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The Republicans have a problem. Actually, several problems, but the biggest right now is that no one of note and substance wants their presidential nomination. All of the candidates have a pile of screaming problems should they get the nomination and one of the biggest problems is the guy who would normally be the presumptive front runner, Mitt Romney. He comes across as a totally inauthentic human being and his one term as governor of Massachusetts, where he passed and signed a program very similar to “Obamacare” more or less puts him in the dead duck category for a lot of Republicans, including the tea pot faction.
What the party really needs right now is a moron. Really. I am not joking. They need someone who isn’t smart enough to realize that the Republicans have been digging themselves a deep dark hole with more and more extreme positions. This person needs to buy into the program, lock, stock and gun barrel and give the far righties something to yell about at their convention next year.
The alternative would be someone who is careful, someone who can pick and choose among the proposals of the moment, but who would, all the same get the support of almost everyone in the party. Ain’t gonna happen. The whole world saw that happened to Gingrich when he dared to question the value of the Ryan plan to end Medicare as we know. Gingrich was all but read out of the party within two days. He won’t make that mistake again.
The Republican model for the presidency fits either a moron or a brain, no matter. Their ideal is to pick someone who can play the role of president in almost every way, while the adults supervising the president decide what and how will be done.
The Democrats, in contrast, are always looking for a savor, the combination of one man or woman who has everything to offer: brains, at least moderate good looks and can recite policy issues 3 seconds after being awakened from a dead sleep in the middle of the night. Bill Clinton was almost that person for the Dems and Barack Obama is as close as they’ve come since John Kennedy, the modern model. The Dems want someone who is a president in fact as well as playing the role for the cameras and the voters. This insistence has cost them the office repeatedly.
Obama would have been perfect if he’d only had a little more upper class status in his background, but, hey, you can’t get everything, can you? He is everything they wanted, except a doctrinaire lib and a representative of those who were “to the manor born”. Since he has African heritage, that would have been asking a bit much.
Sarah Palin, while intelligent in a general and self promotional sense, fits the moron mold quite well, because she is playing with issues and policies of which she has only the slightest grasp. Only a moron would think it would be a good idea to go from mayor of a tiny town in Alaska, governor for two years and then, bam!, the White House. The people supporting her don’t care if she is utterly unqualified, because that is part of their point: they want to break the hold of the “eastern elite” on the presidency by putting an outsider in the office.
In this respect (and perhaps in this respect only), Palin is a kind of insurgent candidate and those who would bring her down could suffer self made consequences if they don’t realize this fact. Looking at historically, the presidency has often been an opportunity for new regions, new classes and people of different background to put their mark on the American story by elevating one of their own. So it is with Palin, for better or worse.
Perhaps a better way to think of all this is that the party needs not just a moron, but the right moron. So far, none is on the horizon, but I suspect one will be picked very quickly once the primaries start next year.
Once selected, as of this moment (5.31.11), the Republican party appears to be headed for its worst defeat since 1964. Only the giant misstep of the way the Obama health care plan was handled by Congress, along with persistent unemployment, should give the Republicans any hope at all. Since somewhere around 400 million dollars went to outside campaign groups supporting the Republicans in 2010, they can never be counted out, but they should not be assumed to be in, either.
After several decades of calling for changes to the Federal government without specifics and without enacting their program when they held both houses of Congress and the White House, the Republicans are now in a deep, deep bind. They have finally put forth a program, in the form of the Ryan budget proposals, and there is every reason to believe that when the majority of Americans get a clear idea of what is in those proposals, they will push the Republicans back into a minority party across the board. Dems stand a chance next year, even in some of the reddest of the red states and districts.
Why are the Republicans doing this to themselves? Good question, Old fashion hubris would be one answer. Gingrich says they have their best chance to “break the left in this country” since 1932, the first election of FDR. They have misread the popular mood and believe that cutting Federal programs is all they need to do to win. If the presidential election had been held last year, it might have worked, but they are going to have to run a candidate in 2012, so their prospects suffer by the month and the week. They are simply pushing too many of their pet ideas too far, too fast. Much could change between now and next year, of course, but what they need most is a moron who will shout this program from the roof tops and think it is all so grand.
Doug Terry, 5.31.11
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