First Impressions

By Baxter

Imagine that you are not a political junkie the way we cats are. Imagine you're, say,  a suburban wife and mom of three kids. Every morning you get those children off to school and then head out for your job as a part-time receptionist in a medical office. At the end of the day, you race to meet your kids at the bus stop and then head home to get homework started and dinner on the table.

Maybe, just maybe, you have time to turn on the network or cable news at that point, but only to play in the background while you tear around with the children, supper and laundry. You probably don't read a newspaper, because there isn't time. You hear about big news stories, and they register — but aside from the major players like the President and maybe the Vice President, you really don't know who the inside-the-Beltway influencers are. You can't put faces to names.

Until now.

Because we cats think that if this describes you, you probably never saw Wayne LaPierre until his foam-flecked tirade post-Sandy Hook.

And you probably had no idea who David Keene was, although these days you see him everywhere.

And you also can't get away from other wildly unpalatable people named Rand Paul, and Steve Stockman, and Marco Rubio, and, oh, yeah, that Rush Limbaugh guy — all of whom are screaming about "tyranny," some of whom are making fun of schoolchildren scared that someone will burst into their classroom and shoot them, and others of whom are making distasteful ads about the President's daughters.

You don't like these people. You don't, because you have kids, and the Sandy Hook massacre horrifies you. You can't imagine how those parents in Connecticut must be feeling. And all those right-wingers screaming about the Second Amendment are guys, who seem so — so angry and unhinged. Like the shooters in Tucson, Aurora and Newtown were. No, you're busy with your own life and everything, but when you give it a minute's thought, you decide: You don't like these people at all.

As Republicans gather in Williamsburg today to mull over the wreckage of their party, they'll no doubt be lectured on how to better speak to Americans like these. But they won't be learning the real lesson, will they? We cats HISS.