Thursday, January 05, 2012

Politics As A Suicide Pact

It hasn't been real unusual for Iowa GOPers to come up with some odd results, I mean historically it isn't as though Mike Huckabee happened in the Dark Ages before... well, anyhow. Here we are now with Mitt Romney and his bazillions of dollars and 2:1 PAC spending tied with little Rick Santorum - Mr Don't Even Google My Name - Catholic theocratic Abramoff/DeLay lap-dog. Given the past half decade of Catholic News stories being their alter boy ought to be a questionable public relations stunt. I can see how "blue collar parents" out plays "silver spoon in the kazoo" but somehow it seems that if Obama can get past the Kenya Daddy thing... Oh - wrong Party.

Rick Santorum is packing as much baggage the Right won't like as Mittens is. Oh it is a bit of a different variety since Rick didn't govern a state, but oooh boy does he have some reeking going on. It might be a bit difficult to reconcile his forced abortion Marianas Ils support with his conception-ism - even if there were big bucks for friends in the former. I don't think Newt shines sufficiently on this particular issue to lay a whacking on Rick.

The whopping Mitts PACs gave to Newt seems to have P-O'ed him a bit. After a moment's reflection answering the question of are you calling Mitt a liar, "Yes," is pretty ... ummm ... uncivil in political terms, even when talking about the other Party's members. Democrats don't seem to do that much at all and in regard to one's fellow Party member even when quite true will probably be pretty heavily counselled against. Maybe the ABMs braying for bloody Mittens will eat it up but I'm not so sure about how broad that sentiment is when it is their own brand name. I doubt it would offend even the most bland of Mittens' dollar men if it were about that guy currently in the White House but - whoa Nellie, Mittens wears an R. (well when convenient, anyhow)

Really, while it is pretty funny to think of any of these GOPers getting all up in the air and calling "liar" about any of the others and not having their collective noses grow; it isn't going to make coming together later all that easy. It may have been stupid for the Mittenpacs to nuke Newt considering who he is and just how much a threat he'd have been in the long haul, but if Newt's reaction to it is as telegraphed by that interview we may have reached a point where MAD (ok, mutual assured destruction) has been enacted as action rather than deterrent. The limits to that particular activity are exactly who the hell has standing.

I whole heartedly approve of the self-destruction of what the GOP has become. It is well past the time for lunacy and destruction of governance to stop being a political platform. I don't know how many pieces they'd splinter into, don't care, but it is not at all good to have a party of crazed plutocrats/theocrats opposed by the not quite crazed plutocrat party. Maybe three parties, crazed plutocrat, crazed theocrat, and crazed people's party would work. I don't know, but the result of the two theo/pluto - crat versus a not really opposition party isn't good. (you will notice that I said not spit about a mythical "crazed middle party") You get voters with a choice between dangerously deranged and "not as bad as" and big money busily buying anything not nailed down and valueless.

Republicans took the dominance engendered by the Civil War and let it become the recipient of the influence of big business and big money and later the resentment of the logical outcome of the War - Civil Rights - combine. It may be the politics of resentment that brought along the theocrats or possibly their native turf being home to its hotbed, but somehow you have a political Party that is the champion of unbridled wealth, melted together with the un-natural bed-fellows of race resentment and biblical governance and that, my friends, is a suicide pact and Iowa is the prophet.

The Democratic tent holds a large and frequently squabbling crowd, but their differences primarily involve who is in the front seats rather than diametrically opposed combatants. Mittens and Santorum are supposedly two faces of that with Newt's meanness thrown in for leavening. What may save Mitt is that while he really is that corporate raiding silver spoon unprincipled plutocrat, all his attackers have is the illusion that they aren't the same things. Hell, that may be what keeps the Republican Party intact - every one of them is a lying sack lying to people who want to be lied to.

What will ruin the Democratic Party is that the GOP is so damned crazy that they look sane despite where they follow the GOP.

*Edit
No, I am aware that I didn't bring up Ron Paul. That is because they are only GOP by default, not enthusiasm. I know their racism and 'fuck you I got mine' seems GOPer, but only on the fringes. They truly are the heirs of ole Jeff Davis rather than the panderers to him that the GOP is - other than the hangers on with their momentary enthusiasms for what they think "Drug War" and "Military Adventurisms" means in Paul-speak.

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