Wednesday, October 26, 2011

The pattern in the Republican presidential campaign

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The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Indecision 2012 - The Great Right Hope - The 180 Club
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Hey, when even Pat Robertson says that Republican presidential candidates are saying crazy things, you know it's bad! Of course, he still agrees with their lunacy. He just thinks they should be more discreet, keeping it a secret from the voters.

Well, maybe he's right (assuming, of course, that you have no ethical standards at all). But even sane Republicans - if there are any - are between a rock and a hard place. To get the nomination, you have to be crazy enough to appeal to the Republican base. And that's crazy, indeed.

But to win the general election, presumably, you have to show at least a little sanity. So if you go far enough into crazy-land to cinch the Republican nomination, it's going to make it just that much harder to win the general election. (This assumes, of course, that these people aren't as crazy as they sound. For some of them, at least, that's probably not a wise assumption.)

I still think that Mitt Romney has the best chance here. He's so phony that no one thinks he believes what he says. That hurts him in the nomination process, yes, but it will help him in the general election. He can say whatever crazy thing he wants right now, and everyone will just assume that he's pandering to the GOP base. I mean, it's just Romney. Of course he's lying.

And Republicans are faith-based. They find it easy to believe what they want to believe. It's still a stretch to believe that Romney has become one of them, but if they really, really want to believe it - and they will, if it's the best way to take power again - they'll rally around him.

Besides, who else is there? They don't really have any choice. (Republicans are not going to nominate a black man for the presidency, even one as loony as Herman Cain.) No, I still think it's going to be Romney. The Republican base will make him grovel, and they'll insist on a bona fide right-wing loon for vice-president, but they'll come around to Romney in the end, just as they rallied around John McCain in 2008.

But will that be better or worse for America? If Romney has a better chance of winning the general election, that's bad - especially since he'll still have to keep the Republican base happy. And we'll be more likely to have a Republican Congress, too. That's really bad.

Would even Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry be much worse than Romney, assuming that he'll continue pandering (which I think is inevitable, at least in his first term)? And he'll have a better chance of winning - and of getting Congress to go along with whatever he proposes. I don't know. It's all pretty scary, isn't it?

Maybe elections should be held on Halloween, rather than just after it...

2 comments:

Chimeradave said...

Did you notice how Stewart was practically repeating a joke Colbert did last week about that same Herman Cain electrified fence clip?

You posted that clip last week.

Bill Garthright said...

Yeah, that happens, John. I also saw that Colbert, Conan, and Letterman had pretty much identical responses to Herman Cain's first political ad, too.

Well, sometimes the jokes nearly write themselves, I suppose. :)