t’s natural for a losing political party to look for scapegoats.

And after Democratic President Barack Obama defeated Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney for a second term in the White House, Republicans did exactly that.

As political columnist Mark Shields said on the PBS Newshour on January 25, 2013:

“As far as the Republicans are concerned, they are simply going through the terrible stages that every defeated party does.”

And one side says we lost because we didn’t stick enough to our principles. And the other side we lost because we were too dogmatic and didn’t reach out to the undecided.

“And so the first inclination is always to blame your own candidate. You blame Al Gore if you are a Democrat in 2000, or John Kerry in 2004. You blame John McCain.”

“The Republicans want to blame Mitt Romney. That’s fine. But Mitt Romney is more popular than the Republican Party. I mean, he got 47 percent. The Republicans are dead in the water right now.”

Consider the reaction of Ann Coulter, the Republican version of the Miss America Nazi.  Speaking on the November 6 defeat of Mitt Romney, Coulter whined:

“People are suffering. The country is in disarray. If Mitt Romney cannot win in this economy, then the tipping point has been reached. We have more takers than makers and it’s over. There is no hope.”

And what did she hope to see Romney do as President?

“Mitt Romney was the president we needed right now, and I think it is so sad that we are going to be deprived of his brain power, of his skills in turning companies around, turning the Olympics around, his idea and his kindness for being able to push very conservative ideas on a country that no longer is interested in conservative ideas. It is interested in handouts.”

Note the chief reason for her regret: Romney would have been “able to push very conservative ideas on a country that no longer is interested in conservative ideas.”

Or, as the Original Nazis would have put it: “You vill love it—or else!”

Unfortunately for Coulter, a majority of Americans rejected this mentality–and the repressive measures that would have accompanied it.

So, naturally, Coulter and her fellow Rightists feel dejected.

Comedian Bill Maher, appearing on the November 7, 2012 edition of “Hardball With Chris Matthews,” offered his own explanation for the Romney defeat: The Republicans fell victims to their own lies.

Bill Maher

Angela George, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

MAHER: But, you know, I think it gets to a bigger point, Chris, which is that Republicans have to start getting their information from a better source than FOX News. I’m not kidding about this….They believed it right up until the end. They were shocked by this election.

They have to somehow fix the way they get information, because they only talk to each other. And they don’t know what’s going on in the real world. And they were rudely awakened last night.

MATTHEWS: What do you think it was like to be in that bubble with Mitt Romney in that time after it really–I called it the knockout, like the sixth round?

MAHER: I mean, I think they were still saying, “Yes, Mein Fuehrer, you have 12 divisions on the Eastern front.”

MATTHEWS: Anyway, Donald Trump took to Twitter last night, trashing the election returns. Here’s what he said.  On Twitter, in real time, to use your phrase. “He lost the popular vote by a lot.

“He’s talking about the president and won the election. “We should have a revolution this country.”

“This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy.”

“We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided.”

MAHER: I mean, it doesn’t deserve thoughts because these aren’t thoughts….This guy only two years ago was like apolitical, right? I don’t even know what party he was.

I don’t know if he knew what party he was.  Now he wants to march on Washington?  This is democracy–so it’s not democracy when your candidate loses?

* * * * *

Almost seventy-six years ago, another fanatical, right-wing woman concluded: “There is no hope.”

She was Magda Goebbels, wife of Joseph Goebbels—Propaganda Minister for the rapidly-collapsing Third Reich.  

Magda and Joseph Goebbels, with their six children and a uniformed friend

“I do not wish to live in a world without National Socialism,” she said.

And to make certain her six children didn’t, either, she gave each of them a powerful sleeping tablet.  Then she crushed a cyanide capsule between their jaws.

Finally, she and her husband died by their own hands–he shot her, and then himself.

Fortunately, Ann Coulter has no children.  Nor even a husband who would willingly shoot her.

So if she truly believed she cannot live in a world where fascists don’t rule absolutely over America, she’s had ample time to let history to repeat itself.