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Is This the Best They Can Do? 11/17/2011 8:32:31 AM
The Republican party is running a bunch of second-raters
for president.
This morning I read about Newt Gingrich being paid to "lobby" for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the years. He'd received over a million dollars for appealing to his conservative colleagues for support. Gingrich says he was paid to be a "historian." Nuts to that; he was a lobbyist.
The problem with that is conservative spin meisters have been trying to blame Fannie and Freddie for the economic meltdown for the past two years. So . . . wouldn't that put the present front runner against Obama in the same boat as Mitt Romney?
Speaking of Romney, I read another article the other day about his record as a corporate raider. After bringing a health care company on the verge of bankruptcy back to life and joining it to two other weak companies, Romney and his buddies gutted the company of 250 million, plunging it into bankruptcy. Do we really want a corporate raider as a president? Isn't it bad enough "legit" corporations seem to be imitating their "business plan," laying people off at the hint of a recession. Is there still such a thing as career employment for the upper middle class?
Let's look at some of the worst, shall we?
Rick Santorum couldn't even get reelected to the senate in his home state of Pennsylvania. He also seems to be even more conservative than Rick Perry. This guy would vote for the Mississippi plan to eliminate abortion in the event of rape or incest.
Okay, maybe Michelle Bachmann is more conservative than Rick. She ran for the board of a charter school after trying to add religion classes to the curriculum. She got her law degree from Oral Roberts; the school closed the year after she left. Did she even pass the boards? She's also a theocrat. Theocrats do not believe in democracy. The last theocrats we had in America, unless you count the Mormons, were the Puritans at Massachusetts Bay Colony, and seventy years later they hanged women as witches in Salem.
When they finally came to their senses, they blamed it on the devil.
Herman Cain is under indictment for sexual harassment. One of the women has an ex-boyfriend who will testify that Cain had dinner with them. Cain says he doesn't know the woman. Both of the women who have come forward are blondes. Is this a coincidence? What about the other two who are afraid to become the next Anita Hill? Herman seems to have some ability as a businessman. He rescued Godfather's from bankruptcy. But it's hard to believe he didn't get a little help along the way from Affirmative Action as did Clarence Thomas. Besides, George Bush was a CEO, although two of his companies went under and he never had much success as owner of the Texas Rangers.
I actually like John Huntsman. He seems to be the only moderate in the bunch. The fear with him is that he'll appoint another Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court. Aren't five enough? Somehow I doubt these political activists are going to affirm Obama's health care plan, despite the fact that Blue Cross Blue Shield raised their rates three thousand dollars for single payers in the midst of the debate. How much of your paycheck do you want to pay for health care? And why let 46 million people get their health care for nothing. Emergency rooms can't turn them away, and you're paying for that.
Rick Perry's wife said God told her Rick should run for president. Herman Cain said the same thing, and I'm pretty sure Michelle Bachmann has said something similar someplace, at least her clone Sarah Palin has. Rick just isn't presidential material. He keeps screwing up the debates despite extensive preparation, and he actually campaigned for the Texas School Board consisting of a majority of fundamentalist zealots who are in the process of rewriting history. The slaves fought for the South? Holding your master's horse does not count as fighting.
Even John McCain was a better candidate than these people.
At least he had the decency to shut that crazy lady up after his concession speech who wanted to tag Obama a moslem, insisting that Obama was a good man. Of course he changed his mind two years later, catering to the Tea Party.
Almost forgot Ron Paul. A lot of people seem to like his nineteenth century ideas, confusing them with new ideas. We don't have enough gold in Fort Knox to go back to the gold standard. The Federal Reserve Board saved us from a Depression. They're doing a good job keeping inflation low.
And did Ron have something to do with his son Rand's statement about restaurants having to right to refuse service? That's straight out of the Cato Institute's platform. Besides, this guy is older than Reagan was when he was president. He could drop dead at any moment and we'd be stuck with the Dan Quayle stand in they run for president. You skoff? They ran Sarah Palin, didn't they?
Most of us are moderates, something like sixty percent from what I've read. A lot of these people didn't vote in 2010, so they're to blame for Congress with its 12% approval rate.
Let's not vote for one of the above and make matters even worse. Before the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac revelation, Newt was running pretty close in the polls: Obama 47%; Newt 45%.
This married man was having an affair during the Clinton impeachment proceeding, and he was pointing fingers. Face it; the man is a hypocrite.
Others conservative voters would like to see Paul Ryan, Chris Christie or Mitch Daniels run. That's what they said about Rick Perry and we know how he turned out.
Ryan is supposed to be a wunderkind with a great plan to revitalize our economy, but his hero is Ayn Rand who thought poor people were a blight on society. He makes his staffers read Rand.
Daniels has targeted Planned Parenthood, overlooking the good they do in decreasing teen pregnancy and emphasizing the abortion issue. Apparently only rich people are qualified to get an abortion. If that's not enough, Daniels was Bush II's budget director. You know, that four trillion dollar budget deficit Republicans conveniently forget about.
Christie is the obese governor of New Jersey who has targeted teachers, making them sound like leeches on society when teachers are the lowest paid professionals in the country. They deserve any bennies they've negotiated. Thankfully, New Jersey wasn't stupid enough to overturn the democratic majority in the state legislature as did Wisconsin and other states.
I wonder whom the voters will blame for the super committee debacle. What kind of lame brain chooses six congressmen who have signed Grover Norquist's "No new taxes no new revenue" pledge to negotiate? His name is John Boehner and he's the do-nothing speaker of the House. Boehner was handed a fortune when he inherited a plastic factory from owners who weren't even related. I wonder if he cried. Probably thought he deserved it.
