The real problem for the GOP is that the “bench” of nationally acceptable candidates is empty. They have wasted an entire generation, and there’s no one near “presidential ready” standing in the wings.
The GOP, which in this senior citizen’s time was a hotbed of honest intellectuals and a genuine desire to make the country a better place, has declined into such a cess pool, so befouled and polluted, that it ought to be a Superfund cleanup candidate.
It is now controlled by bigots of all stripes (thank you W and TurdBlossom); racists (ditto); sponges who don’t want to pay taxes, but are happy to mooch (Koch Brothers, corporate America and Grover Norquist); anti-intellectuals (RSantorum: going to college is snobbish); and frightened, selfish greedy old white men, many of whose first thought is to make themselves more powerful by imagining that women are stupid and need to be controlled.
I imagine this latter necessity comes about because they are impotent, in every imaginable definition of the word.
The DramaQueenMachine of FoxNews deserves special mention here. They are funded by corporate moochers like the Koch brothers, who want profits but don’t want to shoulder their share of the costs. Their attitude is they’re important and the rest of us are replaceable and disposable trash. Health insurance? No, you get sick, get hurt, get old, and we just replace you with another minimum wage drone, and shove the costs of your care into the hospitals, by which they mean the rest of us.
They are seasoned and provided with what appears to be intellectual rigor by the acolytes of false gods nurtured by Liberty University and Regent Law School who the God of the Old Testament would have cast straight to the pit of hell.
This toxic, noxious blend has driven off every reasonable contender. Intellectual rigor, my left foot. Intellectual rigor mortis and the thought processes of 14th century Yemeni tribesmen.
Most can’t get past the Tea Party, because many, probably including Christie, accept that government is about governing, and compromise is necessary.
Some refuse, including Mitch Daniels and I suspect Jeb Bush, for all his coyness, to subject themselves and their families to the vitriolic rants and hate from fellow Republicans during the primaries.
So what’s left? The superficially attractive lightweights like Chris Christie. His willingness to demonize and “take on” people and groups he doesn’t like feeds a Public desire to have an enemy, someone to hate, who is the cause of all the trouble and whose name is neither Christie nor John Q Voter, who elected him.
Christie turns out to be vicious bully whose record will shrivel, like his chances to be president, under any actual inspection. Power corrupts, and as governor he has amassed absolute power.
Governor Bob McDonnell aka Guv Rolex–and if there is fairness soon to become a federal prison inmate. His graft, which he actually COMMITTED, exceeds that of Gov. Blago of Illinois, who just talked about it. Blahs now inhabits a cell.
Rolex was another superficially attractive golden boy, and a graduate of God Law School, who used his position not just to enrich himself, but to shovel his moral beliefs on the rest of us.
Another Republican golden boy the governor of Louisiana. Jindal. He floated like a balloon and crashed and burned.
Rick Scott of Florida, an avatar of hate and a crook whose company paid the biggest Medicare fraud fine in history, and belongs in a federal prison. He campaigned on the promise of god, however they define it, low taxes (except not for individuals, only corporations); and (wink wink nudge nudge) getting rid of all THOSE people, by which he meant the old, sick and poor as well as most Hispanics except Marco Rubio, who were supposed to die or self deport, and African Americans, on who he has declared open season.
Marco Rubio? Pathetic empty if well tailored suit. I had hopes that he might grow into it, but he’s shown himself to be an intellectual bantam weight. He has squandered the time when he might have grown and expanded his base by catering to bigotry. Oh, and I hear he has trouble with the ladies now that he’s moved to Washington.
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