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Tag Archives: Republican presidential candidates

Seven Clowns in Search of a Car

04 Dec

Newt and Mitt are good names for clowns don't you agree?

Clowntime is over for the Herman Cain Comedy Tour, but the season in hell for the Republican Party continues to plumb even greater depths of idiocy.  With Pee Wee Herman on house arrest for the remainder of the presidential campaign he can stop being an embarrassment to the race, and I mean that in all senses of the word.

The seven remaining bozos keep finding new and novel ways to make asses of themselves.

When a guy best known for reality TV and endless, egotistical self-promotion, Donald Trump, is chosen as the moderator for a Republican presidential debate, it’s a sure sign we’ve strayed over the double line between comedy and outright insanity.

Donald Trump apparently didn’t take kindly to Ron Paul’s decision to skip the NewsMax-hosted forum moderated by the developer and reality TV star, saying it created a circus-like atmosphere around the presidential race.

 ”As I said in the past and will reiterate again, Ron Paul has a zero chance of winning either the nomination or the presidency,” Trump said in a statement in response to Paul, adding, “my poll numbers were substantially higher than any of his poll numbers, at any time.”

“Few people take Ron Paul seriously and many of his views and presentation make him a clown-like candidate,” he said.

“I am glad he and Jon Huntsman, who has inconsequential poll numbers or a chance of winning, will not be attending the debate and wasting the time of the viewers who are trying very hard to make a very important decision.”

Trump referred to his book that’s coming out and his claim he is worth more than $7 billion, and asked why he is “not the right person to lead this country out of economic chaos or at least to moderate a debate. I would like to see how Ron Paul would fair in the world of big business.”

Paul was the first candidate competing in Iowa to reject the invitation for the Dec. 27 event. His move may give cover to other candidates to do the same – although Trump’s comments are a reminder of the potential problem with skipping it.

The Eight Dwarfs: Dopey, Sleazy, Crazy, Goofy, Drunky, Nutty, Horny and Clueless.

Seriously Republicans, what the hell is wrong with y’all?

Donald Trump moderating a debate?  Seriously?  What’s next?   Survivor: Devil’s Island with the Republican presidential candidates?  Maybe The X Factor or Ultimate Fighting?  A WWE bout with John Cena and the Rock in an electrified steel cage match against Mitt and Newt?

The utter weirdness of the Republican crop is beginning to devolve into a political version of the Insane Clown Posse.

The rest of the world is taking notice of this horror show as Der Spiegel blasted the Republiclowns as “a club of liars, demagogues and ignoramuses.

Africa is a country. In Libya, the Taliban reigns. Muslims are terrorists; most immigrants are criminal; all Occupy protesters are dirty. And women who feel sexually harassed — well, they shouldn’t make such a big deal about it.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the US Republicans. Or rather, to the twisted world of what they call their presidential campaigns. For months now, they’ve been traipsing around the country with their traveling circus, from one debate to the next, one scandal to another, putting themselves forward for what’s still the most powerful job in the world.

As it turns out, there are no limits to how far they will stoop.

It’s true that on the road to the White House all sorts of things can happen, and usually do. No campaign can avoid its share of slip-ups, blunders and embarrassments. Yet this time around, it’s just not that funny anymore. In fact, it’s utterly horrifying.

It’s horrifying because these eight so-called, would-be candidates are eagerly ruining not only their own reputations and that of their party, the party of Lincoln lore. Worse: They’re ruining the reputation of the United States.

When the only two candidates with enough dignity left to say they want no part of a Trump extravaganza are Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, two bottom-feeders tracking in the single digits nationally (though Paul is polling in second place in Iowa and dropped Romney into third looking up at Paul and this week’s frontrunner, Gingrich), can there be any further doubt this is the most pathetic assemblages of wannabee presidential aspirants in decades?

Instead of the “best and the brightest” the GOP is placing their hopes of deposing President Obama with “the worst and the dumbest.”

When the crusty curmudgeon and social critic, H.L. Mencken quipped, “In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican,” he couldn’t have envisioned the supreme awfulness of the 2012 Republican presidential candidates.

But Mencken was lucky.  Being dead, he’s not stuck with having to choose from the least-awful of a bad bunch to vote for next November.  He also never had to live in a world with a Donald Trump.

Clowns are creepy enough as it is.  They get even creepier when they run for president.

"I always serve the ladies my Meat Lover's Special' sez Herm.

 
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Posted by on December 4, 2011 in News & Views, Rantology

 

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Neutering Newt Gingrich

01 Dec

“…a stupid man’s idea of what a smart person sounds like.”  ~ Newt Gingrich as described by Paul Krugman

At various times another candidate pops out the Republican clown car to enjoy their moment as the media darling and the new Flavor of the Month.   Previously, I’ve chronicled the misadventures of Michele “Batshit” Bachmann, Jon “Hopeless” Huntsman,  Horny Herman Cain, cranky old Ron Paul, and Slick Rick Perry.

Time to neuter Newt Gingrich while he suns himself on a rock.

There isn’t a nastier, more egotistical, unpleasant, and negative candidate than the former Speaker of the House.   He combines Perry’s sleaze,  Romney’s hypocrisy, Bachmann’s fondness for crazy ideas and stupid statements and a lack of moral scruples that would make Cain blush, if he weren’t Black and incapable of doing so.

Newt comes up with these weird, but stupid ideas like firing the unionized janitors and hiring schoolkids to clean their own schools.  Gingrich says child labor laws are “stupid” and thinks taking jobs away from adults and giving them to kids instead is a swell idea.

If Mitt believes in nothing, what Newt believes in is flat-out wrong.

Whenever another one of these fatally flawed candidates bubble up to the top of the murk that is the Republican presidential pool, the speculation begins that while they may be less electable than Romney, it positions a Gingrich or Cain as a possible running mate for Mittens.

I dunno. I’m trying to see the upside for Mitt to tap Newt (Mitt & Newt 2012?) and I can’t find it. The conservative base doesn’t like Gingrich that much more than Romney and he does nothing to stir up evangelicals, Tea Party patriots, and Latinos.

Also, Gingrich is already 68 years old. If Romney were to win and serve two terms, Newt would be 76 by the time his opportunity to replace Romney came up.  He doesn’t seem to be a guy who’s going to age gracefully into his seventies.

We are a month out from the Iowa caucuses where we will get the first meaningful stress test of the GOP field and not everyone will emerge in good condition to carry on to New Hampshire and South Carolina.   Mitt is all-in for Iowa after not being able to make up his mind (surprise!), Newt is surging in the Hawkeye state and don’t sleep on Ron Paul’s ability to make things interesting.  The rest of the also-rans, including Horny Herman are pretty much mashed potatoes, gravy and a roll.

 “In Iowa, it’s long been a two-person race between Romney and someone else,” said J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., which conducted the poll for Bloomberg. “It is now a four-person race between Romney and three someone elses.”

Poll participant Nate Warwick, 34, a machine operator at a packaging factory who lives in Story City, Iowa, is leaning toward Romney, primarily because he thinks he has the best chance of defeating President Barack Obama in 2012. Still, he’s not excited about his choices.

“There’s nobody out there who is really grabbing my attention, wholly,” he said. “I don’t think the Republican Party has a candidate that can beat Obama right now.”

Everything people disliked about Newt Gingrich before they still don’t like and no matter how “old news ” it is, they still aren’t going to get into a guy who talks smack about “values” while living a life that is the antithesis of it.

“There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.”

Feeble explanations and short-term memories aside, Gingrich is still the same unlikable loser he was three or four months ago.  Sure, he has ideas as opposed to dopes like Cain, but a lot of them are bad ideas like this one.

Newt Gingrich is facing criticism for yet another idea he has floated during his presidential campaign — that the country bring back tests for voting, which were banned by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as a tool used to suppress African-American voters. Now, Think Progress reports, none other than Tea Party favorite Rep. Allen West (R-FL), an African-American, is disagreeing — and referring to the sort of discrimination that his own parents faced.

Think Progress asked West about Gingrich’s position that there should be a required knowledge of history in order to vote.

“I mean, that’s going back to some, you know, times that my parents had to contend with,” said West, who then segued into discussing his concerns with America’s education system failing young people, and his admiration of a high school student in his district who has sought to be an intern for him.

He returned to the subject in conclusion: “I think that we need to do a better job educating our young men and women in school, but we don’t need to have a litmus test, no.”

Fun fact about Gingrich and West:  The Newster once said he would consider West as a potential  vice-president running mate.  Throw another folder in the Newt Gingrich Opposition Research File. How many cabinets does that make anyway?

The splendid humor in this is how it reaffirms yet again how unappetizing Mitt Romney is to the mainstream Republican palate.  The more the GOP establishment tries to force feed him to the base, they more they back away like balky three-year olds shaking their heads saying, “Nuh-uh.  Don’t want none.”

A guy named Newt versus a guy named Mitt to decide who earns the right to take on a guy named Barack.   This is good stuff.

It gets better as Ron Paul rips the Newt a new hole in a web ad.

I for one, say bring it on. Clash of the Right-Wing Whackjobs. This is better than ultimate fighting and whatever is on NBC.

Newt is a smart guy who has some interesting things to say about the presidency.  That said, he’s also a hopelessly greedy, unethical and morally challenged career politician who should never be elected president.

An egocentric egomaniac.  A hack politician who hasn’t held a job outside of politics and influence peddling in 40 years..  A philandering hypocritical man-whore who dogged Bill Clinton for his sexual escapades while excusing his own..  A really mean S.O.B. with delusions of grandeur.   That’s your new frontrunner, Republicans.   Hope you like him..

 
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Posted by on December 1, 2011 in Rantology

 

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Slick Rick Blows the Dog Whistle

20 Nov

"And up my sleeve, I have...NOTHING!"

In September, Governor Rick Perry was the frontrunner and leading the pack of Republican presidential candidates with a 31 percent favorability rating.  Now it’s November and he’s down to nine percent trailing behind Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and (gulp!) Ron Paul.

To say the Perry campaign is in free fall would be kind.

President Obama said in a speech this week, “There are a lot of things that make foreign investors see the U.S. as a great opportunity — our stability, our openness, our innovative free market culture.”

“But we’ve been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades,” Obama continued. “We’ve kind of taken for granted — well, people will want to come here and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new business into America.”

Perry rushed out an ad breathlessly declaring, “”Can you believe that?  That’s what our President thinks is wrong with America? That Americans are lazy?”

Appearing on Fox News (where else?),  Perry was asked what he thought the president’s mind-set was.

“It reveals to me that he grew up in a privileged way,” Perry said. “He never had to really work for anything. He never had to go through what Americans are going through. There’s 14-plus million americans sitting out there, some of them watching this program tonight, that don’t have a job. This president has never felt that angst.”

“He never had to really work for anything. He never had to go through what Americans are going…has never felt that angst that they have in their heart. And I think he’s always, when he has had problems, he’s always pointed to somebody else and said it was their fault, not mine.”

These are dog-whistle politics Perry is engaged in.

Dog-whistle politics n. a concealed, coded, or unstated idea, usually divisive or politically dangerous, nevertheless understood by the intended voters

Here is a White man who speaks with forked tongue.

What Governor Goodhair is really saying. “You know that Barack Obama is really somethin’, ain’t he? He went to Harvard. Taught Constitutional Law. Edited the Harvard Law Review. He’s written two best-sellers. He’s a right smart fella. For a Black guy, I mean. He really seems to think he’s not just as good as a White man, he really thinks he’s better than a White man.”

Perry all but says Obama is America’s first affirmative action president. He’s privileged. He got the job others were with more experience and more impressive credentials were bypassed for. He didn’t have to work for what he got. It was all laid out for him . All Obama had to do was show up, give a good speech, smile pretty and all those guilty White liberals would fall over themselves to vote for him.

"Hey Rick, I got your 'privileged" right here."

What America needs is a real American. Someone with good hair, White skin and politics to the extreme Right end of the spectrum.

Someone like Rick Perry.

When Perry says Obama “never really had to work for anything,” he either does not know or does not care Obama was raised by a single mother and his grandparents after his father abandoned the family and his mother would wake him at 4 a.m. on weekdays to study. She also fed young Barack by receiving food stamps.

That’s Perry’s idea of growing up “privileged.”

When your political star has risen as high and fallen as fast as Perry’s has since he entered the presidential race as the frontrunner and now trails Romney, Cain, Gingrich and Paul in the Iowa caucuses that are just six weeks away, you’ve got to do something to reverse the slide. A slide made even more steep by disastrous debate performances and a WTF speech in New Hampshire that left many wondering was he stoned, drunk or both.  Going negative is a desperate, but typical way to try and stop the fall.

It probably won’t work, but Perry hasn’t given anyone any other reasons to pay attention to his slip slidin’ away campaign so if it takes going on Fox and pandering to the racial resentments of Republican voters, that’s exactly what he will do. It’s a dirty, no-class and unprincipled way to get to the White House, but Perry never has claimed to be a paragon of principle.

When anyone tells you something that is an easily proven and demonstrable lie, it should immediately stir the intended recipient of that lie to wonder, Why is this person lying to me and if he isn’t telling me the truth about this, what else is he lying about?

Perry’s more pressing problem is before he can take on Obama he has to earn the privilege of being the Republican nominee and as things stand now, he won’t.

The arc of a presidential campaign is long and candidates that take hard falls can rise again (Exhibit A: Newt Gingrich) and Perry is hardly Texas Armadillo Roadkill souffle yet. Any race that features nitwits like Michelle Bachmann and Herman Cain probably has room for Governor Goodhair to resurrect his flagging fortunes.

But if you can’t win the playoffs, you’ll never get the chance to play in the Super Bowl.

Even if America is denied the opportunity for Rick Perry to do to the country what he’s done to Texas he can always retire to his Niggerhead Ranch to engage in one of his favorite pursuits: tossing out race bait.

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Posted by on November 20, 2011 in News & Views

 

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Mission Over, Nothing Accomplished

23 Oct

Did we win? Do you care?

President Obama announced last week he was bringing all the troops home from Iraq and effectively end the nearly nine-year war.

“As promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year,” Obama said. “After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over.”

“Today, I can say that troops in Iraq will be home for the holidays,” Obama said.

Predictably, the Republican presidential candidates squawked like irritated chickens in response to the president’s announcement despite the Obama Administration simply fulfilling an agreement that was struck by President Bush with the Iraq government to withdraw the troops.

Despite their inability to agree on the economy or much else, Republican presidential candidates spoke with one voice in reaction to President Obama’s announcement of a full U.S. withdrawal from Iraq this year.

They were against it.

It was an “astonishing failure” that risked all the gains made “through the blood and sacrifice” of thousands of Americans, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said he was “deeply concerned” that Obama had put “political expediency ahead of sound military and security judgment.” Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) cited it as another example of the president’s foreign policy weakness, and Jon Huntsman, Obama’s former ambassador to China, called it a “mistake.”

Herman Cain let stand his assessment of last weekend, in which he announced that withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan were “a dumb thing to do.”

This is the GOP plan for dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: stay the course no matter how disastrous or how much the American people dislike the course.   Not a one of them has any better ideas than to gripe, whine, bitch and complain.  Over 4,400 have been killed in Iraq with thousands more wounded.  The number of Iraqis dead is somewhere over 100,000, but nobody knows for sure.

But nine years of blood, death and billions of dollars wasted isn’t enough for Mitt and the Seven Dwarfs.

Don't be afraid kid. We're liberating you. Don't you feel liberated?

I guess the better option would to allow thousands of American troops to stay in Iraq and pouring billions of dollars into rebuilding their infrastructure while allowing this country’s to crumble. Oh, and by the way? That Sharia law thing American citizens want no part of here? Let’s allow our soldiers to be subject to it there.

Sorry kids. You hoped Daddy would be home for the holidays? BZZZZZTTT!!! He has to stay in Iraq because the Republicans say the process that led to their exit is flawed.

Wherever the American flag is planted the Right-wing insists it must remain there in perpetuity. Before the corporations and contractors can safely move in to profit from the wars, the grunts have to bleed out and die off.

First we’re liberators. Then we’re occupiers. We’re always capitalists.

The politicians like things as they are just fine. The people have rejected it. They want the wars ended and the troops home.  Now who’s gonna tell the GOP?

I don’t give a damn about whether the troops are coming home because Iraq wants the right to make American soldiers subject to their laws.

I definitely don’t give a damn whether any Republican presidential candidate has “concerns” or not.

I don’t want to spill another drop of American blood on Iraq soil and I don’t want to spend another dime propping up another corrupt government.

It’s their country. Let them work out their own problems for a while. Push come to shove the U.S. knows the address if they need to return.

Bring the boys home for Xmas and tell the last one out of Iraq turn off the lights

Declare victory and come on home.

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Posted by on October 23, 2011 in News & Views

 

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Chris Christie’s Plus-Sized Problem

27 Sep

A contrast that won't be ignored by comedians

Another day and another Republican “thinking seriously” about getting in the race. Chris Christie, the first-term governor of New Jersey has become the darling of the Tea Party, Karl Rove and other GOP insiders for his blunt speaking ways, union-bashing policies and tough style of governing.

Christie says he’s not running, but he seems to be enjoying all the attention he’s getting from Republicans imploring him to do so.   They see him as their Last Best Hope of denying President Obama a second term.  He sees himself sitting out 2012 and waiting for 2016 when there may be a wide-open contest without the formidable challenge of being an incumbent.

Stop in the name of love. God, I know Rick Perry had a shitty week at the debate last week, but between him and Mitt Romney, that’s a pretty good one-two punch for the Republicans. Sorry if they aren’t perfect, but I can’t believe how fast the rats abandoned the Perry ship after his debate swan dive.

Christie getting in would lively up the base–for about a couple of weeks until his considerable flaws as a candidate are exposed. One of them is his weight.  He’s too fat to win.

This is not to say Christie wouldn’t be a good candidate and a formidable challenger for Obama, but America is a weight-obsessed country. The hefty Christie would be chided as being undisciplined and appearance does matter.  It shouldn’t matter, but everyone knows it does.

Pretty trumps ugly, thin trumps fat, a headful of hair trumps a bald scalp and sexy always trumps frumpy.   These are some of the biological hurdles  Christie is not built to clear.  Hate me for saying it, but prove that I’m wrong.

Christie would be picked apart by commentators cruelly focusing on his size, not his standards. He would be a punchline for every lame comedian looking for an easy and cheap laugh.

This country is never going to choose another ugly, obese, or short president. Why do so many of her supporters think Sarah Palin would be a good president despite her total lack of qualifications for the job?   Because she looks good to them.  Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson would be considered too unattractive to head a presidential ticket.   The media consultants would tell them to get some plastic surgery and don’t come back until then.

It is said the weight of the world rests on the shoulder of the President.  In Christie’s case it looks like it’s slipped to his waistline.   It’s not right and it’s not fair, but it’s not right or fair there’s never been a plus-sized Miss America either.

If you think I’m picking on Christie’s weight just because it’s a soft target you probably think I shop at Casual Male because I like the fashions so much.   I feel for the guy.  I don’t like his politics, but if some naysayes thought Barack Obama was too skinny to be president, Christie doesn’t have a prayer.
Christie should consult with a former paunchy GOP governor who ran for president.  Mike Huckabee dropped 100 lbs before he decided to run for president.

He should give Huckabee a call, drop some lbs and stay in Trenton until 2016 comes around. Christie’s time will come, but it’s not going to be in 2012.   If you don’t look like you could run for the bus you’re not going  to convince the majority of voters you can run for president.

Is America ready for a president that looks like America?

 
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Posted by on September 27, 2011 in Rantology

 

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Obama’s Jobs Plan: Save His Own First.

09 Sep

Obama stands tall on jobs, but will the Republicans go along?

My better half and I watched and while she liked it better than I (light on details, but heavy on the message, “you should pass this bill”), it was easily Obama’s best speech since his remarks after the Tucson shooting spree.

I give it a “B.”  It’s got a good beat (“pass this bill” dammit!) and you could dance to it.  As my buddy Denise Clay said all Obama needed to do after putting the Republicans on notice would be to drop the mic on the floor and walk out.

At the very least it is a reminder Obama is very good when he sets aside his natural aloofness and shows a bit of passion. He should do it more often. It humanizes him.

I’ve already notified my Congressional representatives to step up and heed the president’s call. I know they won’t because doing anything to help Obama’s odds of remaining in the White House is not in their long-term game plans, but it’s worth making the effort.

It was a good speech, but what he says is secondary to what he does to get his proposal through a Congress whose idea of a jobs program is for Obama to lose his.

As regards the Republicans, they had yet another debate at the Ronald Reagan Library.   It was a fitting setting and yet another reminder not one of these lightweights could scrape a cow pie off of Reagan’s boots.

Winner: Rick Perry I guess. He didn’t shoot anyone, though he acted as if he was ready to bitch slap Ron Paul at one point.

It is creepy how much applause Perry got for saying executing 234 people doesn’t trouble him. I’m sure they were all bad people who had it coming  (sarcasm fully intended), but what is it about these obnoxious Bible-thumpers that makes them SO eager to kill people?

Loser: Ronald Reagan. Looking down on these eight dopes in designer colostomy bags bumbling about for who is best qualified to take the country back to the Dark Ages, the Great Communicator has to be wondering WTF is up with the Republican Party if these bottom-feeders are the best the GOP can barf up.

Eight reasons to vote for Obama.

Eventually, someone will emerge, President Obama will have an real opponent and we’ll be off and running.

In 2012, the issue won’t be Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright, or any of that crap leftover from 2008. It will be on the president’s job performance and how Americans feel about their own job and economic situation. If they think Obama has better ideas than his Republican challenger, he’ll win. If they don’t, he’ll lose.

Obama knows that. His supporters may often wonder what he believes in and what he will fight for, but even his most committed opponents can’t deny one thing about him: Obama is one HELL of a campaigner.

He took on two better known and more experienced candidates in Hillary Clinton and John McCain and beat ‘em both. Does anyone really think Rick Perry and Mitt Romney are in that weight class?

All of the top-tier Republican candidates has major liabilities. Romney is running as the preemptive favorite, but he isn’t well-liked by the base or GOP insiders, the Tea Party doesn’t trust him and the differences between Obamacare and Romneycare aren’t big enough for him to put much distance between his plan and the president’s.

Perry has great hair, the kind of politics that play well in a primary, but won’t translate well to pivoting back to the center in a general election. His economic policies are murky and his record on social issues are the kind that give liberals screaming nightmares. That may not matter if he can sell his “Texas created 40 percent of the nation’s new jobs” line to enough Independents. I have sincere doubts though once Perry starts taking fire for his record as the nation’s longest serving governor his hair is going to stay so unmussed.

Perry’s fatal flaw is he’s another Texas governor and the last one of those America tried pretty much trashed the joint before he finally cleared out.

Bachmann can’t turn off the crazy long enough to beat Romney or Perry in a primary.  If she doesn’t win Iowa she’s over and out. Plus, she’s a lightweight. For all her bluster, she hasn’t accomplished dick in the House. For all his uselessness, Tim Pawlenty did make that case rather clear.

The rest of the field barely deserves serious consideration though the Ron Paul Pack keeps hope alive, but his issues are gaining more traction than the candidate. Jon Hunstman makes nice-sounding noises of moderation, but he’s going nowhere except back to Utah.   Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Herman Cain are just different examples of the same kind right-wing tool.

This is why the GOP establishment keeps sucking up to Paul Ryan or Chris Christie hoping they’ll ride to their rescue. They see the flaws of their current field far better than I.

Obama is beatable. But it won’t be easily done and not at all by most of his current challengers. This thing is more his to lose than it is for the other guys to win.  To be the man you first have to beat the man and Obama is not going to make it easy for any challenger to take the belt.

Rick vs. Ron: Not discussing where to go to dinner.

 
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Posted by on September 9, 2011 in News & Views

 

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Last of the Compassionate Conservatives

21 Aug

Jack Kemp was a leader of men on the field and off it.

Republicans many times can’t get the words ‘equality of opportunity’ out of their mouths. Their lips do not form that way.

~ Jack Kemp

Whenever someone comes at me talking smack about how Obama ain’t this and Obama ain’t that and how there’s no way they would vote for him again, I listen and then ask them one question, “Who are you going to vote for instead?”

Shuts them right up.

The Republican field is made up of several flavors of the fruit from the Crazy Tree.  There’s no options there for anyone even hoping for a protest vote.   Between Perry, Romney, Bachmann, Gingrich, Cain and the rest of the munchkins there’s nothing for a disgruntled Obama voter to hang their hat on.   The G.O.P. has been assimilated by the radical nuttiness of a handful of loud extremists and reborn as the G.O.Tea Party.

It wasn’t always this way.  Once upon a time there were still such a thing as moderate Republicans who actually gave a damn about something other than making sure the wealthy and corporations didn’t pay too much in taxes.   Some of even could speak honestly about race without their tongues swelling in their mouths.

The last Republican whom I really admired was Jack Kemp. He honestly seemed to care about inequality and spoke about issues of poverty, racial discrimination and through programs such as the creation of inner city “enterprise zones” really put some muscle behind addressing these issues.

Kemp would show up on C-SPAN talking about how playing quarterback for the Buffalo Bills had opened his mind about race and what he wanted to do to make Dr. King’s dream a reality, I would listen and think, “Man, I wish THIS guy would run for president.”  In 1988 Kemp ended up as Bob Dole’s running mate against Bill Clinton but his heart didn’t seem to be in it and after Clinton crushed the Republican ticket Kemp faded into elder statesman/failed candidate status until his death in 2009.

Make no mistake:  Kemp was not a secret latte-slurping liberal.  He firmly believed in supply side economics and was as loyal a Republican as possible.  But speaking about race didn’t frighten him and Kemp offered solutions and uplift, not charity or dependency to African-Americans.

Sadly, I don’t see any Jack Kemps in the current crop of Republicans running for President. Jon Huntsman has the kind of quiet, non-scary, moderation that appeals to me, but he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance of winning the nomination. George Bush ran as a “compassionate conservative” but that was just a campaign phrase to him.  Kemp genuinely meant it and lived it, but that spirit seems to have been buried with him as today’s Republicans regard compassion as weakness.

I see Jon Huntsman as the same sort of  basically decent, moderate, mainstream Republican as Kemp was and one that has been largely hounded out of his own party. Huntsman is as silent as the rest of the field on race matters, but at least he doesn’t come off as an extremist.  I have no idea why Huntsman got in this race in the first place. He has no natural base in the Republican Party and is running in the single-digits along with the other bottom-feeders.

Huntsman’s campaign is being headed up by John Weaver, a veteran of John McCain’s campaigns, but I don’t see where this candidate scores a key early win. Not in Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina.  Huntsman is hoping a victory in Florida vaults him into the top-tier, but so did Rudy Giuliani in 2008 and it turned into his Waterloo.  Presidential campaigns are fueled by money and enthusiasm and I don’t see how Huntsman can generate enough of either to survive, let alone thrive.

Huntsman has Kemp's moderation, but not his vision.

The funny thing is Huntsman would probably fare better running as a moderate Democrat challenging Obama than as a Republican trying to win the nomination of a party that has no use for his kind anymore.

Which comes first? The chicken or the egg? If Black folks want Republicans to care about their issues I’m supposing more Black folks should be voting for Republicans.

So does that mean Blacks have to align their interests closer to those already prevalent in the Republican Party or does the Republican Party have to be more accommodating to the interests of Blacks?

“There really has not been a strong Republican message to either the poor or the African American community at large,” Kemp said.

What have Romney, Bachmann, Perry, Huntsman, Gingrich or Cain proposed or suggested to get African-American unemployment down and back to work? Something? Anything?

Because if they haven’t how do Blacks engage in discussions and strategy sessions with the GOP to make our priorities THEIR priorities as well? I don’t see leading Black Republicans such as Cain, or Congressmen Allen “I’m Harriet Tubman” West, or Tim Scott making this a priority of theirs. When Michael Steele tried to reach out to Black communities he got a chilly reception from them and a shrugged shoulders and a “why bother?” from his GOP peeps.

It makes no sense politically to be putting all of our clout in one basket. I’m not clear about how to convince the skeptics on both sides that its mutually beneficial for African-Americans to diversify their political portfolio.

Kemp was a self-described “bleeding heart conservative” whom had the GOP paid attention to would have been exactly the kind of Republican who not only only invited African-Americans to the party, he went looking for them.   With his death the Republicans have turned cold, indifferent and hostile to the interests of African-Americans and it’s a missed opportunity for both sides.

There’s a void waiting for someone to fill it, but while Huntsman possess Kemp’s moderation, he lacks his vision and his guts.

Maybe if there were at least one Jack Kemp in the Republican clown car Blacks might have a reason to give the GOP a second look.  Huntsman isn’t close to being in Kemp’s league, but he’s the closest thing the GOP has to a moderate.   Too bad they’re about to stomp him into a greasy spot.

"So Jack, they got anymore of you left in the GOP?"

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Posted by on August 21, 2011 in Rantology

 

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