Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Hassett gave his audience the insider’s view of the Romney campaign, describing how its election-monitoring software crashed on November 6 and Obama was probably behind it, “because those guys are so evil.” The table grumbled in assent. “The thing we have to understand is, these are people who don’t have any morals…. I actually think that Goebbels was more critical of Hitler than the New York Times is of Obama,” said Hassett, tucking into a piece of strudel. “I was in the middle of the fight against the propaganda, and I have stories like you wouldn’t believe. These people are so evil. They’re basically Fascists. It’s unbelievable.”…

Rasmussen offered some friendly advice….

You show [minorities] that you really care, you talk to them as grown-ups on a range of issues, you get them involved, and you accept the fact that it’s a long-term investment. And you accept that you can learn as much from them as you can teach them….

“That’s bullshit!” [said]… Bing West, former assistant secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan, a former Marine and a National Review contributor. West, mocking Rasmussen, said: “If you stupid Republicans weren’t so goddamn bigoted you would have won the election!”…

A moderator asked the four guests if they saw any signs of optimism in America’s economic future. There were no takers. Hassett said the national debt was like a monkey on America’s back, except there weren’t enough steroids to create a monkey that big….

After dinner was a program called the “Light Side of the Right Side.” A frenetic, tightly wound man named James Lileks…:

If we can put a man on the moon, we can put 50 million Democrats up there as well!… We’re the stupid people, we’re the yokels, we’re the dumb, we’re the racists, we’re the hicks, we’re against everything that’s hip and cool….

Lileks… was apoplectic that the mainstream media castigated Michele Bachmann for suggesting without evidence that Hillary Clinton adviser Huma Abedin’s had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood….

Deroy Murdock, the only black National Review speaker…. Murdock highlighted Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who he said promoted segregation in 1936. “He, of course, went on to great fame and fortune afterward,” he observed. The Democrats, explained Murdock, have been “very active in keeping black people down” from 1860 to… 2012. “Go ahead and applaud if you agree with that,” said Murdock. The audience sat up and clapped hard….

Duane said the only way out of the current quagmire is a “revolution,” citing the famous Thomas Jefferson line about watering the tree of liberty with blood…. “You ever heard of guns?” His wife sat up: “How do you like the veal?” “It’s awful,” Duane growled, poking at it. “I can’t hardly chew it.”…

John Thomson was shouted down by everyone at the table for calling Barack Obama “an intelligent man.” “He’s not with us,” whispered a woman named Nancy from Key Biscayne…. “We haven’t done our marketing that well,” conceded Thomson. “That was Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney messaged whiteness. That was one of his greatest failings: ‘I’m a white Anglo-Saxon.’”

Melissa O’Sullivan, the Alabaman wife of John, wasn’t buying the idea that Republicans had alienated minorities. “We’ve invited them to join us!” she insisted…. Ms. O’Sullivan again took umbrage… recalled a conference she attended in Australia in which a liberal nun (who “didn’t even have the decency to wear a habit”) criticized America for its “inner-city racism.” Offended, Ms. O’Sullivan recounted what she wished she’d said to this nun:

Pardon me, madam, but I have been in your country of Australia for ten days and the only Aborigines I’ve seen have been drunk on the street, and at least if we were in my country they would be serving the drinks at this conference!…

Dorothy from Utah…. voted for Romney and was so devastated when he lost that she spent the day after the election praying for America…. Dorothy lamented the misfortunes of her oldest son, who she said was stolen from her by “the seventies,” which was her code for drugs…. At 58, her son was now divorced and unemployed, living in various campsites, and she didn’t know who to blame. I saw tears on her cheeks and I put my hand on her shoulder. “I’m afraid,” she told me. “Write that. We’re scared to death.” Indeed, that sense of fear was everywhere on the ship, fear of an impending debt crisis that would crush all fortunes, fear that the Anglo majority was now marginal… fear that the country… had fully given way to something more… diverse, foreign, incomprehensible….

Jonah Goldberg, having just finished a panel about the scurrilous designs of the left, slumped on a couch, loosened his tie, and sighed….

This is a more downbeat bunch this year. We lost in 2008, but it was almost boisterous and fun. This, a little less so. People were dyspeptic. Their conception of what the country is about, they really were sure the country would reject Barack Obama. I do think it hits them hard. The fear I have, why this election stung, I think, Obama has successfully ­de-ratified some of the Reagan revolution in a way that Clinton never could and didn’t even try to. That’s what freaks people out, that feeling in their gut, either Obama has changed the country, or the country has sufficiently changed that they don’t have a problem with Obama. That’s what eats at people….

Rich Lowry, the magazine’s editor, who flew into the Caymans to join the cruise halfway through, seemed relieved to have it end. “We don’t do this for fun,” he admitted….

John Yoo['s]… mother, Sook Hee Yoo… described herself as nonpolitical… had a diagnosis:

To protect the ego, you have a defense mechanism: denial and projection. You deny your problem, saying it’s your fault and not mine. Instead of projection, blaming other people, we have to think of a positive solution. But I didn’t hear that yet. They are still grieving….

[H]er son winced and began to break in, fearing she’d gone too far:

I hope not for more than six months. The grieving process should only be six months. If it goes on for more than six months, it could go into a major depression.