The GOP’s poisonous double-speak: Thomas Frank on how Republicans hijacked the midterms

Once again, Republicans used their patented brand of fake populism to make Democrats look like chumps

Last week, with the Republican campaign robo-calls coming one after another over the phone in suburban Kansas City — at least a dozen of them every day, the right-wing super PACs’ version of a World War I artillery barrage — I picked out one phrase from the hailstorm of words: “Washington’s liberal class.”

That phrase, delivered with sneering emphasis on the second word, may have been a key to the whole confusing affair. Consider the many ironies of the 2014 elections. Georgia, the state with the highest unemployment in the nation, just elected as its United States senator a businessman who is “proud” of his career of outsourcing. The voters of Illinois overwhelmingly approved a referendum calling for a higher minimum wage, but they also chose as their governor a Wall Street type who in the past has asserted that the minimum wage ought to be reduced or eliminated. And the public as a whole, driven to fury by the spectacle of Washington gridlock, just handed over the U. S. Senate to a party that has enshrined obstructionism as its most precious article of faith.