Friday, March 16, 2012

The Dysfunctional GOP

I remember the days when most, if not all, of the crazy people identified with the Democratic Party.  From environmental terrorists to Hollywood celebrities saying any silly thing that entered their minds, the Democrats had a virtual lock on wing nuts.  Rarely, however, did those people offer themselves up as candidates for president.  The balance of crazy power has definitely migrated over to the Republican Party today.  What's more, the crazies actually run for president and are considered viable candidates by many Republican voters.  The question is when and where did this start?  Some have suggested it began with the vice-presidential nomination of Sarah Palin in 2008.  Perhaps, but I think Palin was more a case of someone being unprepared for the rigor of national politics than the John McCain choosing a crazy person as his running mate.  I do think, however, that Palin's presence on the GOP ticket made it more acceptable for ignorant people to seek the presidency.  That explains the candidacies of Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain.  Fortunately, GOP voters and the Republican establishment rejected both of them.  As they did with the male version of Palin, Texas Governor Rick Perry.   Voters are currently rejecting the GOP's crazy uncle, Ron Paul.

Yet, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, both serial liars and both less qualified to be president than Republicans believe Barack Obama was/is, are considered viable candidates by many GOP voters outside the party's inner circle.  Each has the establishment sweating out the 'what if Mitt Romney fails to secure the nomination' scenarios.  Rick Santorum tours the country telling fibs about the Dutch and how they euthanize senior citizens against their will, claiming that birth control is an excuse to engage in promiscuous behavior, and now lecturing Puerto Ricans on the need to make English the island's official language to 'comply with federal law' in order to pursue statehood.  Of course, there is no such federal law except for the one Santorum would like to pass.  His exact statement was,
“Like any other state, there has to be compliance with this and any other federal law,” Santorum said. “And that is that English has to be the principal language. There are other states with more than one language such as Hawaii but to be a state of the United States, English has to be the principal language.”
Can a candidate for the most powerful job in the world be this ignorant?  Or is this a slip of the tongue that will cause more headaches for conservatives as they try to woo the hispanic population, which will soon be a plurality of the U.S. population?

The good news, if you can call it that, is that some conservatives are now coming around to the fact that  their party has a 'crazy' problem.  Ann Coulter recently admitted the 'con man and charlatan' problem is bigger in the GOP than in the Democratic Party.  As she points out in the video below, when Democrats have crazy people who run for president and lose they don't get shows on MSNBC but Republicans reward crazy people with high paying TV gigs.




This may be the first time in history I agree with Ann Coulter about anything.

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