Friday, June 10, 2011

Newt, We Barely Knew Ye…

Boy, am I ever disappointed today. My cherished dream of watching Newt Gingrich wipe the floor with Barack Obama in a Presidential Debate just went down in flames with the resignation of just about all of Newt’s campaign staff.


I’ve been beating the drum for Newt since Christ was in short pants and knee socks, thinking that he was something that America needed – a right wing intellectual who understood the nuts and bolts of government and who also possessed the historical frame of reference I believe all good leaders should have, but I have finally come to the painful conclusion that a Gingrich Presidency would probably be nearly as bad as the Obama one has been. Primarily because Newt is a procrastinator.

We already have a President who looks like he doesn't want to do the job.

I should have first recognized this when Gingrich took so long to finally announce his candidacy (like maybe six years?). I then should have realized that not only does Newt live and die by the maxim “don’t do tomorrow what you can leave until next month”, but that he’s also somewhat tone deaf: a Mediterranean vacation, a cruise no less, when you have the opportunity to start making your case to the public while The President is down? Romney can’t pay crowds to show up at his events, and Pawlenty is making the case that Brand X Dishwashing Liquid is every bit as good as your brand…so long as you don’t mind warts and chemical burns.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know: it’s still early. And besides, Sarah Palin’s “I’m Not Running” tour is, to quote the flapping rectums on television “sucking all the oxygen out of the Republican race”, so sitting on the sidelines for now may be a good strategy and all that bullshit, but let’s face it: Newt shot himself in the foot the day he called Paul Ryan’s Medicare reforms “right wing socialism”, and despite the fact that he’s right, the majority of the GOP voters (if not it’s elected officials) just doesn’t give a shit; they’re just in love with the idea that someone is ‘taking on’ an entitlement, and who gives a crap if it actually fixes anything? It sounds good.

You have to be a complete douche to screw something like this up, and under these circumstances. Barring some sort of miracle, Obama ain’t getting re-elected and the current crop of GOP ‘front-runners’ leaves much to be desired, in my estimation. Romney changes positions more often than I change my shorts, and being a Mormon could never garner the brain-dead Evangelical vote. Pawlenty is about as interesting as sawdust, and leaves one with the impression that he might be the result of some genetic experiment intended to discover the origin of the Boring and Numbnuts Genes. Herman Cain, bless him, is a nice man with some good ideas, but I’ve now seen him flounder about 30 times when asked a non-financial question that doesn’t seem to require a great deal of depth of thinking.

Michelle Bachmann simply weirds me out; it’s that staring thing she does, and it detracts from the fact that she is a smart-as-a-whip and attractive woman. Rick Santorum would be a fine candidate…if it were still 1948, or if women still wore hoopskirts. Sarah Palin’s I-don’t-know-if-I’m-in-or-if-I’m-out-you-betcha routine is starting to wear my patience thin, and I seriously tired of her months ago just from sheer overexposure. Right now, I wouldn’t follow Sarah Palin through my own front door. She appears to be doing what she does for the money, which is all well-and-fine, so far as that goes, but she’s not a viable candidate.

Right now, if you ran the numbers, Prostate Cancer is probably more popular than Barack Obama. A retarded German Sheepdog with a speech impediment and ties to several Neo-Nazi and Organized Crime groups could clean Obama’s clock. Even better, he’s going to be challenged from within his own party (you think Hillary Clinton is giving up that easily?) for the 2012 nomination. It’s almost gotten to the point where all anyone has to do to win the presidential election is to simply point to Obama and say “Really? Haven’t we had enough of this shit?” and practically coast to victory.

And all Newt had to do was to appear engaged, put Mitt Romney in his place, and shout ‘ObamaCare!” at the proper moments, but this wasn’t on his agenda, I guess.

It’s too bad.

So, now I will have to find another vessel in which to place my enthusiasm. This is going to be difficult because despite what the pundits say, the current crop of ‘professional’ GOP’ers on the slate may all be capable of beating Obama, but I find them most of them to be…what’s the word I’m looking for?...oh, right: assholes.

Worse, they’re the kind of assholes that snake-handling-Baptist rednecks like, which makes just about all of them persona non grata in my book. You should never, ever overestimate the taste or intelligence of someone who finds NASCAR entertaining, and who comes from a place where Crystal Meth and Keystone Light are the recreational substances of choice. Unfortunately the GOP has been wedded to a Southern Strategy since Nixon, and old habits are hard to break. So long as this is the case, we’ll continue to get GOP candidates who can quote Corinthians, but who don’t see a ‘reform’ of Medicare or Social Security as nothing more than keeping socialism on life support.

You could have done it, Newt. It didn’t look all that hard from here. But I guess work is not your thing, huh?

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