My previous essay on fairy-tales of the “right” showed how the master narrative of the Republicans this year was based on misinformation, logical errors, disinformation, and even outright lies.
What this last week’s news shows is how thoroughly these false stories misled not only many of the voters that bought them, but even the leadership itself, all the way up through Mitt Romney and Karl Rove.
When I watched Governor Romney’s truly gracious concession speech, the main thing I perceived was not the words but the nonverbal communication. Mr. Romney’s face (and the fact that he had not even prepared a concession speech) showed beyond a doubt that he actually believed the phony story—the master narrative—that his campaign and its funders had concocted. He thoroughly expected to win, and had not even been able to consider the possibility—a high one, given all the polls—that he might lose. His face was that of a deer in the headlights: he kept thinking “this couldn’t really be happening: I was guaranteed to win.”