RISE AGAINST frontman Tim McIlrath was recently interviewed by Alternative Press, where he discussed his views on politics and what he thinks the outcome of the 2012 election may be.
He throws in his two cents:
It’s interesting. For the first time in my lifetime, the Republican establishment has lost control of its constituency. At one point, outlets like Fox News did whatever the Republican sector told them to do. It seems that time is over and that the roles are reversed: The Republican establishment is beholden to Fox News. Fox News is the one actually steering the ship nowadays, and the Republicans have to placate that and acquiesce to this viewership they’ve built up over the last decade. And then you have the Tea Party, which at one point was [the Republicans thinking,] “Cool, this is our energetic response to liberals taking over D.C.,” but then it was, “Oh, wait: This is Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. We can’t control it anymore.” The right built Fox News and the Tea Party, but now they’ve lost control. The monster has gone AWOL. At a time where it would’ve been a no-brainer to have Mitt Romney as the guy to go against Obama, now they can’t even assure that happening because they’ve built up this crazy constituency of people they no longer have direct communication to.
It’s been really fun watching this [nomination process] unfold. What I think it is doing is showing the really ugly sides of right-wing conservatism, the real bottom of the barrel. We live in a world where we like to think, “Well, the left-wing talking heads are no better than the right-wing talking heads.” The Republican right-wing conservative party is now synonymous with bigotry. And it’s really scary. [Rise Against] were working with the It Gets Better campaign with our song “Make It Stop.” Now you’re seeing actual lives at stake. You’re seeing people in politics working to create an environment that trickles down into the hallways of high schools, an environment where there are students who feel they don’t belong in those hallways, or on this planet. When you are pulling those strings in Washington, D.C., and creating such mental anguish in a student’s or a teenager’s life, you’ve crossed the line. This is pure hate and it has no place. It’s a great thing in America that we give people a voice. But that party has gone off the rails. It needs to be reined in, and it needs to be held accountable.
