“Are they -- someone like me, maverick, you know, I do go rogue, and I call it like I see it, and I don't mind stirring it up.... is a title and is a campaign too shackling? Does that prohibit me from being out there, out of the box, not allowing handlers to shape me?"
This quote from an interview on Faux News with our preeminent political philosopher, Sarah “Is that camera on?” Palin says a lot about her ambitions and let’s be clear – they are not to be president. She reminds me of Alice in Wonderland, ("It would be so nice is something made sense for a change"). An aging and tired John McCain choosing her for his VP was, I am sure, flattering, but she has to know that being president requires a level of sophistication and – dare I say – intelligence that she has yet to exhibit. Running around the country showing her ankles to the panting and dim witted republican base is fun, as is cashing the checks for her literary achievements, such as they are. And who could resist the kind of fawning and clamorous media attention she gets everywhere she goes and every time she opens her mouth in public? But she could be president like I could do brain surgery and trust me on this – both would end badly, tea party or no tea party.
The other ingénue winking from the back of the room – Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey – also continues to be coy about running but watching video of a recent speech he gave was instructive for a couple of reasons. A woman in the audience stood up and essentially beseeched him to run, saying that his country needed him and “we can’t afford to wait until 2016…”. Remember; there are currently – by my count – 10 republican candidates for her to choose from and she is blubbering in public for Tony Soprano to run and save us all from the terrible, terrible negro devil currently in the White House. I mean, c’mon – it’s a “white” house after all, right? Wink, wink… In an astonishing example of pot, kettle black, he actually started his speech by saying something to the effect of, “Now Obama is starting his 2012 campaign by trying to divide the country to win re-election”, apparently not having noticed his colleagues working extremely hard at that very thing for almost three years now.
I can say right now with a high degree of certainty that this guy has no chance to be elected. He’s obese. And while I have no particular prejudice myself regarding the morbidly obese, there are large numbers of people in this country who would never vote for the guy because he doesn’t look presidential; he looks like Vinnie, the fixer from down the block. You go see this guy to get a bet down before the 5th race, not to have a cogent discussion on the strategic issues surrounding our policy towards China. Like Palin said – in her usual tortured gibberish, about Herman Cain, who just won the Florida straw poll; “That Herb Cain, well he’s the flavor of the month”. Christie’s rise to prominence is clearly a function of the dismal lack of an attractive choice amongst the Obama-hating posse trying to ride to the rescue of the party and the country at large.
And besides; wither the tea party in all this? What happened to tea party darling Michele “I’m just doing the lord’s work” Bachman, who dominated the media coverage for a solid month until everyone realized she was bat -shit crazy and a frightening and dangerous lunatic? Rick “What did I say wrong?” Perry is still trying to get his Tony Lama out of his mouth and his fervent supporters are bailing on him in droves. Even Roger Ailes, high priest of hyperbole and strategic misinformation, is now backing away from the rabble and that’s the most telling thing of all.
Will Bunch wrote recently in the Huffington Post about the demise of the tea party and what he said was right on: “When historians look back on the surge and decline of the Tea Party Movement in America, and they will, I believe the focus will be how something that was real – anger and fear among a segment of the middle class that has been decimated by the decline of the US economy – was hijacked by a band of high-def hucksters, starting with media stars and their bosses seeking ratings, attention, and cash – not necessarily in that order. The behind the scenes billionaires eager to save their oligarchy, and the craven politicians that they own, came later.”
The tea party’s popularity is running around 25% with likely voters, and, with more and more public exposure to its anti-science, anti-immigrant, anti-government manifesto, obfuscating focus on deficit reduction rather than job creation and belligerent foreign policy, fading daily. Now with Rand Paul holding up a pipeline safety bill in the senate because…well, because he can, sympathetic supporters will likely be fewer still. It wasn’t bad enough that terrified middle of the road republicans, abandoning any remaining vestige of common sense or compassion, threatened a government shut down over their unprecedented refusal to provide disaster aid without cutting social services and a job-creating green technology bill. Now with the very real threat of whole neighborhoods in Texas exploding in napalm-like fireballs, Perry's misguided and doctrinaire refusal to defer further cutting to some more appropriate opportunity makes him look like a thoughtless apparatchik straight out of Moscow, circa 1962.
So I say come join us, Governor Christie. Bring your straight talking coarseness and substantial girth and join the party’s party. I think there’s room for one more…
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