Wacko is relative

I read a well-written analysis on Politico today that will unfortunately never see the mainstream. People are too lazy, or too burned out on politics, or both for something like this to be presented to the masses. It doesn't fit in a "tweet" so people will tune out.

The full article is here. It aligns with a couple theories I have about the current race, specifically:

1. Trump is getting disproportionate media coverage because his statements are so sensational that they sell a ton of ads. He's the gossip/reality star of the race and that's what Americans lust for these days so he's a siren's song to the major media outlets.
2. His positions are so outlandish that they skew the curve for other statements made by his fellow GOP candidates. In other words, if you remove Trump from the equation, there are plenty of crazy statements being made by the other Republicans in the race, they just seem less crazy and get less air time relative to Trump
3. The Democrats are making some wacky statements too, but they're about hippie/socialist themes, not starting wars, encouraging xenophobia and legislating religious beliefs into US law. 
4. People are so turned off by the entire political process that they don't tune in. This creates a vicious circle, because it gives the candidates the freedom to say absurd things and know that the majority of the electorate isn't listening; they'll only hear what the media distills for them in conveniently digestible 140 character increments. That distillation process is also biased towards trying to sell ads, because that's what a media firm does. 

The process of saying crazy shit in the early part of a race to "stand out" and then later coming back to the center is nothing new. It's called "shifting the Overton window" and the article references it. What is new is the the extremes to which candidates are willing to go to stand out. Think of a number line with 0 as dead-center, moderate America (which is really where most of us are, FYI). 

Ten or 20 years ago, GOP candidates might go to a "+2" to the right and the Dems might go to a "-2" to the left in the early part of the cycle. In this current cycle, the Dems are kicking it down to "-5" with stuff like 90% tax rates and free college for everyone. I don't like that, it's blatant pandering. Here's what I believe is a real problem: The GOP is taking it to "+20" with some of their positions, it's not just Trump, and it's working spectacularly well. Both parties are being more extreme in their rhetoric, but the GOP is going MUCH farther away from center than the Dems. Here are a few examples from the article:

• Carly Fiorina’s conclusion that the minimum wage is unconstitutional 
• Mike Huckabee’s pledge to defy Supreme Court rulings he deems incompatible with God’s law 
• Ben Carson’s assertion that if the United States had set a goal of oil independence within a decade, moderate Arab states would have “turned over Osama bin Laden and anybody else you wanted on a silver platter within two weeks”
• Rick Santorum’s claim that Islam is not protected by the First Amendment 
• Chris Christie’s threat to shoot down Russian planes and launch cyberattacks on Chinese leaders
• Ted Cruz called for putting the United States back on the gold standard 
• Marco Rubio vowed to repeal Wall Street reform in its entirety and oppose abortion without any exceptions
• John Kasich, supposedly the moderate in the GOP race, vowed to “punch Russia in the nose.”

These are all things the GOP candidates actually said, on live TV, during their first 75 debates. Many of these statements were not even contradicted by anyone else on stage at the time. Most of them are absolutely ludicrous. Yes, Bernie Sanders giving everyone free college is ludicrous too, but let's hypothesize on the amount of economic harm that would cause versus what every respectable economist believes would happen if we followed the dipshit idea of returning to the gold standard. Or following the theory, which has been roundly disproveds, that wall street will self-regulate. GOP extremism is potentially far more harmful to America. And besides, Obama apparently already made us a socialist nation, so there's nothing left for Sanders to do.