The Horse Has Thrown The Rider

"In the old days, the Republican ego had control of the party’s id. The id, sometimes described as a galloping horse or crying baby, 'the dark, inaccessible part of our personality ... chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations,' as Freud called it, was whipped up obliquely by candidates. Nixon had his Southern strategy of using race as a wedge, Bush Senior and Lee Atwater used the Willie Horton attack, and W. and Karl Rove conjured the gay marriage bogyman. Once elected, those presidents curbed the id with the ego, common sense and reason. But now the G.O.P.’s id is unbridled. The horse has thrown the rider; the dark forces are bubbling. Moderates, women, gays, Hispanics and blacks — even the president — are being hunted in this most dangerous game." - Maureen Dowd, writing for the New York Times.