"Well, in history today, Patty..."

Big news today - Michele Bachman has leaped into second place in a poll of likely republican voters, trailing only nominee- in- waiting, Mitt Romney in the field of 10 little Indians or 7 dwarfs or whatever it is called this week.   The two of them polled 46% of the votes, with the other 54% scattered among the other announced candidates, plus Texas evangelist, governor, and erstwhile candidate-to-be, Rick Perry.  In a poll of Tea Party-aligned voters, Romney’s lead is much narrower – 24% to 20% - and among voters who identify themselves as “very conservative”, she actually leads 24% to 22%.   What does this reveal about the republican electorate?   Well, they’re either sedated, crazy as loons, dumb as a box of rocks, or some twisted combination of all of them.  Or they’re self-serving, rich people who hate all taxes and big government unless it benefits them…yeah, I think that covers all the possibilities.

In the ultimate irony, Jon Huntsman, the most normal, sensible, non-psychotic one of the bunch is trailing the field – dead last.  It’s probably a function of him just entering the race and being from Utah but Bachman hasn’t been in the race all that much longer so it’s not just that.  The guy has a pretty spiffy resume for an elephant – work for both republican and democratic presidents, multiple ambassadorships, a degree in international politics, two-term governor of Utah, re-elected with 78% of the vote, 6 honorary doctorates, and founder of the Pacific Council on International Policy.  I have to say, I am impressed.  He would make a very worthy and tough opponent for Obama in 2012…among people with the capacity for rational thought, that is.   Luckily for Obama, that apparently doesn’t describe the majority of republican voters, who seem to have mistaken Bachman, a woman with her hair on fire, for Lady Liberty holding up the torch.

In contrast to Huntsman’s impressive resume, Bachman’s accomplishments consist of sponsoring 38 bills since 2007, none of which even made it out of committee, let alone became law.  She and her husband run a some kind of Christian counseling service, where they apply half-baked psychological theories to try to un-homosexualize homosexuals and perform other feats of evangelical Christian witchcraft.  That’s pretty much it.  Oh, and she got pregnant and had 5 kids of her own and cared for a number of foster kids – all teenage girls, many with eating disorders.  Evidently, while republicans seem to have some weird aversion to sex, they procreate like rabbits – Huntsman has a handful of kids too. 

With the rest of the republican field becoming irrelevant faster than J-Lo, those seem to be the primary – so to speak – actors in the neat little drama unfolding over the next year or so.  Newt can’t figure out why he’s running, Herman Cain is a half-baked pizza baron with a little too much pepperoni, Ron Paul makes too much sense, Pawlenty has a search party looking for his charisma and Sarah Palin – lurking in the weeds and basking in the glow of her docu-comedy film debut, The Undefeated – can’t make up her mind whether she wants to be Eva Peron or Jennifer Aniston.   So that leaves Bachman and Romney, along with Perry when he finally throws his Stetson in the ring for real and – I hope, for the sake of the country – Huntsman.   Barack, if you just don’t drive the bus off a cliff, you should be OK.

Meanwhile frustrated republican members of the house have pushed through a bill that would freeze the national budget and require a constitutional amendment to change it, a radical, unwieldy and largely symbolic exercise, in exchange for voting to allow an increase in the debt ceiling.  You have to admire the focus of the mostly freshmen house members – they keep saying they were elected to reduce the size of government and that the one thing they intend to do.  Of course, idiot savants are focused too.  These folks don’t seem to realize their constituents have the attention span of 4 year-olds and have already moved on to caring more about the finals on So You Think You Can Dance than something as esoteric as the size of government.  And the first time the unemployment check bounces they’ll have something else to be pissed off about in any case. 

John Boner gave the obligatory verbal thumbs-up to this nonsense, all the while continuing to cut a deal behind the scenes and scheming with his senate pals to come up with something to save face after Obama essentially called their belligerent bluff about shutting down the country for its own good if they didn’t get their way.  It was always clear that that wouldn’t happen, despite dire warnings and the most elaborate political theater since Ninja Newt went a few rounds with Clinton in 1995 and lost his ass in the process.   Thirteen years after leaving the political arena, he’s still looking for it and McConnell and Boner and Cantor don’t want to end up in the same leaky lifeboat so they are finally taking off the Kabuki make up and cutting a deal.  Honestly – there is nothing more boring than a political slap fight where both sides are trying to make sure their hair doesn’t get mussed up.   Let’s get back to something serious like getting the troops out of woe-be-gone Afghanistan – that would be accomplishing something important.