In a little remarked upon story this week, Rick “Saintly” Santorum reportedly said he would be open to accepting the vice presidential position should Mitt Romney prevail at the republican convention in Tampa in August. So that pretty much seals the deal; the fix is in and all that remains is for Karl Rove and his merry band of super PACs to herd the sheep into the right pasture and there’s your 2012 republican ticket. Romney brings the privileged white gentry and Santorum brings the delusional, crazed, ignorant and sexuality obsessed white riff-raff. Bob’s yer uncle, as they say. This way the republican establishment gets their guy in Stepford bag-man, Mitt, while throwing red meat to the snarling rabble who will do all of the heavy lifting by assigning Santorum to be his Boy Wonder.
They’ll let Newt make a big speech so he feels like everyone appreciates his gravitas and wisdom. Today he announced that he was scaling back his campaign and no longer expecting to win the nomination by winning primaries. He fired his campaign manager and laid off a third of his staff. Rather, he’ll focus on a strategy based on social media and personal phone calls to delegates to try to get them to support him and to deny Romney the nomination, forcing an open convention. In other words he’s going to sit around while Callista massages his feet and think up scathing yet historically relevant Twitter postings about how much Romney sucks. Pretty clever, Newtie.
Newt has to figure out the complex jujitsu involved in “obviously supporting” the eventual nominee after spending weeks and weeks calling him a pointy-headed moderate pussy who has no chance to beat Obama. Don’t throw your back out, Newt.
They’ll also let Ron Paul make a speech so he can rant about his favorite causes and ideas, even though the GOP really wants nothing to do with any of them. He’ll take the podium and talk about ending a tragic interventionist foreign policy, slashing half a dozen federal departments , and abolishing the Federal Reserve and the delegates will use the time to refill their drinks and take a bathroom break. Let’s hear it for Uncle Ron…! OK, we love you; we mean it; now go home.
And they’ll save the key-note for an up and coming republican star like Marco Rubio – just like the democrats did with Obama – to position him for 2016. Of course this also is a sure sign that they understand the political calculus of having Romney and Santorum on the ticket together: to give them their day in the sun and get them the hell out of the way.
But if the Supreme Court validates the Affordable Care Act – something very much up in the air but also a real possibility – Obama can take Michelle and the girls and go to the beach. Under no foreseeable scenario would the republicans even make it close in November. And for all the traction a brokered convention could get them, they could draft Rubio and Christie and have Sara Palin and Michelle Bachman perform a lesbian love act in a kiddy pool full of Mazola oil and no one would care. Make no mistake about that.
If the court strikes it down as unconstitutional Romney is still in tough if the economy continues to improve – it would be closer but they’re still doomed. It would be fascinating to sit in on Rove’s planning and strategy sessions right now to see if he is working on trying to maintain or increase republican control of congress – as George Will has suggested – or go all in with the loons and go out like Pike and the gang at the end of The Wild Bunch. “Give ‘em hell, Karl…”
Of course the court won’t rule on Obama-care until late June and by then anything could happen. Between now and then the democrats will be working hard to press their advantage and hope to hell that they can keep the momentum.
On the subject of jobs, there was a story in The Nation magazine today, headlined by this interesting fact:
“Since 2010, a handful of Republican-controlled state legislatures have worked furiously to shrink government. Now, twelve red states account for 70 percent of all state and local public sector jobs lost.”
So a key component of the tea party’s intellectual platform – shrinking government – has increased the misery index for those states that provided them with the most support. I wonder if the mob’s torches are still burning as hot as they were in 2010. With tea party poster boy Paul “Hairball” Ryan having just turned in a hilariously wrong-headed budget proposal calling for even more draconian spending cuts while doling out generous tax cuts to his key constituents – and Romney’s for that matter – and increasing defense spending beyond what even the Pentagon requested, I wonder how that unemployment tastes to the citizens of those states who fell for the steaming pile of horse shit these guys have been shoveling. As Randian fantasies go, this was a beauty. It remains to be seen if this is what people who are justifiable pissed at the monstrous, larded, semi-competent aspects of government really want; to stand in the unemployment line.
And while empty-headed young money grubbing sluts like Eric Cantor scramble madly from one donor function to another, preaching the tea party mantra of government sucks / screw the desperate and the doomed among us, Rove and his obsession with 30 years of uninterrupted republican rule, (not governance; RULE), is a fundamentally more establishment gig. After all, he’s been up to his chubby man-boobs in republican establishment politics since the late 70s. His vision is still clouded by the misty memory of the Reagan years and the glorys of a shining city on the hill. He doesn’t really want to shrink government; at least not his piece. He just wants to make sure his guys are running things.
The real problem Rove and the monied interests of the republican party face is they really don’t have much of a constituency left. Running a Romney / Santorum ticket would mean drawing votes from the 1% - or let’s call it the 5% - and evangelical Christians. No people of color, immigrants, students, or the elderly benefit from their policies and neither does the middle class. And if I’m an independent surveying the political landscape, do I really want to vote for a ticket representing things like an end to the EPA, subjugation of women, governing by the rules of the Old Testament, leaving the sick and the poor to die in the streets and bombing our enemies to rubble? How do you draft a campaign ad to make that look attractive?
The political media and non-stop gibberish between now and the Supreme Court ruling in June should be fascinating in its banality. We’ll watch an utterly vapid and colorless Mitt gamely try to show himself to be a regular guy and a viable alternative to Obama when what he really is, is a fresh version of that old republican stand by, the kindly, wise and rich paternal patrician – a George HW Bush without the stench of scandal and criminality to make him interesting. Good luck making the voters clamor for that, Karl.
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