| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Indecision 2012 - The Great Right Hope - Not Chris Christie's Time | ||||
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| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Indecision 2012 - The Great Right Hope - The Manchurian Candi-Dad | ||||
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Chris Christie is running for president, I suspect. But he's running for the 2016 race, not 2012. That's why he keeps showing up at the Reagan Library and other national political venues.
I don't like Christie's political positions, not at all. But I can certainly understand his appeal as a straight-talker. He seems to be refreshingly different from the usual measly-mouthed politician who's always so afraid of offending someone that he won't say anything at all.
On the other hand, Chris Christie doesn't have Fox "News" pouring over everything he says, trying to find something they can take out of context and just hammer into their viewers over and over and over again (and which every single Republican leader will then parrot mindlessly, as well). Unfortunately, most of us Americans seem to fall for that sleazy tactic every time.
Re. Mitt Romney, well, I'm not sure we should really call him a flip-flopper, because he's had one firm, overriding belief his entire adult life: the belief that Mitt Romney should be elected to political office. Everything else - and I mean everything - is negotiable. He'll be anything you want him to be, if it will just help him get elected.
Unfortunately, what Massachusetts wanted in a governor was the exact opposite of what the Republican base wants in a president. But Romney is trying his damnedest to convince the Tea Party loons that he never meant anything he said back then and that, in any case, he's a true believer now in whatever crazy shit they want him to believe.
But keep in mind that John McCain had a similar problem, and he solved it just like Romney is trying to do today, by running just as hard as he could to the right, and away from his record. Once he got the nomination, he picked the looniest far-right nut he could find as a running mate, and the Republican base fell into line.
That will happen this time, too, if Romney gets the nomination. The Republican base is so afraid of our first black president, that "Kenyan Muslim socialist" - you can just look at him and tell that he's not a "real" American - that it really won't matter who's nominated, not for them. But Romney will still have to throw them as many bones as he can.
Honestly, at any other time, the 2012 election would clearly be a landslide for the Democrats. I mean, can you believe the people they're trying to nominate for the presidency? And this is after the complete and unmitigated disaster of the last Republican president, less than four years ago. Who in the world would vote for a Republican after that?
But most Americans vote only with their feelings, and right now, they're scared. They've got more misinformation than real knowledge, if they pay any attention to these things at all. When they're hurting economically, they tend to blame the president, even when he took office after the economy collapsed,... and even when the Republicans have been doing their best to actively sabotage the recovery.
I'm not trying to imply that Barack Obama has done everything right, of course not. But where he's gone wrong is in trying to appease the right-wing, instead of giving us that change most of his supporters wanted. At any rate, whatever you think about Obama, he's so far and away a saner option than any Republican that it's just hard to imagine that the election is even in doubt.
Well, to thrive, a modern democracy needs an intelligent, informed, and active citizenry. And we Americans just can't seem to manage all three of those things at the same time. I fear for my country.
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