Why when I see him, I see a guy stuck in 1972, with the polyester vibe? Back then, the look of white angry people was polyester and artificial to a fault: hair laquered into immovability, white buck shoes polished to a sheen, blue jean look polyester pants with an immovable crease. The difference between hippie and anti-hippie was that hippies would actually wear something that moved and felt soft to the touch. And hippies were touchable, even huggable, in their bare feet and twenty strands of beads. The polyester people were not huggable in the least, and gave off the smell of resentment. Even the clothes they wore were hard and stiff and could sometimes stand up in a corner.

Now, in 2012, we see these same people, or their children, now sitting in scooters with that same resentment on their faces: only the clothes have changed. But society changed even more, demographically and politically. The hippies got the last laugh on many issues, and the blacks/browns/yellows are now ascending.

Indeed, this whole Republican campaign is one long primal scream to get back to 1972, and the frustration that simply saying so cannot turn back the clock to those days. That they can’t simply wish away Barack Obama, or open gays, or anything else they like: that the mere expression of disapproval is not enough to cow those other people anymore. The open racism is one symbol of the primal scream: Santorum with his sexual obsessions is another. The open war-mongering from Perry. But the passionless Romney is the last. That there isn’t more talented and passionate and competent candidates is that the politics of the embittered primal scream doesn’t appeal to them. They know that there is no turning back the clock, just adjusting to change, and until the primary voters come to that, they can’t win. So why try?