The Surge of Mr. Rick

"I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money."

Rick Santorum

Thank you, Massah....

To Mr. Rick's credit, he says he was misquoted when he made that remark, and I'm perfectly willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He claims he didn't say "black people". What he really said was "blah people". Of course he did. Some of my best friends are blah people.

And now on to the freak show....

It's almost inconceivable to me how much lower the standards of the GOP manage to fall with each passing year. Their new flavor of the month for February 2012 appears to be Rick Santorum, a man who could be mistaken for George W. Bush's not-too-bright younger brother. He kinda reminds me of Bobby Kennedy with birth defects. Is this yet another passing fad? Just a little over a week ago I was hoping against all odds that he would be The One crowned at the convention this summer. A Santorum candidacy would be bound to bring in a million laughs. I then dismissed the very idea as absurd. Fate has never been as kind to me as that. Now I'm not so sure.

One almost has to feel pity for Mitt Romney. As a genuine conservative, he would have been right at home with the Barry Goldwater crowd of yore. But this new Republican party is something else entirely. Back in the good old days, while they might have been hard to take seriously most of the time, they were essentially a well-meaning - if slightly goofy - lot. It strains the imagination to remember that the legendary New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (photo left) once served in congress as a Republican. That era is gone forever and long forgotten. The gauge that records the intellectual substance of the "party of Abraham Lincoln" has flat-lined. They will soon be extincted. Life is beautiful.

As if things weren't bad enough this week for Romney, he's now struggling to win his home state of Michigan - a state his father George once served as governor of a half century ago. He may be a son of that state but it's more-than-apparent he's not the favorite son. It must be a depressing thing to wake up each and every day to the realization that even your own kind detest you. The "base" sees Mitt, not as the kind of guy who will work in their interests, but the interests of the moneyed plutocracy - which is true - but that's true for the entire Republican party. The difference between Santorum and Romney is this: Rick has most of them deceived. Mitt is as transparent as your sitting room window.

This is not to say that the Romney campaign is dead in the water. Anything but. A lot can happen between now and the convention and probably will. It's anyone's guess how Super Tuesday will play out. Rick's disadvantage is that he is disorganized and (when the going gets tough) befuddled. The fact that he has been able to win anything speaks volumes about the ideological condition of that disgusting party - not to mention the mentality of the people who vote in Republican primaries. If the Mittster can hang onto Michigan he still has a shot. If he doesn't he might as well fold up the tent and go home - wherever the hell "home" is. He's never made that quite clear.

My heart is with Mr. Rick. I soooo want him to win the nomination I can't stand it. I know what you're thinking: Be careful what you wish for, Tom Degan! Yeah, I know. President Rick Santorum would be catastrophic for this poor country, I hear you. But look at it from the point-of-view of a progressive blogger. A Santorum administration would be the gift from Heaven that keeps giving. And when your vocation is finding the humor in all things political, Rick's White House would be a virtual gold mine! It was a lot easier siphoning the comedy out of George W. Bush than it is from Barack Obama. Of course this is all wishful speculation on my part. Rick Santorum is never going to be president. But a man can dream, can't he?

And then there's poor old Newt Gingrich....

On second thought, when a person disintegrates to such a miserably pathetic state as Newt has, kicking him is bad form - not to mention in terrible taste. I'd better take a pass here - tempting though it may be.

"Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."

-Lou Gehrig, 1939

Luckiest? Read it and weep, Lou! Which brings me to the subject of the man the three stooges of the pluticracy are tripping over themselves trying to defeat - the president of the United States. The gods of happy political accidents have smiled down on Barack Obama throughout his short political career. Fate has always pitted him against people who were either engulfed in scandal, imbeciles, extremists, or crazy as an army of bed bugs. In the case of Sarah Palin it was all of the above. It now appears that in 2012 this run of good luck won't be deserting him. It's irrelevant who gets the nomination in the end. That party has so mortally wounded itself they've effectively reelected Obama. I get miffed whenever someone says that the prez has an uphill fight between now and Election Day. I disagree. The end-result has been etched in granite. It's all downhill from here.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

SUGGESTED READING:

Fire-Breathing Liberal
by Robert Wexler (with David Fisher)

SUGGESTED VIEWING:

And speaking of Fiorello LaGuardia, here's a clip of "the Little Flower" (as he was known in his day) campaigning for mayor in 1932. He is speaking out against the prohibition of alcohol. One might imagine him saying the same thing today about the prohibition of marijuana. When this film was made, grass was not yet illegal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36KLuAZd8Qk&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLA830D052D59822DE

They just don't make Republicans like that anymore. It's a shame. La Guardia was as good as they get