Surveying the wreckage from Super Tuesday...

Another tumultuous week in politics has sailed past at light speed with a dizzying series of events and developments that might lead a person to wonder – in the immortal words of a disoriented hipster many years ago – “What’s it all mean, Mr. Natural…?”  If I recall correctly, Mr. Natural’s reply to that existential question at the time was a muttered, “Don’t mean shit…”   However with the advantage of a 21^st century perspective, I feel that answer is no longer appropriate to the times.  There is indeed some meaning to glean from the furious outpouring of hyperbolic and breathless reporting and the cascade of events we’ve seen unfolding over the past week or so.  Witness, Super Tuesday…

 The cluster of primaries and caucuses proved once again that Mitt Romney is probably the least enthusiastically supported front-running republican presidential candidate ever.  Exit polling interviews all seemed to reveal the same sentiment among people who voted for him; “Well, I don’t really like him that much but at least he’s not crazy…” - thin ice indeed upon which to base the party’s fortunes in November.   He won 5 of the 10 contested states, mostly because he saturated low information voters with so much advertising they couldn’t help wandering into a voting booth and pulling his lever like they were buying a box of Tide or a bottle of Draino.  This saturation-bombing is the best of Mitt’s few ideas and certainly the most effective.  

Yesterday, puffed up with this store-bought hubris, he haughtily suggested his rivals surrender with honor, a suggestion greeted with a symbolic middle finger from the deluded but feisty group.   Newt won his home state of Georgia and as he is wont to do, completely misinterpreted it as a repudiation of those calling for him to quit the race and treated it like he was raising his battered battle flag yet again to march across the south, victorious in the next series of primaries and on to the nomination through his brilliant strategy of losing miserably over and over, thus making Romney and the others over confident.  Right…even Calista looked a little dubious on stage beside him as he tossed out this absurd notion.  Newt’s best hope now is to try to not be an asshole and insult Romney, who will then throw him a bone, like Secretary of State.  This would be a terrifying prospect if it looked likely that Romney was actually going to win. 

Santorum for his part continues to parlay his hallucinating vision - leading an army of Christian soldiers descending upon the snake pit of Washington in glorious victory over the Muslim, socialist, born-somewhere-else awful uppity negro, Barack Obama, thus making Americans safe again from the terrifying and insidious dangers of secularism, sex just for the fun of it, and Dancing with the Stars - into otherwise inexplicable primary wins.  Whenever I hear some addled citizen saying they voted for him because he, “seems like a good, Christian man”, I wince like someone just pulled out my nose hair.   But it is a measure of the insipid and vapid nature of Romney’s “front runner” status that a man with a 19^th century notion of morality – a social Luddite – with a completely disorganized campaign and almost no money can be nipping at his heels at this point in the process.  After all, Mitt has been running for five years, at least.   When George Will basically suggests that the GOP surrender the presidency and concentrate on not losing the House, the predicament becomes very clear.   Other than other rich white people, the only ones voting for Romney are those loyal republicans who have looked around and decided, “What the hell…”  This is not the kind of campaign likely to end in victory for Mitt and you can tell he knows it.  On to Alabama…!!!

 Of course, the other major dust-up of the last week or so has been the reaction to Rush Blowhard calling Sandy Fluke a slut.  This is hilarious on so many levels it’s hard to know where to start.  My first thought was, who knew this asshole had a TV show and what kind of brain-dead maroon actually watches him?  How home bound and bedridden do you have to be to want to watch this cartoonish gas-bag pontificate for three hours a day?  Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons would be preferable and probably more politically sensible and informative.   Of course what he said was repugnant; he’s repugnant just sitting there.   But it was the aftermath that was fascinating. 

If I was a republican politician I would be embarrassed for any number of reasons but primarily because this guy is the de facto leader of your mutant army of liberty loving subversives and yes, you have to answer to him, just like you have to answer to half-mad Grover Norquist.  This alone would be enough reason to walk with your eyes downcast, guilt written all over your face.   It’s like Bozo the Clown was your pre-eminent political philosopher.  

Moreover, your ostensible “leadership” in Washington responds to the blowback with utterly tepid statements ripe with equivocation and dissembling.   Hey John Boner – Rush is a dick; why can’t you just say so?   Instead there is lot of nervous glancing around and throat-clearing until you finally say that what he said was “inappropriate”.  Again, as George Will so aptly put it, using your salad fork for your entrée is inappropriate.   What he said was reprehensible and inexcusable.  But you can’t bring yourself to say so even if you believe it because he scares the crap out of you and McConnell and Boy Wonder Cantor.  You’re a bunch of spineless worms. 

Lost in all this was the initial absurdity of a grave and serious bunch of republican MEN having a hearing on women’s health issues, as if any of them ever menstruated.   Ms Fluke only testified to a subsequent gathering because you hurrumphing knuckleheads were so blindly stupid that you couldn't see the irony.  “Me and some of the boys are going to have a meeting, smoke some cigars, drink the old bourbon, tell some dirty jokes and decide what your health insurance should cover.  Now don’t bother me, woman…” 

To me any attention given to Rush Blowhard was time wasted; he’s just the most overt symptom of a much deeper and more serious problem in this country, one that won’t soon be fixed.  As Leonard Pitts put it in a column I read this morning, paraphrasing; modern conservatism has become a landfill and Rush is just a seagull circling overhead.   I don’t think you can sum it up any better than that.