Not using the word "narcissism" (though she has before), digby is instead focusing on the issue of temperament in a recent brief post, "Finger On The Button", but the two are clearly related. She begins:
I think one of the things I find most reprehensible about the Republican Party and their Big Money backers is that they think it's ok to play Russian Roulette with the country (and the world) by nominating people to power who have completely inappropriate temperaments for it. George W. Bush, with his thin skinned, shallow understanding of the world, bottomless need for flattery, is a good case in point.
At one point, McCain reportedly began referring to Hispanics as "you people":
"He was angry," one source said. "He was over the top. In some cases, he rolled his eyes a lot. There were portions of the meeting where he was just staring at the ceiling, and he wasn't even listening to us. We came out of the meeting really upset."
McCain's message was obvious, the source continued: After bucking his party on immigration, he had no sympathy for Hispanics who are dissatisfied with President Obama's pace on the issue. "He threw out [the words] 'You people - you people made your choice. You made your choice during the election,' " the source said. "It was almost as if [he was saying] 'You're cut off!' We felt very uncomfortable when we walked away from the meeting because of that.
Some "outreach" huh? But that's how it's done amongst the narcissistic set. "You may kiss my ring.... No, on second thought, you're not worthy!"
Of course, Media Matters' Free Ride, along with Glenn Greenwald's treatment of McCain in Great American Hypocrites gave us an up-close view of how the media facilitated McCain's narcissistic fantasies of his own greatnessuniqueness as the man who could save America. But, alas, we made our choice during the election, now, didn't we?
Never fear, however, clawing his way back to the top of the GOP for a run in 2012 is no other than the twice-divorced, pro-war, pro-death penalty man who recently sought to school Notre Dame on "Catholic" values (Obama, like Kerry, doesn't got 'em!) in advance of his own conversion. It really seemed an act of humility, though, compared to how Newtie comported himself back in 1994/95, when he was styling himself as the virtual savior of American civilization. But it turns out Newt was only getting warmed up in his new role as the defender of all religion, as TPM reported ("Gingrich: Obama Waging 'War Against Churches'"):
In a new appeal to the Christian right, Newt Gingrich told OneNewsNow that President Obama's proposed changes to the charitable deduction for top earners amounts to a "war against churches and charities," deliberately designed to discourage the successful from donating money to churches and make us all dependent on the government.
"I think there's a clear to desire to replace the church with a bureaucracy, and to replace people's right to worship together with a government-dominated system," said Gingrich.
How anyone gets from a modest lowering in the tax deduction rate for charitable gifts to "replac[ing] people's right to worship together with a government-dominated system," would be an unfathomable mystery to me, were it not for the twin magicks of projection and narcissistic personality disorder.
Here's how it works: Newt is the savior of all mankind. He can't be bothered with petty details like budgets and stuff. And so when Obama makes a budget proposal, Newt must see in that act the same sort of sweeping megalomaniacal act that it would actually be if Newt himself had thought of it.
And then, of course, we have the angry would-be-President governors (Palin, Jindal, Stanford, Perry), stamping their feet about being forced to take stimulus money. There was a time, not too long ago, when a certain Texas governor was touted as just thing the country needed in the White House, because of his ability to bring his state legislature together across the aisle. Of course it was a bunch of hokum. But it was a good narrative. Now, though, we have GOP governors at war with their own Republican legislative leaders as a path to the White House!?
That only makes sense in a world where the GOP's narcissism thing has totally jumped the shark.
Digby concluded her piece:
McCain and Bush, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Steele, all of them have "issues" in one way or the other. Indeed, the raps on Bill Clinton -- that he needed people to love him too much and that he screwed around --- seem positively inane compared to the violent, short tempered, intellectually hidebound freakshow that is the leadership of the Republican party.
But we need to be quite clear about this: this isn't a bug. It's a feature. In fact, one might well say it's the feature of the modern GOP: the triumphant of malignant narcissism as a governing philosophy.
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