Republicans Yet Again

It has been more than 2 months since the lesser lights of the Republican Contenders blinked out leaving only four still flashing. It looked good for a while, as if these skilled Vaudevillians would duke it out in a timely manner and leave the field clear for Mitt to get down to the serious work of molding lies and distortions about the current administration and generating impossible promises of a prosperous future with his glorious self at the helm. Instead what we have had is a seemingly endless parade of these indefatigable blowhards trumpeting lies into the 6:00 news and slinging little gobbets of feces at one another. What was once a bit of light-hearted fun has crossed over to the realms of pure tedium.
The latest opinions of those still paying attention suggest that Mitt is still considered "Most Likely to Succeed," which status he has been able to maintain through generous application of more money than an ordinary citizen can imagine. Rick is still baying at his heels, his campaign buoyed up by the noisy support of followers who are either deeply suspicious of anybody with that much money, or appalled by the thought of somebody in charge wearing magical underwear. Newt is still hanging on like a terrier on a rat, thanks in no small part to an open-handed Las Vegas billionaire. And finally there's poor Ron with only $1.6 million on hand, but ever hopeful.
Of course they must be getting pretty tired of the whole thing too. After all they have been addressing the same crowds with the same talking points, repeating the same tired threats and promises for months now, night after night. There is nothing new to be gleaned from these carefully choreographed events, so if we are to learn more about these contestants we need to look elsewhere. And what better way to get a good long peek behind the curtain than to study their blunders?
Take Mitt, for example, who in the midst of the worst depression in almost a century tries to connect with the unemployed by telling them that he too is unemployed and therefore sympathetic to their concerns. At least on this occasion he had the uncharacteristic insight not to mention his $200 million in assets that ease his heartbreak. He slipped a little when he went to reassure a room full of auto workers that he stood foursquare behind the industry, offering as evidence that his wife drives two Cadillacs. Maybe he thought that if he stunned them with this bizarre little factoid they would forget that he rabidly opposed the bailout money provided by President Obama, without which his audience might also have been in the unemployment lines. Then at a NASCAR rally while speaking off-the-cuff to a crowd of fans, he declared that he was a great fan of the sport, that in fact he had many friends who owned NASCAR teams.
What we learn from all this is that Mitt Romney is so completely out of touch with the world of the wage earner that he could not possibly understand, much less fix, any problems that the 99% might have.
Then there's Rick who thinks the President is a snob for wanting everybody to have the chance to go to college. And he gets hiccups at the thought of homosexuals wanting to marry, or blacks wanting decent schools, or women wanting any control over their own lives. He is frantic at the mere suggestion of contraception and abortion and believes that the "threat" of gay marriage is on a par with the destruction of the Twin Towers.
He stated, in public, his views of President Kennedy's speech in support of the separation of church and state: "Earlier in my political career,"
he said, "I had the opportunity to read the speech, and I almost threw up," said Senator Rick Santorum. A man with such a delicate constitution should perhaps be spared the rigors of presidential politics.
Newt's gaffes have a more general interest flavor, and often sound more like the inventions of Jon Stewart than actual public statements of somebody hoping to occupy the White house. Like his promise to set up a permanent lunar colony. Or his explanation of his upcoming divorce from his first wife: "She's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of a President. And besides, she has cancer." With regards to the Occupy Wall Street throngs he suggested they should get a bath and a job, in that order. When asked to explain how he ran up half a million dollars in credit card charges at Tiffany's, he just huffily insisted that he was really very frugal. There are a thousand of them.
Not that he is free of religious mania, having growled to some jostling multitude that he saw a time where the kindly Christian ideals that made the country great will be replaced by the apostasy of radical islam.
And finally, straggling in last and breathless, there's Ron, who, to his credit, beat out Newt in Michigan. His fatal flaw is that he makes sense. He is the only politician in the country who wants the military withdrawn from everywhere, not a popular idea among the bloodthirsty majority. He seems to be lamentably innocent of serious blunders, or maybe his chances are so slim that it is considered unsportsmanlike to record them, like snatching the chair out from under a blind person.
Whatever the case, now that we have had a close look at these creatures in unguarded moments, face to face, as it were, the options are clear.
As of last Friday, March23, 2012, 57% of Republicans were rooting for the guy who would sell his first-born to the gypsies if they offered a good price. 25% favored the one who wants to eliminate the teaching of science and bring back witch-burning. 13% were hoping that the classic Boss Tweed look-alike gets the nod, while only 4.5% thought that the irritating little man with the ideas that might actually work should get a shot at the prize.
The good news is that Obama's chances look better every day.