And Now, Some Unwarranted Punditry
I have been watching this circus as much as anybody, and I think I’ve figured out why there’s still no clear-cut leader. If you want to save yourself a whole lot of reading, I’ll help you out: they all suck. If you want to know why they all suck, or if you’re just bored and looking for something to put you to sleep, gather ’round. I shall weave for you a tale of mediocrity so decent it will leave you feeling… “meh“… right before you plant your forehead through your keyboard. Shall we?
I wanted to do this earlier. Like, a lot earlier. Problem was, each and every one of the current candidates just gave me so much to go on about. I had to wait at least a little while to weed out the ones we knew were going nowhere like Bachmann, Cain and Perry. Actually Perry surprised me, I thought he’d be in it for longer than he was. The media talked up his debating chops like he was the lost god of oration, but wouldn’t you know it, Dubya probably could have taken him and won it. Even strategery’s better than this. Or this. Or this. Really, I would have liked to keep him in the race for entertainment purposes alone. Then again, a lot of people thought the same about GWB and that didn’t turn out so well, did it?
My theory on Cain is that he was a troll, plain and simple. I don’t think he ever had any serious plans to take the nomination, I think what he wanted was a book-signing tour and he got it. I mean, we’re talking about someone who had no issue with not knowing a thing about foreign policy (in fact he said “I’m not supposed to know” it), and who’s biggest accomplishment was turning around failing Burger Kings. That we even allowed him on the stage to debate is outrageous, but I will give ol’ Herman this: he made me laugh.
And Bachmann… well, that’s a horse so dead even I don’t want to beat it.
But you know I will anyway.
The same people I know who were spouting “BACHMANN 2012!!!” are the same people who were spouting “PALIN 2012!!!!” before it was clear she wasn’t going to run. At first, I didn’t understand. I thought maybe it was just because they were both women, but no. It’s more than that. Claiming internal genitalia as their only commonality is an insult to the rest of the female population and I won’t stand for it. One belief they share is that our slave-owning founding fathers “worked tirelessly” to abolish slavery. Another similarity is that neither can produce accurate numbers on anything, ever. At one point, she accused Nancy Pelosi of “sticking the taxpayer for a $100,000 bar tab for alcohol on the military jets that she is flying”. The only problem with that number is that it’s actually the total food/drink/baggage tab for nine different trips, each consisting of between 11 and 85 state officials. Oh, and Pelosi doesn’t drink. So I get it now. What does one do when one wants shrill, baseless accusations hurled around to stir up the base? Vote for Bachmann… but only because Palin’s not around. Got it.
Tim Pawlenty and Jon Huntsman also ran! That’s about how much media coverage either of them got, and if you haven’t figured it out already, that’s everything. Although in these two cases, I suppose it wouldn’t have mattered. Jon Huntsman worked for the Obama administration as an ambassador, so he’s already dead in the water since bi-partisanship is not the name of the game here. T-Paw, on the other hand, just never got the momentum going. He was quiet and under-funded, so the Romney campaign absorbed him as their national co-chair. The campaign also retired about $60k worth of his campaign debt… leaving him just over $100k in the hole. That’s right, Romney. Keep him where you can own him, that’s the spirit.
Alright.
So, those were the also-rans. The little guys. I’m afraid all of them combined, however, would not produce enough crazy to faze our next champion of morality and compassion: Newt. Fucking. Gingrich. Why him first? Because he’s probably closest to the list of also-rans than anyone else still running.
First thing’s first: Newt Gingrich (Newton McPherson, actually) is by no means a political new-comer. You probably know this already, and you’ve probably even heard his name before this year. But do you remember why? Let me refresh your memory. Newt was Speaker of the House in 1998 when news broke about then-President Clinton‘s affair with a certain paczki-loving White House intern. Despite being the only Speaker to ever be officially reprimanded for ethics violations, he presided over the House’s investigation until the inevitable happened: Clinton kept his job, and the Republican Party became so unpopular over it that it lost five more seats in the house (though they were afraid of and close to losing as many as thirty-six). When he resigned in November 1998, he turned it around on the House, calling them “cannibals”. The “cannibals” comment probably came from the attempt at replacing him a year prior which was led by Tom DeLay (a convicted money-launderer and former Representative for the great state of Texas), Dick Armey, and none other than current Speaker of the House, John Boehner. When these guys think your ethics are shaky? Most people would take a good, long look in the mirror.
But not Newt!
No, our sweet Fig Newton pressed on! From 1999 until present, he has spent his time owning and operating several for-profits as joint efforts with his wife. One of those, called the Center for Health Transformation, served as a buffer between Gingrich and the money he was being paid to lobby for big pharma. Drug companies like Pfizer and Astra-Zenica would hire his “influence” through this service, and in turn he would directly contact and try to persuade law makers to vote for favorable legislation like Medicare expansion. Newt calls it paid consulting, the rest of the planet calls it lobbying. We would also call it lucrative, considering it almost tripled his net worth from a paltry $2.4M in 2006 to a more respectable $6.7M in 2010 (that the government knows about).
So here we are, present day. It’s February 2012, and Newt Gingrich is one of the four top contenders for the GOP nomination for the Presidency.
Wait, what?
Did you read what I wrote? He disgraced himself and the party! Fought to expand Medicare! Called the party a bunch of cannibals! This guy should be about as far away from a Republican nomination as the President himself, and I think that’s exactly where he’ll end up. Between arresting judges he doesn’t agree with and replacing union laborers with school kids, Newt also intends to conquer the moon. Step one is a system of mirrors which will keep the Earth lit up with ambient light at night. In theory, this system will allow us to save money on streetlights and make criminals easier to find. After that, he’s going to colonize the place! Never mind Bush II’s already-cancelled plan to put a base there (a base… not a colony), the $250-500B price tag will be worth it because the moon will act as a “tourist destination and manufacturing hot-spot”. I want to go to the moon, and even I feel comfortable saying this is nuts. All of these things are important to remember if you’re considering voting for Newt “I never lobbied under any circumstance” Gingrich. My opinion: the dude’s bat-shit crazy, appears to be aggressively wasteful with spending (Really? The moon instead of infrastructure? If we even had that much money?), and has great difficulty grasping reality… or at least in remembering it. He is one of many cancerous growths that need to be excised from the body of politics, and it is my fervent hope that this election cycle will do the trick… I’m not counting on it, though.
Next in line not to win it is Dr. Ron Paul. What sucks is, I actually like a lot of Ron Paul’s ideas. That’s probably because he’s closer to being a Libertarian than being a Republican, but he’s smart enough to know this is a two-horse race and labels are irrelevant. He believes, as I believe, that the government should exist for two reasons: national currency, and national defense. That’s it. He wants to see a dramatic reduction in our military involvement overseas, cut out the welfare state mentality at the Federal level, end the costly and ineffectual “war on drugs” (he wants to legalize pot!), and supports a foreign policy that puts the security of our own borders first. Sounds like a lot of good talk to me, so what’s the problem? Depends on who you are. For me personally, the problem is that his religion is still way too entwined with what he would legislate. I’ll never fully support a candidate who pushes for religious legislation, or who thinks religion should have even a little to do with what goes on in government. We’ve seen where “faith-based initiatives” can lead, and no thank you.
But like I said, that’s me. That’s not why he won’t win it.
He won’t win it because he makes too much Goddamned sense. There’s nothing exciting about that! No news organization wants to cover a calm, rational individual. It doesn’t get people talking (though it probably ought to) and it doesn’t pull in viewers. People want to hear about war! The moon! Mexicans! Abortions! That’s the kind of polarizing bullshit people really pay attention to. When somebody goes up on stage and calmly dismisses most of that shit, and then explains why… it’s like a big let-down. We’re talking about crowds of Republicans here, and not progressive centrists. We’re talking about the kinds of people who will boo an active duty Soldier from the US Army… because he’s gay. Rationality has no place here, and that highlights another facet of Paul’s problem: he’s not far right enough. He exhibits a dangerous willingness to work with Democrats, and that’s just no good anymore. The GOP of 2012 is not the party of Lincoln, and it’s not the party of Reagan; it’s the party of “as far away from Obama as possible, at any cost”. Nobody really lets Ron Paul talk enough to see if he fits the bill better than he lets on, and that alone is why he won’t win it.
That said… I’d love to be wrong.
Hailing from either the Keystone State or the Old Dominion, Rick Santorum is the only real competition Mitt Romney has got at this point. He’s a staunch supporter of both wars, he thinks welfare is only for black people, he doesn’t believe in evolution (and doesn’t think our kids should learn about it, either), and lumps homosexuality in with such pursuits as beastiality and pedophilia. You probably think I’m making that last one up, and I wish I was. When asked about his views on gay marriage, Santorum eloquently responded with this series of gems: “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does… That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing.” To place homosexuals in the same category as any of this seems like madness. And why is he so obsessed with sex, anyway? Fortunately for the closet bigots out there voting for him, it’s a siren song: this is what they want to hear. The biggest difference between Santorum and Romney is that he’s serious when he spouts this kind of stuff, and his supporters know it. It’s not rhetoric for him, he means it.
Unless you are Jesus Christ Himself (and maybe even if you are Him, since Santorum hates Palestinians), this man should be scaring the shit out of you. He certainly seems to be keeping our last candidate, Mitt Romney, on his toes.
Speaking of Mittens! Did you hear? Our very own governor, Rick Snyder, has officially endorsed Romney as of this morning. That’s swell! But… wait a minute. Didn’t Mitt write an op-ed all about how we should have just let the auto industry fail? How Detroit was better off… oh, how did he word it? Oh! I remember now. The op-ed itself was called “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”. You can probably guess what it was about, but I’ll give you the gist: it starts by insisting the bailout will fail, and goes on to detail how bankruptcy and replacing everyone in charge would fix everything just dandy.
At least, that was what he was saying.
As results of the bailout started to show more and more (2011 was the first time since 2004 that all of the Big Three posted a profit), Romney reversed his position. He even went so far as to say he would have done the same, and that it should have been done sooner.
At least, that was what he was saying. Wait, haven’t we been here before?
As recently as this week, Mitt has begun reiterating his belief that Detroit should just be left to its own devices. What’s hilarious about this whole thing is that Mitt Romney has, himself, benefitted from a government bailout before. He had no problem pocketing a cool $12M (after an $8M investment) for his firm, Bain Capital, when it drove Worldwide Grinding Systems into the ground. Oh… and that was before $4.5M in “consulting fees”. 750 people lost their jobs as a result of Romney’s mismanagement, and this is what he calls “experience with the real economy”.
Bullshit.
What’s happening here is an incredibly wealthy man playing with people’s livelihoods to increase his own already-considerable wealth, and pawning it off as business experience. Good business experience is privately funding a start-up and growing your own organization through hard work and adaptability. It’s actually having a stake in what you do, having something to risk by entering in. Using a small portion of easily-accesible funds to purchase and destroy troubled businesses, businesses which provide honest, hard-working Americans with jobs… and then profiting off of it… does not qualify as anything but under-handed, cowardly, despicable profiteering. If you take these things into consideration, the fact this guy can switch stances as quickly as he can should tell you something: he will say precisely what needs to be said to get the job done (in a way that benefits him). I’d like to point out there’s a difference though, between saying and doing what needs to be done. Further, if he’ll promise anything to anyone now, I have to wonder just what the fuck he’ll actually do if he ever gets to the White House. How can we know?
Put simply, we can’t.
As with any election, the best you can do is pick whichever set of lies appeals to you most personally, and either vote in that direction or abstain. With very few (if any) exceptions, the people who want to run this country have no part of your struggle, whatever it is, at heart. Most of us are middle-class, and most of them have demonstrated just what that term means. We exist so they can profit, and the less we’re paid, the easier it is for them to do that. The “myth” surrounding the war on the middle class is not a myth at all. We are racing towards a future of extremes, very rich or very poor, and it’s because as a class, we complicate things. We have unions, we have benefits, we have rights… we need these things, but most of these people have demonstrated a frightening level of comfort with doing away with them.
I am not religious or wealthy enough to have any use for, or be of any use to, the modern Republican Party. This is unfortunate since I’m also too firm a believer in limited government to have any respect for the Democratic Party. So what’s a man like me to do? I love politics, but loathe all of my choices. I’ve no faith in the words of any of them, and I’m not excluding President Obama from that statement.
Despite promising to “change the way business is done in Washington”, the last three years have been some of the most bitter yet. And yeah, he did get kind of a lot done… unemployment is down, troops are home from Iraq, Osama’s dead, 32M previously-uninsured people now have health coverage, Detroit’s doing fine… but he caved to lobbyists on the Keystone pipeline, something he said he’d never do. He hasn’t touched illegal immigration at a time when it’s beating the piss out of our economy, and has yet to offer any real incentive to keep American jobs here instead of shipping them overseas. And what about campaign finance reform? Really? Super PACs? What the fuck, man?! If candidates now have unlimited funding at their disposal from any person or entity willing to give it, then the Presidency is nothing but a bigger spending contest than it already was. How embarrassing! How embarrassing and shameful that with enough money and just a little bit of charisma, any dumb motherfucker can assume the Presidency of the United States.
How cheap.
Things need to be different. You know people say, “Well if you don’t like it here, why don’t you just leave?”. Yeah, it doesn’t quite work that way. You ever look into what it takes to live in another country? I mean, really looked into it? Most places won’t let you live there permanently or even get a visa without a college education and a high-paying job to come into (or a fuckton of money back home). College graduate or no, how am I expected to find a job somewhere else if I can’t find one here?
Being an American is not optional.
We are all stuck here. Together. We are letting them destroy us, and what’s worse is we keep fucking voting them in. We keep lapping up that Kool-Aid campaign after campaign, always thinking this guy means it. And then even if by some miracle he did mean what he said, the other half of the government just stymies all his efforts. It’s useless. The whole Goddamned thing, useless. Senators and Congressmen should be drafted, and they should be paid according to what they made before entering service. When their single term is up, they get to back to their constituencies and answer for their votes. Presidential campaign funding needs to have limits: individuals can donate anonymously up to certain dollar amounts, anybody else can donate to larger amounts and may not be anonymous. How’s that for transparency? Wouldn’t it be great to see everyone who paid for your Congressman or your Senator’s seat? Of course it would.
Also, you know what I found out today? My laundry folds better if I don’t use fabric softener.
