Charles Pierce: "Debate Preview: The Headless Horsemen Go Riding By"

[highplainsdem]

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/cnn-republican-debate-arizona-6789340

It should be A Very Special Episode, this Wednesday night's season finale of the 1,329,465,771.5 Republican debates. They should invite the whole cast back, all the people who left the show for their own spinoffs, the way they brought Rhoda and Phyllis back when Mary Richards got fired at WJM. Look, here's Herman Cain, and there's Michele Bachmann, and there's Rick Perry, stumbling and falling into the potato salad. And there's the formerly invisible Jon Huntsman. Who knew he was so tall?

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Then, the four remaining Republican candidates will get together and, before the first commercial break, the thought will occur to the nation that, sometime between Governor Goodhair's brain-freeze and the revelation of Herman Cain's horndoggery, something went badly awry to leave the nation with this quartet as the only available options. Come to think of it, I've missed those old debates. (My favorite moments here.) These four have been out there for nearly two months now, debating by proxy with each other. They've been hollering at themselves through their ad men, and bagmen, and sugar daddies. Now, at least, they'll get to look each other in the eye and say what they've been out there otherwise saying to the wind.

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It's hard to remember how they actually react to one another, much less what they might say to each other. Rick Santorum has been talking like a religious nut for two weeks now, but that's unlikely to come up, since both Willard Romney and N. Leroy Gingrich, Definer Of Civilization's Rules And Leader (Perhaps) Of The Civilizing Forces, have been rendered by their own rhetoric — and by the length and breadth of the demented political party in which they are running — incapable of making an issue out of the fact that Santorum is such an incredible dick, and have I mentioned that recently? The debate's in Arizona, so I suspect we're going to get a real workout on immigration, and the fence, and arming the border, and the Hezbollah training camps on the Mexican border. It's entirely possible that Willard's old gardeners may come up again. As best I can recall, Santorum's worried about Arab terrorists sneaking across the border, Willard's worried about "amnesty," and Newt wants to set up an immigration board in every city and town to pass on the eligibility of people's gardeners to stay in this country. At which point, Ron Paul will say something about the federal reserve, and everybody will bolt awake again. Then they'll all thank Arizona Governor Jan Brewer for being a crackpot.

For a long time, these debates were the great unifying force in the nomination process. There was one every week or so, and you could count on them being the gravitational force that held the news cycle together for two or three days. Now, though, everybody has their own bankroll and everybody's on their own hook, and they don't seem to be running against each other but, rather, running for the presidency of their own private Americas. None of us live in any of them, of course.

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