran plans to everyone.

He's got a distorted point of view,
Believes what Fox News tell him to,
And he'd screw over me and you!

Moran Man--just shut the fuck up!
You are whiny Right-wing suckup..
Moran Man--America is not yours to command!

There. That's how it's done.

Muir Predicts! And His Crystal Ball Is Still Broken.

It's All Our Yesterdays! Because ba-da-da-da!

Yep! Huge win for McCain! How's your Messiah now, Dems?

"And We're Assholes!"

It's All Our Yesterdays! Because everywhere is war!

Yeah. Nice.

Ummm, Right.

It's All Our Yesterdays! Because exodus--movement of Ja People!

Choosing the crazy Right wing Veep--and notice we've heard nothing of Palin's meltdown--it's all part of his plan to campaign against the "conservatives". Yep.

That Wacky McCain!

It's All Our Yesterdays! Because who is Mr. Brown?

Yep! McCain's an idiot! He should realize that the Republicans are still the way and the power.

"And I Say Your Group, Because You Founded Them. I Think."

It's All Our Yesterdays! Because feel all right!

Muir may not know what the hell is going on, but the noise machine has told him what to think--and that's what he's thinking, damn it!

What A Maroon!

It's All Our Yesterdays! Because Ja would never give the power to a crazy baldhead.

Yeah! McCain should have let the crowds get worked up--and try to kill that crazy terrorist Obama!

Six Degrees Of TRAITOR!

It's All Our Yesterdays! Because we're moving out of Babylon.

Muir shows he has a very loose definition of terrorist.

Ayers! Obama's Murderous Hippie Buddy!

It's All Our Yesterdays! Because screwface, no I won't be frightened.

Yeah... Muir really doesn't know much about the Weathermen, does he?

Jules Verne Is Turning In His Grave.

It's All Our Yesterdays! Because no woman no cry.

"And due to my voracious reading of the "New Media", I know that Barack Obama is a Fascist-Communist-Muslim sleeper who wasn't even born in America! Your "old media" with its "standards" tries to stifle these truths!"

Ha! Keep Trying Obama! Joe The Plumber Is A Hero For Our Times!

It's All Our Yesterdays! Because one good thing about music--when it hits, you feel no pain.

As Muir doubles down on stupid and insists that really, if the media wasn't sucking up to him so much, everyone would hate Obama, I have to state--man, he cannot draw those babies.

I For One Welcome Our Republican Overlords!

It's All Our Yesterdays! Because unite for the benefit of your children.

"The Bush tax cuts. For the top 1%. So, miss--you LIKE letting the rich fuck you up the ass, I'm guessing. You think they mean it when they say they'll still respect you in the morning..."

Hail Not-Joe the Not-Plumber!

It's All Our Yesterdays! Because how the dread-locked Rasta became a buffalo soldier.

Yep! Obama's a socialist wimp! And a secret Muslim! HUZZAH!