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The Republican party looks to be doing an imitation of the Democrats, finding a way to meet defeat more than half way and pushing hard in the same direction. They are facing a president who is very unpopular with a segment of the population and not all that popular with the rest (save a small percentage of true believers), the economy is coming back in fits and starts and the sitting president has not found an effective way of either getting what he wants and needs from Congress or making the Republicans pay for blocking him. What do the Republicans in Iowa do? Give a victory to a former defeated senator from Pennsylvania who is radically out of touch with most Americans and give virtually an equal number of votes to a former governor of Massachusetts who, were he a solid candidate, would be the presumptive nominee by this point.
The Republicans are apparently losing a candidate, Rick Perry, who lat first looked like he might get the nomination in a couple of giant, Texas size steps, but wound up being an embarrassment to himself and to his state. Perry’s candidacy became the “oops” heard round the world and, after a 5th place finish in Iowa, there is no realistic place for him to go but back to Austin to cry.
Ron Paul, by coming in third in a near tie with Santorum and Romney, also creates big problems for the Republican party. He is in no way a traditional, conservative candidate. He isn’t a traditional anything, which is why he is getting so much support. He wants to cut the federal budget by one trillion dollars (that 1,000,000,000,000.00) and he says that people should suffer as a result. He wants to do what al Queda wanted, which is withdraw American from the “world stage”, pull back, stop foreign aid and act like a small third rate power. That’s just for starters.
At the bottom with Perry, there are Gingrich, Bachmann and Huntsman and neither of the last two has a whiff of a chance to be nominated. Huntsman might have been thinking he could be picked as vice-president (not with Romney, however), but his “campaign” as been so limp and uninspired that people now wonder how he ever became governor of Utah. Did someone die and leave him the office? He won’t even get a show on Fox out of this.
The superpac campaign against Gingrich rolled over the long ago Speaker of the House like a tank through a field of daisies. If nothing else, it showed a perfect model for the Democrats of how to defeat Gingrich, should he ever get close to the nomination: just remind the voters, again and again, that this isn’t a guy with clean hands, that he paid a huge fine from the House ethics committee and was thrown out as Speaker by a revolt within his own ranks after only two terms. Drop in his personal history of marriage and adventures in playland while married and the deal is done.
The entire field of Republican candidates consists of people who would not likely have been considered for more than ten minutes eight or twelve years ago, when candidates were expected to be drawn from those who had actually succeeded in public office. Romney lost the nomination four years ago and only served one term in a liberal leaning state. Santorum was thrown out of office by a huge vote margin in Pennsylvania. Gingrich, thrown out of leadership in the House 13 years ago and never elected to anything since. Bachmann? House members don’t usually (almost never) make the leap from a small district to the White House, even when they understand the difference between fact and pure fiction, which is not one of Bachmann’s strong points. Ron Paul at 76 years old is a pure political original who, at any other time in our national history, would be running on some obscure third party ticket and being ignored by all media, everywhere. Perry was the only one who held a major office currently and appeared, to many, to be capable of moving up, but he quickly proved the error of that assessment. He was no more ready to be president than Roseanne Barr was ready to be queen of the Cowtown Rodeo. Actually, she might have more qualities for that job than he did for the White House, but who wants to do the math?
If this picture isn’t discouraging enough, they have a radical, inexperienced and unpredictable cohort in the House who prefer to cause trouble to making peace, even rejecting proposals that they themselves have approved only days before. These House Republicans are, still, looking for a fight, any fight, and looking for a place to make a stand and they don’t care that much about the consequences. The tea party associates of the Republicans, lurking on the sidelines, could threaten to walk out of the party if the nominee is not to their liking and, in any case, they support an anti-government, pro-business approach that is a good distance (about as far as you can get) from the American mainstream in times other than this strange, lingering recession.
Obama will still have to fight and fight hard to win, but the Republicans are going way out of their way to help him. The nuttier the Republicans become, the better Obama will look. A few more upticks in the economy wouldn’t hurt his chances at all, which might be one reason the House Republicans have opposed anything that might keep the economy on track through generally accepted measures.
Doug Terry, 1.4.12
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