Profiles in Courage

Here’s an idea. All the new small government guys can do their part in making government smaller. They can quit. Apply their staff’s salaries toward paying down the national debt. Go start a new business. It would be sooo Sarah Palin.

Mitt does the math

The nice thing about businessmen is they’re handy with numbers. They know when to cut their losses. So Mitt Romney has looked at his delegate count and his meager ability to win only the states where he has once lived, and decided that it is time to stop backing a losing venture. So Rush Limbaugh’s true conservative is out of the running and it is time for the Republican talk show host to do the only conscionable thing: Get out the vote for Ron Paul. Mega dittos, Rush.

Look who’s endorsing Hillary

Whenever I think Hillary Clinton is shrill, strident and downright unladylike, I just have to listen to Anne Coulter to remember how shrill, shrill can be. The mean-spirited, mini-skirted GOP pundit is now saying that she is so against John McCain being her party’s candidate that she will vote for Hillary Clinton. Alright. That has to be the endorsement of the week. The point of Coulter’s latest teapot tempest is, of course, to say that Mitt Romney––the formerly liberal, formerly pro-choice, currently Mormon, former Massachusetts governor––is the real conservative in the race. Why Americans are not seeing this is really getting her goat. McCain is apparently worst than anything the tax-and-spend Democrats could conjure. And the pro-life, evangelical Huckabee? Also a liberal. Also, not to be trusted. Yup. Anne would know, after all, she’s the one voting for Hillary Clinton.

Fred is Dead

Fred Thompson, we hardly knew ye. Senator Thompson’s lackluster performance in the primaries was a disappointment to many a Reagan-loving, abortion-hating, God-fearing conservative. He started out this campaign season on the sidelines, toying with our affections, chomping on his cigar and talking tough about cracking down on the borders, ridding our country of brown-skinned freeloading illegals. He tantalized us with coy suggestions that he might throw his hat into the ring. He excited us with the imminent possibility of a run for Ronald Reagan’s old job. He would blow these two-faced Massachusetts rich boy politicians out of the water. He would pulverize these gun-controlling, gay-marrying, pro-choice pantywaists. He would trounce these maverick, amnesty-granting Arizonan moderates. He would singlehandedly bring the party of Reagan back to the policies of Reagan. Hoo-ya! Then he got in the game at what seemed like the eleventh hour––and did zip. And today, this would-be messiah leaves the race with neither a bang nor whimper. Just a thud and a thunk. And with his departure it has finally dawned on us that the party of Reagan is truly a thing of the past. The abortion issue has lost its pull, smaller government is out of vogue and there is yet to be a consensus on what to do about this maddening immigration conundrum. The fact is: It’s a new GOP. The Grand Old Party has become the party of imperialism, growing deficits and federalized solutions to localized problems. Clearly, this is the end of Fred. But more importantly this is the end of an era.

Now what?

Two big wins for John McCain. Two back-to-back victories for Romney. And Hillary Clinton is kicking butt and taking names. So what do we know for sure? In the Democratic camp, it is clearly down to a two-way race. If Clinton ekes out a victory in South Carolina, Obama can start crafting his concession speech and a shot at the V.P. slot. The GOP is more up in the air. Clearly, Thompson is a bridesmaid. Ron Paul can decide between a Libertarian run or writing a book on How to Run a World-class Government on Two Dollars a Day. The Giuliani strategy remains an intriguing gamble. And it is pretty clear that Romney has the Mormon vote. The rest, I confess, is a bit hazy. It wasn’t all that long ago that John McCain’s campaign was dead in the water. And there is plenty of time in politics for him to fall and rise again. One thing, however, has to be troubling. McCain’s narrow victories have been with a rag-tag confederation of Republican moderates, independents and the religiously lukewarm. The traditional Republican mainstay of the abortion-hating, illegal hard-lining, born-again church-goers seem to favor a Huckabee candidacy and they, on the whole, have always been a bit leery of McCain and his maverick ways. I mean, the man opposes torture; Can this fellow really be trusted? Winning over the base of the GOP means not alienating this powerful block. Can McCain do it? Well, he’s just won over the people that knocked him out of the running eight years ago. So, anything is possible.

Channeling Ronnie

For a dead guy, Ronald Reagan sure gets around. The ghost of Reagan haunted the earliest Republican debates. Every plank of the GOP Presidential hopefuls’ stump speeches were “in the spirit of Ronald Reagan.” Or so they said. Our Reagan-loving electorate even coaxed a sad-eyed, bulldog-faced actor into the running because they were convinced this tough guy from Hollywood might be the heir apparent to the old twenty-mule-team Dutch. Now, even the Democrats are getting in on the act. For this last week, Barack Obama referenced Ronald Reagan with neither a sneer, snicker nor an eye roll. In fact, Obama’s remarks about the Gipper fell just short of full-blown praise. You see, Reagan was a change agent. Reagan was an optimist. Always electric, but never fiery. Always calm, but never weak. Reagan was not some cynical Karl Rove creation. He was the real deal. An icon of hope. A promoter of big dreams. And Obama thinks that America is once again ready for a new morning. We’ll see tonight if the folks in Nevada don’t agree.

Reality Check

He’s looking to Florida to put him back in the game. He is looking at a state rich in Latino voters to put him back on the map. So Rudy Giuliani has done a most logical thing. He has launched a series of Spanish-language TV commercials. That’s right, the same guy advocating that no one be allowed U.S. citizenship without demonstrated fluency in English. Ironic? Ai yi yi yi! Which illustrates the complexities of this hot potato immigration issue. It seems we live in a nation where it is alright for non-citizen Latinos to join the U.S. Marines and die for our country. But if you come across the border and take the jobs we don’t want to do, at wages we refuse to be paid; if you send your kids to our taxpayer-funded public schools; and if you come here speaking another language like our German, Polish, Swedish and Russian ancestors did; Then we get bent out of shape. Then, candidates start saying patently unamerican things like you can’t be a citizen unless you speak, read and write the Queen’s English. But, suddenly, reality sinks in; the hardliners come down from their high horses and become as pragmatic as a Texas restaurant owner or an Arizona homebuilder. These same tough-talking politicians go out and make themselves a Spanish-language TV commercial: Senor Giuliani es muy macho.

Peace, man

 

It’s Christmas in Berkeley. The streets are packed with last-minute shoppers huddled under clear, blue skies. A grizzled little man with a Santa hat cranks out the hits of the Eighties on his squeezebox accordion as passersby stuff folding money into his tip jar. A jewelry store has a sign over its door that reads “welcome procrastinators.” A line queues up outside of a corner bakery.  It’s all like a Curriers & Ives engraving minus the snowball fight. Berkley is a left-leaning hamlet strewn with broken dreams and discarded Subarus where tires go flat and marriages go bust. The gold rush is over, they gave peace a chance and are now left with a village of grayed-out hippies and close-cropped lesbians complaining of nagging back pain and osteoporosis. They sip their herbal teas, nibble on their organic, free-range granola and secretly thank Vishnu that our country is saddled with another unholy war for them to bitch about. Protest makes them feel young again, even if it is nothing more than buying that key ring at the greeting card store that flashes the countdown to Dubya’s last day in office; and the only well-funded peace candidate is a libertarian wingnut who haplessly wandered into the GOP.  It’s Christmas time. So as they settle into their beds tonight, they can dream of peace on earth, good will toward men and lions lying down with lambs. Berkeley, like Des Moines or Dallas, sleeps this Christmas eve awaiting the birth of a Saviour.  A prince of peace would be nice. Preferably, not a Republican.