Oh Yes They Are

Appearing, as if out of nowhere, were two related articles in major conservative news the day after the third debate of all Republican presidential candidates — Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman. In the articles, conservative pundit Bill Kristol — hands clutching pearls in horror — realized something profound: that the Republican field looks and sounds crazy.

There is the concern (terror) that Texas Governor Rick Perry (homo erectus texas ignoramus) just doesn’t have what it takes (too nuts to bring to a badger hunt) to win the Republican nomination and the Presidency in 2012,  Mitt Romney’s candidacy just isn’t generating the enthusiasm in Southern states to cinch the nomination and he is now chasing after Perry even though Romney’s candidacy and nomination was presumed inevitable as “establishment favorite.” Since Perry’s entrance, Michelle Bachmann and Ron Paul, once front-runners, are barely registering a blip. Yet, instead of handing a win to the evangelical darling Mr. Perry, the winner of last week’s Florida straw poll was Herman Cain, former CEO of Godfather Pizza.

The high priests of the conventional wisdom in Punditlandia may or may not remember when and how it happened — so much for allowing conventional wisdom to dictate their perspective —  but somehow, their incredulity over the nature and response to the Republican field is a moment made for laughter. No one should be blamed for this but themselves. And unfortunately none of us are laughing. Are the republican presidential hopefuls really crazy? Oh yes they and most of their supporters are.

Reminiscent of the climax of Oscar Wilde’s Portrait of Dorian Gray, pundits’ horror of looking at the mirror is justifiable. This is what has been wrought from years of believing your own spin. Behold the creation. The trifecta of money, guns and God represent the people the conservatives courted and counted on, built up from Reagan on. The military industrial complex, corporate plutocracy and religious right wing were immensely successful in solidifying conservative Republican control under a Bush II Presidency, capping it with a Republican-dominated Congress that put in a corporatist as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and the ambition of a permanent Republican majority in the country.

Common practice in the relationship between government and big business is, whatever it is, wherever you are: you stay close to your funding source, and in all cases of government and business together as one, both parties are mutually recompensed and can wave hello to each other as neighbors. Under these circumstances is it any wonder that a fully functioning democracy may now not be necessary, and those of us who still believe in the concept of being a democracy are frustrated at the gate by lack of funds in our checking accounts needed to get through and into the gated community. But, this has been the point of the entire enterprise of the last forty years, whether Mr. Kristol wanted it or not.

So here’s a question: Why are those of us who pay taxes paying salaries for Congress to de-fund FEMA while the country is struggling from natural disasters? Why are we paying this Congress to let the world slip off the economic edge because they want to spare rich people from paying taxes on capital gains? Why are we paying for a Congressional Super-Committee to decide whether to de-fund, privatize a Social Security already paid for?

Taking down energy-saving light fixtures in Congress and reverting back to using styrofoam take-out packages in the congressional lunchroom — acts of childish nincompoopery — are probably as far as this Congress should be allowed to go — on behalf of the general public. The damage they’re doing actually trying to govern is far worse than what they’re sucking off the power grid or adding to the landfill. I am a liberal pro-public sector, pro-government, see-between-the-lines type of political blogger, but I have come to the conclusion that having Congress convene — particularly this Congress — is a supreme waste of taxpayer money.

This is what The Washington Post, The New York Times, National Review and their host of conservative beltway pundits have wrought in their cynical shilling for their friends and neighbors on C Street, J Street, and K Street — noted lobbyist neighborhoods in DC. Horrified at the atrocious lack of intelligence and public policy acumen on the Republican challenger side for the 2012 general elections? This was bought by each word written to support the dying paradigm of the Reagan religion of no new taxes and even less regulation. A nation convened under a Congress of idiots whose sole purpose is intentionally not to think while the nation is dying. We are in need of as many clear thinkers as possible on both sides of the aisle, and we have been asking for years: Who and where are they?

I’m afraid the pundits who cry for a true conservative savior for 2012 may already have what they needed and deserve — someone who will take the conservative movement so far off the rails, the movement could destroy itself in a decade. And that in and of itself is a waste and a shame. Not because I’m a closet Republican or latent conservative. I am a die-hard liberal of the FDR stripe. We need both sides of our political brain to break the deadlock that comes from being permanently pulled from both sides, each not allowing the other to move, and unfortunately, one more willing to compromise than the other.

Perhaps then it should not be the job of this Congress to move us through and out into the future, even though we’ve been paying through the nose and elsewhere for them being in office. This Congress is not capable of thinking, let alone sound thinking. The ideology entrapping them and the special interests binding them, making political points instead of actually governing in a deliberate attempt to take down the Obama White House, is killing us. If these guys were working for a company of mine to do the job I wanted them to do — to fix what needs fixing in the country — they would’ve been fired back in February.

So to Congress, Mr. Kristol, and members of the knighted punditocracy — you’ve all had your hands up your asses trying to blame Democrats and Obama for the mess foisted on us for close to forty years. You should get to know the difference between your proverbial butts and a hole in the ground. Until and unless you do, your judgment, your opinions and conventional wisdom will get the constant questioning it needs until you finally rate your credibility. I am not holding my breath. Are the people of the United States fed up with government as it is, stilted, gasping for air and a sense of some intelligent life?

Oh yes we are.