Hey, 440 some-odd days until the 2012 election! Excited yet? Sure you are!
Michele Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll, a black guy is running for the GOP nomination and Christine O’Donnell is walking off the set of Piers Morgan Tonight. It’s a great time to be alive.
Let me tell you this:
I sure hope that Libya has better luck with their democracy than we’re having with ours. I’m beginning to gravitate toward Fareed Zakaria’s plan of eliminating Congress altogether and moving towards a parliamentary form of government.
If there was anything we learned from the debt ceiling debacle, it was that average Americans are fed up with everyone they elected—regardless of party affiliation. Herpes is more popular than Congress.
At least, according to the latest polling, both are registering very high negatives.
And itchiness. No one escaped unscathed from the debt debate—not the President, not the oompa-loompa who runs the House, nobody.
The floor is open for any politician with half a brain to step forward and explain, in a way that makes sense, why we’re borrowing 41 cents for every dollar we spend and why some members of Congress would rather cut Medicare than make Exxon Mobil cough up their fair share on April 15. It should come as no surprise to you that no one has stepped forward as of yet, but we will stay tuned.
In the meantime, the President blames Congress, Congress blames the President and we’re buying our groceries at the Dollar Store. (Just how do you “devil” a ham, exactly?) You’d think that the GOP would capitalize on this, right? You anoint a candidate who isn’t a complete moron, teach him or her a couple of groovy, centrist catchphrases, then unleash the beast on the populace at large and, boom, the weakened President goes from Hope-N-Change to One-N-Done. But this isn’t the Eisenhower GOP, is it? This is the “holy s**t, hide the sharp objects” GOP of the 21st century, where females must abide by their husbands bidding, Big Mac value meals are cheap and plentiful, polar bears are stranded on small icebergs for our amusement and rational thought makes you go blind.
— Why did Republican donors load Mitt Romney up with cash so early in the primary process? HE CAN’T WIN! Supporting Mitt Romney is like laying good money down on a three-legged greyhound at the Birmingham Race Course. (There still is a Birmingham Race Course, right? Corner of John Rogers Parkway and No-One-Can- Understand-Anything-He-Says Boulevard?) Millions of dollars wasted, just so we could see Mitt Romney awkwardly attempt small talk with average Americans from Nashua to Nashville for a few months. Corporations are people, my friend! Corporations are people, indeed.
— Why was Rick Perry goaded into joining the fray? Just what we needed—another Texas-sized sumbitch running in a national election. If I wanted to see an arrogant, tough-talking, Lone Star half-wit on the stump, I’d turn the wayback machine to January 19, 2009, back to the guy who reminded us of why Hope-N-Change was the meme of the last presidential election.
Perry hadn’t been on the trail two full days before lumping Ben Bernanke and Benedict Arnold into his “Traitors” Google+ circle (Hint: It’s between family and co-workers). Oh, and evolution? Scam. Really, Rick? Let’s shrink evolution down to the microbial level here and see if we can prove a point. You ever hear of antibiotic resistance? You know, when we develop medicine to combat a certain bacteria and, over time, the medicine doesn’t work anymore? You know what that is, Rick? EVOLUTION! Lord, have mercy. Only so many dumb-asses can be president in one century, and we’ve already had a president from Texas.
— Why isn’t Michele Bachmann irrelevant yet? Why is she still here? Good news, everybody! Despite the fact that oil is a finite resource that is rapidly depleting, and despite the fact that oil prices are influenced by a litany of factors, ranging from acts of God, terrorism and pipeline disruptions to the whims of OPEC, Michele Bachmann is promising to bring gas prices down to $2 per gallon. Outstanding!
To prove that I’m an equal opportunity hater when it comes to politics:
— President Obama: Really, Martha’s Vineyard? That’s, like, your way of saying that “we’re going to stop these terrorist killers, now watch this drive!” (Remember? Fahrenheit 9/11? Look it up.) Anyway, how can you spend a week talking about how much the economy sucks for everyone, then go hide out in Martha’s-freakin’-Vineyard? Come on, man. Go to Disney World, go back to the Gulf Coast, go home to Chicago. Be the common family on a frugal vacation. Don’t gripe about the heat from an air-conditioned room.
Anyway, I’m getting light-headed, which is my cue to wrap this thing up. I’ll close by suggesting that Jon Huntsman is either very smart or very dumb.
I’ll be honest and say that, for a while there, I was rethinking the 15-1 odds I gave him of winning the GOP nomination. But the reason I gave him those odds, the reason I just like the guy, is finally fleshing out.
Minutes after Rick Perry dismissed the totally provable theories of evolution and global warming as poppycock, Jon Huntsman said that both—both!—evolution and global warming were real. Real! And he said it via Twitter, so, you know, it had gravitas.
Look, there are easier ways of winning the Republican nomination for president than affirming your belief in both evolution and global warming, but Jon Huntsman just doesn’t give a darn. He’s a conservative, yes, but he’s a realist as well. And, hey, when’s the last time you described a GOP politician like that? I don’t know if he’s really serious about running for president, but he’s serious about running away from the fringe of his party, and that’s admirable, brother.
Jon Huntsman knows the tried and true rule of presidential politics—you know, the whole “race to the center” thing—and he’s camped out there right now. If he can just hang on to the handlebars through the early primaries, you might be looking at the next GOP nominee. And hey, if it’s him versus Obama, at least a rational person would be president for another 4 years. That would be just fine with me.
“PolySigh” is a weekly political column by Matt Hooper. Send your feedback to hooper@bhamweekly.com.
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