Staying abreast of every developing GOP-presidential-candidate nincompoopism has become an impossible task. It's torrential. It rains down upon us in buckets. We scoop, bail, and heave, but more comes -- more and more and more -- relentlessly, from morning through night, in newspapers, on cable TV, and in blogs like this one.
These candidates have no mercy, and we're reaching our limit.
The latest: Gov. Rick Perry, he of plunging poll numbers and skyrocketing electoral doubts, is thinking about skipping future debates. Now, it is axiomatic in politics that only two types of candidates are permitted to do so -- the Mitt Romneys and the Jon Huntsmans; the clear leaders (who don't care to open themselves to public blunders) and the hopelessly obscure (I repeat, Jon Huntsman). If you've any chance at all of overcoming the frontrunner, you debate. Period. This is axiomatic for excellent reason.
Steve Schmidt, John McCain's presidential campaign manager (yeah, I know, but Schmidt is nevertheless a real professional), had this to say of the non-debate non-option:
It’s like skipping the third quarter of a football game. It’s not practical. Plus it’s a stipulation he can’t make an argument and is unprepared on the issues.
Or, rather, a re-stipulation. Whatever.
At any rate, the larger point remains, How much more can we take? We've months more of this amateurish twaddle.
Ahh that's too bad. My only hope now is that these idiots don't listen to conservatives who are telling them to knock off the silliness and crazy talk and start getting substantial. I guess I just want Obama to be reelected that badly. I was kind of hoping Scary Perry would win the nomination. Is it true that he didn't do much debating while constantly being reelected as governor of Texas? He thinks he can win the presidency that way? I could just imagine him on a debate stage with the president. Obama might just walk on stage, take one look at that inellectual lightweigh and say, "Nahh, too easy". and walk away. And then win reelection by a landslide.
Posted by: AnneJ. | October 27, 2011 at 02:33 PM
OK, under the banner of the theater of the absurd, will someone please explain what I saw last night on MSNBC?
Richard Viguerie was a guest on the Ed Schultz show with the obvious intent to trash Mitt Romney, annoint Rick Perry and praise Cain. I get why he was saying those words, but why to me and the rest of the Ed Schultz audience.
That is like Ralph Nader going on Fox to disparage Obama for not be liberal enough.
Seriously.
Why?
Posted by: Robert Lipscomb | October 27, 2011 at 05:18 PM
if you can't defeat a phony piece of plastic like Willard Romney in a debate...you're not qualified to be President
Posted by: rikyrah | October 28, 2011 at 07:43 AM
What made the Keystone Kops funny was the fast paced idiocy and relentless sequential gags. I think you're not looking at this in the right spirit. You can't expect to keep up with all the lunacy in real time. You have to learn to revisit and savor the bits you missed the first time around. I believe historians will be mining this election cycle for perfectly formed gems of stupidity for many generations to come and I,personally, am enjoying the hell out of it.
As you pointed out yourself, as long as they continue to work so assiduously to outdo each other in fatuous right-wing pleasing stupidity they are doing the Democrats work for them.
Posted by: Peter G | October 28, 2011 at 09:17 AM
What if the joke's on us? I'm not prone to accept as indisputable the economic determinism of many mainstream center-left pundits and "strategists," though they'll point to shelves of books supporting their theories saying O will be punished for his bottom-line failure, regardless of second-order explanation, but what better expresses the true beliefs of the anti-government, neo-Anti-Federalist pseudo-conservative movement than treatment of the presidential election as a farce in search of the best-worst clown? They want to neutralize the federal government by populating it with the supine hacks and fronting it with captious lunatics. Hail to Freedonia!
Posted by: CK MacLeod | October 28, 2011 at 10:29 AM