Is it Possible?

Is it, I cannot help but wonder, even possible for the Republican attempt to find a candidate to run against President Obama any more ridiculous than it has become? I mean, really, can this be any more than just a bad joke? Mitt Romney still manages to be considered as the most probable candidate to run against Obama, even though no more than about 25% of Republican voters support him, and even though they have desperately sought someone else in a sort of “Anyone but Romney” frenzy. By now they have pretty much exhausted the possibilities and at the moment, if you can possibly believe it, Newt Gingrich is leading in the polls. This will not last more than a week. First there was Bachmann, leading in Iowa, where you have to be certifiably loony to even be considered, and once she left Iowa she flunked out miserably. Then there was the Great White Dope from Texas, who was to immediately become the leader of the pack, who then flunked out on Brains 101, to say nothing of basic memory. Then it was the turn of Herman Cain, possible sex offender, admitted know-nothing when it comes to foreign policy or much of anything else. Still going so far but with virtually no hope are Ron Paul, with his marvelous imitation of Pa Kettle, Rick Santorum obsessed with sex and the single parent, and Huntsman with the temerity to suggest that science might be important. Santorum and Huntsman have not yet had their turn in the barrel and probably won’t. With the possible exception of Romney, who has been a candidate for President for a long time, the rest of this dismal field has little or nothing to offer. Even more ridiculous possibilities like Donald Trump and Sarah Palin have (understandably) gone the way of Dodo birds, and more serious Republican candidates have declined to run.

So, at the moment it is Gingrich, a truly marvelous candidate, almost certainly one of the world’s greatest hypocrites, a serial adulterer, lost the Speakership of the House and was fined for illegal activities therein, self-proclaimed intellectual, Pontificator extraordinaire, Dumpy chronic prevaricator, egomaniacal self-promoter basically out merely to sell books, and transparently fake candidate. He has managed somehow (after years of self-promotion) to convince at least some members of his party to believe he is the most intellectual of them all, no small feat given the reality of his intellect (tells you something about the intellectual abilities of Republicans in general). Gingrich’s hypocrisy is so pronounced he cannot possibly survive as the leading candidate for long. His latest hypocrisy has to do with his loud and obnoxious claims that anyone who had anything to do with Freddy Mac or Fannie Mae should be put in jail, while neglecting to mention that he, himself, had received 1.6 million from them for “Historical advice.” Actually, while I think about it, he probably is an ideal candidate for the gang of greedy thieves that currently makes up the Republican Party, he has, as they say “what it takes.” But really, seriously, is this not an absurdity to about the nth level of absurdity?

And so, after one after another of these prospective candidates bites the dust, we inevitably come back to Romney. Even though few seem to want him he probably will get the nomination. Why someone who must know his peers have tried desperately to find someone else, and thus obviously do not want him, continues to run I find somewhat mysterious. But it is indicative of his apparently unbelievable lust for the Presidency. He has demonstrated consistently he is willing to say anything to achieve this goal, to the point where it is impossible to believe he has any basic values or principles at all. He says things that are at time so preposterous and transparently absurd one can only marvel at his willingness to even say them. One of my recent favorites is “If Obama is re-elected Iran will have a nuclear bomb, if you elect me, they won’t.” You have to reflect on this for a moment before the full impact of the stupidity hits you. First, there is no basis in fact whatsoever for such a claim. Iran may not even be working on a bomb, and even if they were/are what makes him believe Obama will be any less effective about stopping it than he would be, and even if he were President he could not necessarily stop it anyway. Such a statement is simply ridiculous and designed to please an audience of numbskulls. It also betrays Romney’s assumption that the U.S. is going to unilaterally determine what goes on in the Middle East and the world at large. Romney, were he to actually become President, I’m convinced, would be a disaster even beyond the scale of Bush/Cheney (something I might have thought impossible until listening to Romney’s plans for the Middle East).

And so there you have it, Willard and the six useless mental midgets, all determined to overthrow the Obama administration and lead us inevitably to further humiliation and defeat in the eyes of the (real) world. I would never have thought it possible for (what used to be) a legitimate political party to be so self-destructive. Republicans seems to have inverted the old tattoo, “Death before Dishonor,” into “Death before Honor.” What goes on in the mind of baboons?

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

P. J. O'Rourke