Debate Impressions

If one has a Republican friend or acquaintance, be nice and don't make many loud noises this morning.  Last night's debacle in New Hampshire was enough to provoke the most committed, teetotaling Republican to down a fifth of Jim Beam, straight and hot.

Let's get the candidates who have absolutely no chance off the table first.  They may be around for the next seven months or so, but once the buses leave South Carolina, they will be gone.

Herman Cain is a condescending jerk who has a bunch of ideas, and absolutely no idea how to make them work in the context of Government.  His skill set requires the absolute authority of a business executive, not a contentious Congress.  Cain is one bad interview from gone.  He's smug, arrogant, and the wrong color to get any traction with the full Republican electorate.

Ron Paul is a great cult figure, but that is exactly what he will remain.  His greatest obstacle is that he speaks the language of his cult.  The rest of us are sitting there listening to the theme from The Twilight Zone going through our heads.  He's not going away, but he is unlikely to connect with more than the ten to fifteen percent of the Republican Party that he already holds. 

Rick Santorum has one major problem which will not go away: he was thrown out by the voters in purple Pennsylvania.  The Keystone State leans slightly blue, but you would be hard pressed to know it because they will pick some of the most conservative candidates known to God or man.  If Santorum could not hold Pennsylvania, how in the world does he expect to hold Ohio or Florida?  He should run out of money before long.

Tim Pawlenty has more than one issue which will not go away.  He has a competitor from his home state in Michelle Bachmann.  He looks enough like Rick Santorum that their respective wives could view the photograph and ask, "What's wrong with this photo of my husband?"  By screwing with Romney, he has tinkled in the Rotarian Republicans' corn flakes.  And he is almighty dull.  He might last until Super Tuesday as the non-Mormon version of Romney.

The scariest moment your Wandering Gentile had while watching the debate was looking at Newt Gingrich and thinking, good Lord, he's the best one up there.  His answers were comparatively clear and articulate.  He showed a sense of having an idea of how to do things.  Hell, Gingrich was Clinton's tough old adversary, and almost worthy of nostalgia.

Newt Gingrich also sounds like a capon being strangled, and Romney does competent equally well.

Mitt Romney looked better.  He was clear, concise, articulate, and he is blessed with one of the better speaking voices in a party filled with men who sound as if they are waiting for puberty.  He is a little bit less dull than Pawlenty, who remains his closest competitor on the issues.  He was the best communicator on the stage on 13 June.

Michelle Bachmann was the other candidate who mattered. With her unofficial declaration as a candidate, she slapped the elephant in the room in the tusks. The elephant in the room is Sarah Palin. 

Palin will be the shadow over any candidate on the stage until she formally declares her decision.  Her name recognition exceeds that of Mitt Romney.  Palin has a national apparatus in place waiting for her to jump in, and by avoiding the early debates, she is finally listening to the wisest advice she could get: Better to be silent and considered to be a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

The last thing Sarah Palin needs right now is a lucky punch from a second tier candidate that lays her candidacy on the ground.  The only ones who could get that in might be Gingrich or Santorum.  In spite of their being insufferable, the two of them are also much smarter than Governor Palin.  Santorum and his ideological twin Bachmann have the most to gain by the absence of Palin.  They are similarly paleoconservative in philosophy, and Bachmann has an outside chance of winning the nomination compared to Romney.

What one should watch for in the short term of this most off of off-years follows.

There will be attrition in the very near term of candidates with little or no traction.  Cain, Gingrich, and Santorum do not appear to have very strong campaigns and may not make it to Iowa.  The heat and light Pawlenty needs to grow in Minnesota will be consumed by Michelle Bachmann competing for much of the same supporters.

Ron Paul's supporters will be a spoiler, and will likely go to ABR, i.e., anyone but Romney.

If Michelle Bachmann gains traction over the next three months, she will serve as Palin's surrogate.  That is all Michelle Bachmann will ever be.  She lacks adequate name recognition, and she is unlikely to build a national base beyond those who would have written Palin in, anyway.

Look for Palin to get in late, possibly as late as December 1.  This keeps her out of debates where she has always done poorly, but leaves her viable in the Iowa caucuses.  Michelle Bachmann holds the enthusiasm of Iowa congressman Steve King, which puts Tim Pawlenty at a huge disadvantage.

Mitt Romney will continue as the moderate alternative to Bachmann Palin overdrive.  The fatal error that Romney's campaign will make is that he will continue to run to the right.  Romney's problem is that he is not credible as a paleoconservative, not if he had a successful career achieving statewide office in Massachusetts.  Indeed, the waning support for the tea parties indicates that he would have a chance as a moderate in the general election.

However, in order to get to the general election, one must cater to the party's base.  And that base will prefer someone with a better set of credentials as a Conservative, be it Bachmann, or more likely, Palin.  Mitt Romney would be well served by campaigning for the Vice-Presidency, because Governor Palin has a history of not bearing up well under scrutiny from the national press.

The future of the Republican Party will be dependent upon the strength of bringing moderates into the fold. 

It shall be seen if they remain to do so in 2016. 

The Parable of Republican Fiscal Responsibility

A Republican goes on vacation.  A thousand miles from home he decides he wants a bacon sandwich.

So the Republican spends thirty dollars renting a car.  He spends an hour of time and and three gallons of gas searching for a supermarket.  At the supermarket he spends ten dollars on bacon, mayonnaise and bread. 

The Republican makes a huge mess in the hotel microwave for the maid to clean up.  She will not be tipped because the Republican presumes her to be illegal, despite the fact that she is blond, 6'6" tall, and named for her legal immigrant grandmother, Inga.

The Republican realizes that he has no method for taking care of the bacon and the mayonnaise, so he drives out to the truck stop and buys a portable cooler for a hundred dollars.

After the end of his three day visit, The Republican has a cooler he cannot take on the flight back, filled with food which, while not spoiled, is more than he requires.

Giving the surplus food to people who haven't got enough to eat goes against The Republican's work ethic, so he sticks it in the commercial waste-collection dumpster at the hotel.  The cooler, likewise, is not something which can be allowed into other hands, for fear that it may be repurposed for some nefarious end.

So the Republican stands at the airport, proud and pleased that the sandwich itself only cost two dollars.  But he wasted $158 to make that two dollar sandwich.

A Democrat is on vacation. A thousand miles from home, he decides he wants a bacon sandwich.  The Democrat walks to a nearby restaurant and asks for a bacon sandwich.  When he is done eating, he gives the waitress about seven dollars, including tip. 

The Republican shakes his head in amazement at how wasteful the Democrat is, when the Democrat could have done the job himself.

Judge Sotomayor

There is something satisfying about watching Republicans in a state of absolute public impotence. Please understand, this is not to refute the general impotence that compels a disproportionate number of Viagra ads on Rush Limbaugh-or Mr. Limbaugh's questionably obtained mass quantity of the drug. No, one refers to Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the minority woman who has become untouchable.

President Obama has the prerogative to select the candidate he feels is best suited to being the next high court justice. Kudos to Senator McCain for stepping back quickly with the words, "...elections have consequences." Indeed, one could suggest that Mr. McCain is the prototypical centrist, once identified as Republican and now suffering the hangover of two Bush terms. After all, McCain was patient zero in the Bush disaster.

Returning to the theme of Judge Sotomayor's nomination, the facts are such: President Obama is in a position to select a candidate closely reflective of his own center-left politics. At the same time, Obama is in a position to acknowledge the contribution of an ethnic group to his candidacy. Finally, he has the option of a supremely qualified candidate who lives in this political neighborhood.

Now this is about to become fun-like watching Radio Disney switch to an all Garage Rock format.

First and foremost, the most partisan Republicans are going to come after Judge Sotomayor for her ethnicity. Hello? Does anyone think that Roberts, Alito, or Scalia were not given a pass by Republican principals for the simple fact of being white males? Of course they were. Part of the decision to pick the three of them is to reflect the concerns of conservative phallo-centric whites.

Sotomayor is no more or no less racially motivated than Roberts, Alito or Scalia. If that is a concern for the reader, perhaps the reader may wish to reconsider some of his or her own perspectives upon race. One suspects that Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) are suffering from a bit of projection here. Of course, part of that is because Sessions was rejected for a seat on the Federal bench by the Senate

Sessions' partner in crime, Mitch McConnell (R-KY, a/k/a Jim Bunning Lite) has raised a few concerns about Judge Sotomayor's qualifications. Way to go, Mitch! If you want to throw that rock, it's going through Clarence Thomas' roof. Judge Sotomayor has 18 years on the bench, having become a federal judge (roughly) concurrently with Thomas.

One would not feel as compelled to embrace Judge Sotomayor's nomination if, for example, she had hosted the courtroom on an afternoon television program. While one suspects that Judge Milian from The People's Court could capably run any courtroom where she sees fit-the type of court atmosphere where Judge Sotomayor is vastly different. Most of Sotomayor's litigants have a greater command of vocabulary, grammar, and precedent. They are major-leaguers in the field of being a boil on the tuchas of society.

Simply disagreeing with an individual does not make them unqualified. It is justification for withholding support, but one should be certain to have all of their ducks in a row when it comes to evaluating qualification. Should this fight continue, Mr. McConnell's emasculated little party would be in position to be splattered with all the mud.

That would not be of much concern in states like South Carolina and Alabama, where Latino votes are miniscule compared to those of black and white Americans. But in states like Texas, Florida, and Arizona a significant latino electorate would be in a position to turn out about fifteen percent of the remaining Republican senators. Georgia and North Carolina are already on the edge of being driven out of the fold. If those five large sun belt states wind up going blue, Republicans will wind up living next to the Whigs and the Know-Nothings of Millard Fillmore.

Thus it comes down to this. Republicans can pick a fight with Judge Sotomayor's supporters, and become the next inhabitants of the ash heap of history. Or they can make the discreet decision to choose a more appropriate battle. That is the choice they face in this debate.

One asks whether or not Limbaugh, Gingrich, Sessions and McConnell will choose oblivion over relevance based upon a flawed principle. One waits with bated breath.