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| That Loud, Sucking Sound You Hear........ |
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| is the GOP's four candidates |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, February 08, 2012. The conservative movement in the US has managed to convince a basically Protestant electorate that winning will solidify the alleged virtues of their reactionary and mostly Methodist or Baptist cultures. That it took Catholic and Jewish intellectuals to formulate this thesis and, more impressively, sell it, is one of many interesting aspects to a political movement about to self destruct this election. There are too many mutual exclusives and prejudices that do not play well together represented in the Republican party, a distinction the Democrats are grateful to surrender. The GOP currently has for its presidential nomination a choice between: 1. a fanatic conservative Catholic who wants Bell, Book, and Candle condemnations of anything conflicting with the tenets of the largest legal organization of world wide sexual predation on six continents for at least two centuries. Rick Santorum, who won the Colorado and Minnesota caucuses over the heavily favored Mitt Romney and in the Missouri non binding caucus, is a creature from another place and time. A male nun. 2. ...a recent Catholic convert and serial adulterer whose mere presence in conjunction with his adulterous current wife - his third - must boil away the water in baptismal fonts OR.... 3.... a devout Mormon but one who will say anything for a vote in direct contradiction to what he said previously for another vote OR...... 4...... a mildly entertaining libertarian whose sole attraction to those under 70 is he'll be pro pot. Well, that and he's the only WASP in the race. Such is the shallow depth of competence in the traditional WASP political talent pool of serious candidates that the political party that specifically panders to those white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants has only one in the race, and he's the least likely to win the Republican nomination. Of course, Newt Gingrich is only a notional Catholic while wife three is to that manor born, and you cannot help but think this cynical yet fuzzy thinking Republican is concerned about the expanding Latino vote and its Catholic underpinnings. The Republicans don't do well in Latino neighborhoods as a rule. So, the Catholics having two candidates out of four may just be a hope that Latinos would accept deportation and punishment for their decades of tax paying labor if the politicians who advocate such attend the same church as their soon to be shipped out neighbors. Something. Despite the fact that Romney won all three states in the last presidential primary season, he flopped this year and didn't win a single district in Minnesota, coming in third behind Ron Paul, the Libertarian, and Santorum. Gingrich is the only one of the four with a big boy resume, and Santorum isn't even remotely electable, melding as he does a petty and vindictive personality with a dangerously flawed view of the relationship between church - especially THAT church - and state. Ron Paul is a genial lightweight who is running to promote libertarianism, and cannot think he could win. Mitt Romney was supposed to be the mildly conservative shoe-in, but he doesn't seem to resonate anywhere. Like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman, he rarely dares to do a live press conference. That's because he stinks at it, having no discernible personality you'd cross the street to meet, a smile that triggers every auto distrust gene in your body and, perhaps more damning, has not been able to formulate anything coherent about the various opinions he has held through the decades. Is he pro-life or pro-choice? Why won't he open up his finances as he's promised, but only complied when compelled by circumstance? And how does he justify the things he's said about Obama and birthers and the genuinely scuzzy ads that have gone out under his approval against Gingrich but which he claims he hadn't actually seen? And then, there's that Romenycare thing, near identical to Obama's national policy, which he cannot navigate at all, because there IS no major difference. He's tried. Obama, in polling nine months out, is about seven points ahead of Romney and far more ahead of Gingrich, Santorum or Ron Paul who, in Romney's worst nightmare, could well start a third party bid and siphon off the bitter reactionaries he has spent millions and months trying to win over to no purpose, since they'll abandon the Massachusetts moderate for a half eaten Happy Meal. The economy and DOW are way up. The only way the Republicans can win is if the economy crashes again, but people are paying attention now. I suspect the GOP will lose big, and not survive the analysis. |
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