Astor, Bogart in "Maltese Falcon"
Yesterday I quoted rightwing blogger Eric Erickson saying that, by voting for Gingrich over Romney, South Carolina Republicans were “giving the Washington Republican establishment the finger.” But giving the finger isn’t the same thing as wholesale rejecting, and in the past, like the earnest and passionate Maggie Tulliver in George Eliot’s Mill and the Floss, they have always come back to the good-for-nothing brother. They do so even though there are others swearing undying love (Stephen and Philip in the book, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich in the primaries).
E. J. Dionne of The Washington Post, writing before the South Carolina Primary, noted that Tea Partiers may have thought that they were turning the GOP into “a populist, anti-establishment bastion” and social conservatives may have argued that “values and morals matter more than money.” “Yet in the end,” he says, “the corporate and economically conservative wing of the Republican Party always seems to win.”
So will this time be different? This time (to shift books for a moment) will they be like Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and refuse to “play the sap” for Brigid O’Shaughnessy? I can imagine frustrated activists enjoying the scene where the private detective finally holds her accountable for the string of lies she’s been telling him to ensure his cooperation (think of her as Mitt Romney). This time he’s “sending her over,” even though it’s emotionally hard:
If all I’ve said doesn’t mean anything to you, then forget it and we’ll make it just this: I won’t [let you go] because all of me wants to, regardless of consequences, and because you counted on that with me the same as you counted on that with all the others.
We’ll see what happens. Maggie has a brief marriage with Stephen, which could be like Republicans voting for Newt. (I admit my analogy breaks down here because Stephen, unlike Newt, is admirable. Although come to think of it, he does break his commitment to one woman and marries another.) In the end, however, Maggie’s primary love wins out and she returns to Tom when he is threatened by rising flood waters. The waters overwhelm them both and they die entwined in each other’s arms.
Will Tea Partiers and Social Conservatives, answering desperate cries for help from Establishment Republicans, get pulled down in similar fashion?
