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I've been thinking about the GOP presidential hopefuls and what their chances are in general...and no, I haven't been licking psychedelic toads again. Much.
*hic* :)
Anyway...
McCain...his numbers are improving a bit of late, but he has no dough and might have actually gone crazy somewhere along the line, thus fulfilling the Bush/Rove smear-job from the South Carolina primary in 2000...
...ya know, the primary when Rove & Co. spread rumors of McCain having sired illegitimate children, and Black ones to boot, that his wife was a drug addict, and that he aided his Vietnamese captors while imprisoned in Hanoi...
...gross, yes, but ask yourself what is worse: those smears, or the fact that McCain voluntarily embraced and supported the people who attacked him and his family with those smears? Hm...brutal insults, or craven lickspittle shamelessness? Three guesses, and the first two don't count.
Nah. Maybe an outside chance at a VP nod, but he'll be broke by February 5th, if he lasts that long...which will free up his calendar for plenty of calm, perferctly safe strolls through any number of Baghdad markets...as long as the batallion has spare time to give him defensive cover.
Thompson...sorry, but I dig several of his movies, to be fully honest. Chief of Staff in "In the Line of Fire," CIA Director in "No Way Out," hard-ass Admiral in "Hunt for Red October," small bit in "Cape Fear," and though I am a full-blown fan of Law and Order, ol' Fred will just never quite live up to Adam Schiff, as far as I'm concerned...
...huh? Oh, right, politics. Short and sweet: Fred isn't too bright. He has said out loud and near people who wrote it down that there is no global warming, it's just that the solar system is heating up. He wants to blockade Iran, which is bordered by five different nations. He said just yesterday that Iraq had WMD, which means he missed the memo (dated April 2002), or got it and didn't bother to read it, because on top of being kinda dim, he's also pretty lazy.
Also, he lobbied in favor of the 1982 savings-and-loan deregulation bill that basically shattered the S&L phenomenon; lobbied in favor of pro-choice positions depite his 86.1 conservative rating; and also did some legal work on behalf of the Lybian intelligence officers charged with blowing up Pan Am 103...
Did I mention that he's not so bright?
Mitt...um...no. He's a chin without any real record, a haircut who pretty much did nothing at all while governor of Massachusetts (which is OK by me and also a MA tradition; we elect GOP governors to keep the Cambridge hippies from running amok, and the House Speaker, Senate president, SecState, Police Chief, and Mayor of Boston pretty much run everything...poorly, to be sure, but it sure saved Mitt the hassle of, like, actually governing and stuff).
And then there's Rudy...who has tapped a Podhoretz to be his chief foreign policy advisor, yeah, that Podhoretz, who said the Iraq war was about the internal reformation and modernization of Islam, who just recently begged George to bomb Iran, and who has basically been wrong more often and more dangerously than any three people you can name...unless you say Kristol Kristol Kristol really fast.
That, more than anything else one could say about the Rudester, proves to me that he is the absolute comprehensive full-blown astonishing total and complete definition of the wrong man for any job that might put him within 5,000 miles of any White House anywhere. Period. Podhoretz...gad zooks.
But Rudy might save America.
Seriously.
How?
OK...
McCain championed an immigration bill despised by the GOP base, championed campaign finance reform that was despised by the base, and dared to challenge George in 2000, which the base still remembers...and her's going to be broke soon, and has no chance.
Fred isn't ready for prime time, and while his well-trained vocal chords will carry him for a while, the first time he has to debate will be a debacle. The solar system is warming, remember. Also, his Lybian/anti-fetus lobbying record won't help much, kinda.
Mitt, whatever else is wrong or right with him, is a Mormon. As far as the GOP base is concerned, that means he's a devil-spawn cultist freak satanic evil fiend...which is kinda funny, since the GOP base is pretty much a cult as well. In any event, he's doomed.
But Rudy...Rudy...
Rudy is more despised by the GOP base than those three combined. He's been pro-choice for years and just recently experienced some sudden change of heart or something. He's a gun-grabber, too, and has been married several times, and is essentially a Northeastern liberal by the base's standards...a little bit Kerry and a little bit Cuomo, but all wrong in the eyes of the GOP base.
Here's the thing.
The lack of base support will be terminal for McCain, Mitt and Fred...but Rudy can survive it. He has name recognition, the 9/11 crap-lore invented around him, and the fact that Podhoretz slithered into his camp indicates that the RNC infrastructure is working on his behalf.
Rudy can save America...by winning the GOP nomination.
If he wins the nomination, he will do so despite being universally loathed by the GOP base...which has been the most dependable and effective voting bloc in recent American political history. They have owned every GOP president after Ford, and when they abandoned Bush Sr. in '92, it cost him the race. The GOP base has pretty much been the center of policy/political gravity in America for years now. They are why we're in Iraq, why there's so much mayhem loose in the land, and why it never seems to stop.
It doesn't stop because that base is still in control of the GOP.
But if Rudy gets the nomination, it will break the stranglehold that base has had on the GOP since 1980. Real Republicans - whom I disagree with but am not terrified of, because they can be reasoned with - will have the chance to re-take their party and banish the Jesus-shouters from power.
THAT would be an amazing and wonderful service to the present and future of America.
...and then, of course, Rudy would lose in the General election and slink off into the night, having done two grand services for the nation: 1. Remove the Christo-fascists from the GOP control room; and 2. Lose to a Democrat.
Plenty of "maybe's" and "no way's" in there, of course.
But I do like the idea.
Go Rudy.
;)
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