An ominous cloud of doom and desperation is building over the republican candidates as they move towards a messy and involuntary reduction of the field after this weekend’s primary vote. The “4 non-Romney’s” resemble swimmers fighting over a single life ring – scratching and clawing with no concern over whether or not they drown each other in a savage fight for survival. The evidence was everywhere over the weekend and it was universally ugly. The candidates are taking turns trying to find the bottom of the gutter and outdoing each other in see who can pander most effectively to the angry white republicans of South Carolina.
Even though I have been barking about this same message for months it’s worth repeating as an illustration of the emptiness of the current republican primary zeitgeist. In the republican primary, a successful candidate has to want to make abortion impossible and, hopefully, illegal. The have to express an explicit disgust over homosexuals and vow to make gay marriage constitutionally unavailable even if individual states vote to allow it. They have to treat immigrants in general as suspect and if they’re illegal, as the source of all evil, regardless of how long they’ve been paying taxes, serving in the military and being good citizens. They have to hate the federal government, a particularly ironic position given their ambition. Guns of all kinds are good and probably should be a requirement of citizenship in every home in the land. Any foreign country that dislikes us, is mean to us, doesn’t want to do what we want them to do, or otherwise disrespects us is the enemy and subject to military intervention unless they’re really big and /or powerful in which case we should twist the knobs of the world economy and make them buy our T-bills. Did I mention that poor people have only themselves to blame and are not worthy of anything but our contempt, especially if they’re not white. I think that covers it.
The non-Romney candidates are chasing the votes of republicans who don’t like him with a determined and desperate fury now, the home stretch in view even though a ludicrously small portion of America has been given a voice in the matter. Santorum is the embodiment of much of the list of prerequisites above and has the endorsement of the majority of conservative evangelicals, (are there liberal evangelicals?), although there is a plume of toxic dust still rising over the weekend conference where he was chosen and Gingrich in particular is wandering around insisting that he really won and Santorum cheated and he’s the one - and only one - who can defeat Obama and making other scary noises as he tries not to look in the direction of the graveyard. As proof of his strength as a candidate he can point to Sarah Palin as a supporter, a harbinger of doom if there ever was one. Santorum called Newt arrogant for calling on him and Perry to drop out – hey Rick: Newt is a pompous blowhard and a deranged nitwit. How can you act like he has suddenly gone off the rails when his whole schtick is be Triumph the Insult Dog and lash out in every direction like a crazed Ninja. He’s fucking nuts, Rick…
Newt, desperately flailing around for an issue, decides to go for the KKK vote in South Carolina by insulting African-Americans on Martin Luther King Day, confirming and displaying what used to be the subtle racism of the republican party. It was about as subtle as running the stars and bars up the flag pole at the White House. Newt’s racism is the clueless variety exhibited by the “some of my best friends are negroes” folks. He apparently doesn’t see anything wrong with jabbering on about giving African Americans job instead of food stamps, despite the fact that a much higher percentage of food stamp users are white people who have jobs. Nor does he give any hint of recognizing the stupidity of proposing using inner city child labor for janitors in schools. In fact, cheered on by the audience at the recent debate, he is obviously going to double down on that particular bit of nonsense, claiming to anyone within earshot that he was the noble truth-teller that we all are yearning for. Sheesh…
Rick “It’s only urine” Perry also joined the fray, defending South Carolina’s attempt to disenfranchise whole blocks of potential Obama supporters – African-Americans, students, poor and elderly – with the cockamamie voter ID law currently being challenged by the Justice Department. In Perry’s case, he was probably just dizzy from too much okra. But Perry, trailing the field like a three legged horse in the eighth race, has taken to expressing outrage over the impending punishment of the four dimwit soldiers who not only pissed on corpses in a macabre and pointless display but were stupid enough to capture the whole thing on video and post it like some dancing baby or cute little kitten. Because the president expressed his disgust over the incident Perry is saying – with a straight face – that Obama is betraying our brave fighting men and women, the armed forces in general, chrisitianity and western civilization in a sputtering blast of jingoistic hyperbole. The guy is such a hopeless knucklehead.
So it left to Ron Paul to file his nails quietly in the corner waiting for the circus to leave town so he and Romney can find a place to sit down and divide up the spoils, shake hands and head for Tampa.
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