Gingrich eats his words so he can spit
them out with a new preposition this fall.

I’ve always felt that politicians embody the most vile manifestation of celebrity, with newscasters hot on their tails. We like “real” celebrities – movie stars and music artists – because they’re pretty, or funny, or put a song in our heart. Newscasting has always seemed to draw people who want to be admired in this way, but fall a little short of silver screen level “star quality” or “It Factor”. But politicians? Dear God. They’re often not very attractive, they talk about things you don’t understand, care about, and exactly 50% of the time don’t agree with, and then they want you to LIKE them so much you actually have to trudge out and SAY SO in a voting booth. Since they’re generally so unattractive and disagreeable, that means that in order to secure this love and admiration they so desperately need, they have to lie and cheat almost constantly. Which is why I was so excited about the idea of the Newt Swingrich 2012 campaign. As such a despicable spouse cheat and hypocrite, he’s well on the way to winning our 2011 Best Politician award. Let’s not forget that Newt was not only cheating on his wife while engineering the Clinton/Lewisnky impeachment circus, he also was one of the key architects of the Contract with America. An interestingly titled document, since the only Americans that actually signed it were all GOP politicians. A document that was also interesting in that it is often credited with giving the GOP a congressional majority for the first time in decades, when this was in fact already well on the way to happening. It was sort of like Reagan shouting “tear down that wall” at a time when this was almost certain to happen anyway. Good timing and good politics, but not really “good leadership” in the conventional sense. In any case, I have much more to be excited about this week than last week regarding the 2012 presidential race. If historians record this era in America with any accuracy, it will be remembered as the era that turned politics into the DC version of “American Idol”, and Frank Luntz – GOP pollster, strategist, and author of the brilliant Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear – will be remembered as its kingmaker. And he’s at it again. You may have read or heard about his  survey work with 26 Iowa Republicans last month. The results were interesting, and could easily be spun in two distinctly different ways. While on the surface, Gingrich seemed to be the surprise winner, the inclusion of undeclared candidates like Michele Bachmann shifted the feel of things quite a bit. Suggesting that Bachmann may in fact be capable of more than just the Tancredo Effect. Just the other day CNN reported that she’ll be forming an exploratory committee by June. This would create a pretty volatile field, with the strongest contenders so far being Huckabee, Gingrich, Palin, and Bachmann. But can a teabagger candidate like Palin or Bachmann do anything but divide the party? Especially if there are two of them? And if they get enough media spin (as Andrew Breitbart says, Sarah’s really too good for the White House and should take her throne as the next Oprah) can the old-school white guys learn to work with them? Because they’d probably have to sign on to the teabagger remix of the Contract with America called the Contract FROM America . And then we have Trump to consider, and hell who knows, maybe even Hillary. As outlandish as THAT sounds, it was James Carville himself who not too long ago said “If Hillary gave [Obama] one of her balls, they’d both have two”. He also hilariously called Romney the “Designated White Guy”. Wherever this heads, you can trust we’ll have more fun than a tornado in a trailer park with the 2012 campaign trail. The Swingrich campaign is just the beginning. We’ll probably have to fine-tune our Donner Party platform, and give the Palyn/Quail ticket a re-think.

It’s painfully ironic for me to become as cynical as I have about Barack Obama, especially in light of the fact that his remark on the campaign trail that “Cynicism is a sorry kind of wisdom” was one of the things that helped inspire me to vote for him. I know now – and I did deep down inside then – that in spite of his promise of no permanent bases in Iraq (the kind of language that Bill Clinton loved using), and his implied intention to get America disengaged from wars of aggression abroad, there is absolutely no way his presidency means America’s withdrawal from Iraq or Afghanistan. RNC chairman Michael Steele’s bizarre proclamation that the war in Afghanistan is a “war of Obama’s choosing” doesn’t surprise me at all either; Steele confirmed his ignorance back in April when he played the race card by saying that he and President Obama have a slimmer margin of error because of their race. Which of course left him wide open to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs saying “I think Michael Steele’s problem isn’t the race card, it’s the credit card“, in reference to Steele’s lavish personal expenses as RNC chair. No, Steele’s idiotic statement fits nicely with a long tradition in politics of creating a problem while you’re in office, and then blaming the new guy when you’re out. Much like Vietnam was perceived as Nixon’s war even though LBJ had every chance to end it, and much like Carter was blamed for the Iran hostage crisis even though – as apalling as the likely truth is – it was Republicans who engineered the hostages’ extended captivity, Barack Obama will almost certainly inherit the two wars the Bush administration started as part of his own legacy; the GOP has already done a pretty good job (via tea partiers) of pinning the bailouts of the Bush era on the Obama administration even though they were legislated before Obama was even in office.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s noticed Michael Steele’s resemblance to Humpty Hump:

Source

The hubbub recently surrounding Charlie Crist jumping ship from the GOP reminded me of how I found it amusing back in 2004 that one of the key strategies that the Bush camp used to beat John Kerry was to peg him as a “flip flopper”. To me, that’s the very definition of a politician. And even politicians I admire seem to adhere to flip flopping as a modus operandi. I personally feel that given the fact that in the states we have what is – in reality – a two-party system that’s manipulated by a corporatocracy, that switching parties or running as an indpendent immediately before an election is a powerful reflection of that politician’s lack of character. Kind of a “Dick Move”. Which is one of the reasons I have so much contempt for one of the most famous Dicks in America, who for some reason prefers to be called “Joe”. Some of the other reasons are that he looks like he probably eats flies for breakfast, drools in his sleep, and lives under a toadstool. But I digress. Charlie Crist’s decision is generating a lot of dialogue, ranging from those who believe it’s more a reflection of Crist’s style, to those who believe it’s a powerful statement about the US political system being broken. But the fact is that party switching is nothing new. If you don’t realize just how common it is, check out the roundup on Wikipedia. You’ll probably be surprised. Just over forty US politicians have done it each of the last two decades.

I thought I’d Appoint
Stupak Bishop Before
The Church Gets To It

I got a little annoyed when I read that it was a Democratic congressman from my state that engineered the last minute amendment to the house’s draft of the health care bill that limits federal funding for abortion. It wasn’t anything to do with the fact that the amendment limits federal funding for abortion; I’m not sure I think I approve of the government paying for abortion anyway. It was the fact that congressman Bart Stupak was pulling a total “dick move” that will almost certainly advance his career, while otherwise bringing nothing but divisiveness to the party of which he is technically a member. You know when the GOP calls something a “win win” that what they really mean is “we win”. I wouldn’t be surprised if Stupak later pulled a Lieberman and jumped parties completely just to win an election. But the thing that disturbed me even more about Stupak’s political whoring was the quiet but driving force behind it all. We’re all aware of the incredible influence fundamentalist Christian leaders have on policy in the United States, but I wasn’t aware of The Family until yesterday. The fact that the organization’s name sounds more like the title of a John Grisham novel than the name of a faith-based fellowship is apt; the group’s shadowy and mysterious nature is summed up well by Ronald Reagan’s remark that “I wish I could say more about it, but it’s working precisely because it is private.” Stupak’s little career-advancing stunt is heinous enough in its Karl Rovian manipulation of faith issues for voter sentiment, but it was playing out against a heady background of Catholic influence peddling. And if you don’t think The Family is creepy enough because of its basic nature, read a little about how its leader Doug Coe compares devotion to Jesus to devotion to the Nazi Party.

The answer to that will probably remain open to speculation. If you don’t believe in Jesus, you’ll probably say “Nothing. He’s dead, if he ever existed“. If you do believe in Jesus though, I’d hazard to guess that you’d agree that he’d say something like “Let’s stop all these wars and heal some sick people with the money we save“, unlike the Christian Right (Why do they call them that anyway? They never are.) which continues to believe in torture and war while attacking the idea of saving lives. On a more personal and practical level though, I’d like to address this Obama fellow, and his handling of the continued irrational ranting of the far right. Hey White House staff! Did you learn NOTHING from the last eight years? Somebody let me at that Napoleonic twit Rahm Emanuel. I’ll kick his midget ass six ways to Sunday and start a new media blitz where the White House DOESN’T moronically defend itself from the psychotic ramblings of a bunch of health and insurance industry funded astroturfers. FRAME THE DEBATE Mr. Obama. Don’t even directly address the idiocy that extreme conservatives and the health/insurance industries spew. Keep talking about change, and MAKE IT HAPPEN. If you keep up the ignorant and ineffective tendency to chomp on every piece of insane spin-bait they throw your way, your agenda remains doomed. Which I wouldn’t mind, except I thought when I voted you guys in that your agenda had something to do with our agenda. I also thought you were smarter than this. Is it too late to take my vote back? Unfortunately, this is not a battle over principles, it’s a battle over the media, and the current administration is losing. Routinely. C’mon you guys, you’re smarter than this. President Obama has more intelligence in his pinky than a county full of red state values voters. Let it show.

I shouldn’t be as astounded as I am that the GOP has once again taken ownership of a public sentiment that has absolutely no real foundation in a partisan stance. Tell me. Who in America (besides a bunch of bailed out bank executives) is NOT angry that tax dollars are being funneled into a mind-boggling array of government subsidizing of business and bailouts of epic business failures? And more importantly, how the hell did the GOP spin this out so cleverly and so quickly into their issue, when it is, plain and simple, their fault? This is the party that from Reagan to Cheney has said that deficits don’t matter. And now, suddenly, deficits are a horrible monster created by Barack Obama. The GOP is even benefitting from the humor and confusion that a typical witty liberal will enjoy when watching a pun-laden rant against tea parties, as in the MSNBC clip featured at left. Who’s behind this masterpiece of Astroturfing? Mostly the conservative lobby groups Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity. Nice job, Dems.

Some of my friends are a little suspicious of my support of Rush Limbaugh as the GOP presidential candidate for 2012. Well, let’s get realistic for a moment. I voted for Barack Obama, and am mostly trusting my gut that he has a little more integrity than the average politician. I’m still tracking the ObamaMeter though, and if Washington continues on its self-serving path of enrichment and protectionism of the already-wealthy, my faith in the two-party system will finish its long, downward spiral with a catastrophic impact into the metaphoric Mount Rushmore in my head. At that point I’ll be voting more for sport than actual results, and what could be more fun than watching the latest darlings of the GOP – Rush “Bonehead Gangster” Limbaugh, Bobby “Mr Rogers” Jindal, and the 13-year-old punk in the clip featured here, Jonathan Krohn – duking it out for dominance of the party base? If Obama is miraculously able to provide the inspirational leadership to keep the country moving forward during these difficult economic times, it will be no contest. If he can’t, this should prove to be the biggest free-for-all since Smokey and the Bandit or the Sack of Rome, and I’d rather have a front row seat to the spectacle and lose, than be sitting in the winner’s circle of of the victors-by-default Democrats.

So here’s my first idea for the new team: