Department of ridiculous Washington Post headlines, today’s edition

Following up on yesterday’s headline, which professed surprise that Karl Rove hasn’t folded his tent, today’s Washington Post (print edition) serves up this gem:

At a loss in Red America: After the election Republicans grieve for the nation they thought they knew.

The Post’s story, by Eli Saslow, turns out to be about the sentiments of one Republican, a campaign worker in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and a few of her friends. Ms. Cox’s reaction to the election is: “I will be okay; I just don’t think we will be okay.”

Ms. Cox comes across as a fine Republican, her willingness to serve as a specimen for a condescending Washington Post reporter notwithstanding. But to make her a stand-in for Republicans in general and Red America in particular seems a bit much.

In fairness, it would not have been difficult for Saslow to find other conservatives who share Ms. Cox’s sentiments. They appear all over the internet.

However, this pessimism is only one side of the coin, and it is incorrect to assert that Republicans as a whole, having concluded that they no longer know the nation, are indulging in grief that exceeds the norm for a defeated party in a close presidential election. Like that pesky Karl Rove, many of us are planning our next moves, while recalibrating slightly our view of the electorate, as befits a party that has lost an election by a slight margin.

NOTE: The web version of the same story bears this less over-the-top headline: “GOP’s Red America forced to rethink what it knows about the country.”

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