The Gay Republican #3 - Romney's Poll

Like a good American, I voted this Super Duper Tuesday. And like a good Republican, I voted early, by absentee ballot. The forty-one cents that it cost in first class postage was a cheap price to pay not to have to stand in line at a polling place, thinking “This is southern California; I bet I’m the only human in this room with enough brains to assemble a political thought other than ‘Fuck Bush.’”

This article won’t be posted for your consumption, dear reader, until (probably) Thursday, so its contents will hold sway over precisely nobody’s voting decision. But a news graphic in today’s Daily News provided some consolation; it announced that in Los Angeles County there are about 1.9 million registered Democrat voters and about 1.0 million Republicans. Consider as well the fact that the California Republican Party holds a closed primary, meaning that only registered Republicans can vote for the Republican nominee. Add to those two facts a third: the likely audience for this narrative’s venue is young, tattooed, and doesn’t have a 401(k). I think you’ll agree that even if this article had been published on Saturday, its effectiveness as a conservative electoral influence would still roughly equate to the effectiveness of a banner ad for Jim Cramer’s Mad Money on TheHungerSite.com!

(Aside: TheHungerSite.com is a gleaming illustration of the vapidity of liberalism. You go to the site, click a button, and it tells you that you just donated “a cup of food” to feed the hungry.
Really? My mouse click did that? Obviously not, but it makes the clicker feel as though his sheer “caring” made a difference. So you make your non-sacrifice, and you receive a belly full of happy feelings in return. Maybe tomorrow you’ll buy a TerraPass for your car; if you’re simple-minded enough to believe that your mouse-click fed a starving Ethiopian, then you’ll probably also swallow the idea that you can assuage your car-driving eco-guilt for a year by paying somebody on the other side of the planet $60 to reduce his carbon emissions accordingly.)

Rather than dance around it, I’ll just come out with it: I like Mitt Romney….

I have throughout the race. He’s a handsome, intelligent, well-spoken former Governor, who enjoyed fabulous success governing a state where his traditional Mormon roots put him at odds with a very liberal population. He implemented a universal health care system in Massachusetts that precludes (further) government bloat. (It works like car insurance: If you live in Mass, then you must carry health insurance. And if your employer doesn’t provide it and you can’t afford it, then the state will assist in paying for it.) Also, Romney has a track record of enviable business acumen, which would be well put to use helping our nation excel in a global economy.
And as if that’s not enough, he has five HOT sons. Have you seen those boys? Ben, Craig, Josh, Matt, and Tagg.

Gleaming, clean, pure-bred, Latter-Day fetish objects; the whole lot. If you figure that about 10% of the population is gay, then the odds of at least one of those boys being light in the loafers is about 41%. (If you’re scratching your head about where that number came from, stop reading this article immediately and go donate a cup of food at The Hunger Site.)

If Craig Romney ends up being the Mary of the group, I call “dibs!”

Anyway, Mitt Romney is the only viable conservative left in the race, so he’s my guy. I was leaning toward Fred Thompson for a bit, but he’s gone. I think that a Romney-Giuliani ticket would blow away either Hillary or Obama (or both) so that’s what I’m hoping for. At press time (figuratively speaking) the California polls have not closed yet, but Mitt Romney seems to be leading.

Other states however, as I see them on CNN.com right now, aren’t looking so good for Mitt.

The American press (with the glaring exception of right-wing talk radio) is audibly salivating over the possibility of Senator Lockjaw McCain being the Republican nominee. And by the look of things, their odds are improving by the day. My question is this:

What’s his appeal? To the Republican Party base, I mean. What does he offer us?

The Hanoi Hilton thing? Is that it? Enduring enemy torture might earn you a medal of honor, but it’s not the criteria we use to select our leaders.

I get the sense from what little TV news I see that there’s a common sentiment among voters that it’s John McCain’s “turn”. The nomination contest in 2000 was a close one (not really - he withdrew in March of 2000 - but people seem to remember it that way) and it was an ugly one and McCain has paid his dues and now it’s 2008 and it’s McCain’s turn.
This, to me, is the wildest imaginable perversion of electoral fundamentals.

Elections aren’t about the “rights” of the candidates! Elections are about the “rights” of the electorate. John McCain’s “my turn!” claim on the 2008 Republican nomination is about as valid as my claim on Craig Romney’s nipples.

My real problem with McCain though is simply the inverse of my affinity for Mitt Romney. McCain isn’t a conservative. His modus operandi is all pragmatism and no principle. If it’s politically expedient to oppose tax cuts or propose campaign contribution limits or nominate liberal judges, he’ll do it. And the press loves him for it, granting him fawning interviews and referring to him as a “maverick”, which only reinforces his bad behavior. The next time Katie Couric or Christiane Amanpour offer to lionize him for kneeing his Republican base squarely in the groin, he’ll do it again.

Strangely (or perhaps not) the reason McCain seems to be doing so well in the Republican primaries is that non-Republicans are voting for him. McCain has yet to win a majority, or even a plurality, of the conservative base Republican vote in any primary so far, with the shady exception of Florida. Romney gets those votes. McCain gets his support from independents and Democrats who ask for Republican ballots at the polls (see: South Carolina). This is a twist that makes me wonder why any of the state parties – Republican or Democrat – would allow non-members to help pick their nominees. Some think that it’s a clever idea, that sacrificing party self-determination will result in a more moderate candidate who will therefore be more “electable.” I, however, beg to differ. And I offer a counter-intuitive observation: Electability does not win elections.

Exhibit A: John Kerry.

Ronald Reagan defined conservatism as a three-legged stool; the three legs being fiscal policy, foreign policy, and social policy. Mitt Romney may have gone through his evolutions, but he seems to sit solidly on all three legs of the conservative stool. John McCain, on the other hand, seems to occupy all, any, or none, from day to day, depending on his mood (or perhaps his pollsters).

Conservatives – even moderate ones – had better wise up and start seeing through John McCain’s folksy “straight talk” myth, or else we’re all going to wind up having our conservative stool pushed in.

And not in a good way!

Whirled News Tonight - Illinois Presidential Primary Yields Surprises

February 5, 2008 (CHICAGO) —Results from the Illinois presidential primary have surprised pollsters and political pundits alike. On the Republican side, a runaway upset victory for Generalissimo Francisco Franco left observers scrambling for explanations. “It looks as if the majority of Republican voters have had enough of all this talk about change and have decided to cast their votes for the only candidate who promised no change at all,” said one observer. “In passing over John McCain and Mitt Romney, voters have clearly signaled that they want to stay with a candidate who combines the sentience of Ronald Reagan and the policies of George W. Bush.”

In the days leading up the election, the Generalissimo outflanked his opponents on two key issues. Hammering home his views on immigration by pointing out that the Spanish Civil War insurgency was largely composed of illegal immigrants, the Generalissimo thundered, “Never again must we let the democracy our party overthrew fall back into the hands of counterrevolutionaries who do not even speak our language.” The Generalissimo also took the steam out of his opponents’ proposals to jumpstart the troubled economy. “Our economy is muy bueno,” insisted the Generalissimo, who adapted a phrase recalling the heyday of the United States economy. “What is good for General Franco is good for the country,” he said.

Leading Republican contenders promptly accused Franco of dirty campaigning. “In the days before the election, thousands of Illinois voters received a mailing referring to me as the Mormon Jabber-wacko Liar,” complained Romney. John McCain also complained about a mass anonymous mailing pointing out that he would be the oldest elected President in the history of the country. “Generalissimo Franco himself ran his country quite competently while in a coma on his deathbed for almost a year,” said McCain, “and I intend to do the same.”

The Illinois Democrat primary also yielded a surprise. With 98 percent of the votes tallied, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were in an exact tie, not just in percentages but in raw numbers. “Apparently voters could not make up their minds whether to vote for the candidate of grand pronouncements and half-way measures or the candidate of bland pronouncements and half-way measures,” said an observer.

The Gay Republican #2 - Washington Goes Wild

I got an email this weekend from my friend Sue. Yes, that’s her name.

It was a forwarded email; a “résumé” for George W. Bush… comprised of his ostensible embarrassments, offenses, and failures - personal as well as professional; some real, some fictional. Reeked like it was composed by some moveon.org axe wound who spends his evenings writing “Draft Al Gore!” blog comments on the Daily Kos from his parents’ basement.

I replied to Sue simply, “What made you think that I’d enjoy this?”

I’m well aware that I hold unpopular opinions within my demographic, given my identity and my location. Irreconcilable (and unignorable) political differences have played at least a partial role in the demise of three serious relationships. (I just can’t imagine one day raising little ankle-biters with a husband who would want them to mature into shit-eating Socialists.) But while the constant “dull roar of blue-state,” Los Angeles, has yet to persuade me to genuflect at the alters of socialized medicine and anthropogenic climate change guilt, it has reinforced the message of the Golden Rule.

I have a personal policy against needling people. I love an honest and feisty argument, but I think twice before spewing unprovoked personal antagonism. I didn’t always have this policy, and I’m not perfect about following it, but I’m pretty damn good. It’s a karmic thing, I suppose; I didn’t call my lefty friends to say “neener neener” after the 2004 election, and I expected the same from them in 2006.

My conversation with you though, dear reader, is not a personal one, so I’ll spew whatever vitriol in this space I please.

This week I have some!

Like any respectable citizen, I watched the State of the Union address on Monday night.
Bush did pretty well, I thought, stumbling over only a handful of words here and there, and proposing only minimal new discretionary spending.

The interesting part of the Address, however, as with any stage show (such as the Oscars), was the people-watching.

I noticed Barack Obama seated next to Ted Kennedy. They strike the eye as terribly odd bedfellows, but I imagine that Barack would be feeling pretty chummy with Teddy right about now, having just picked up his endorsement for President this week. Another small victory for Obama’s campaign of “hope”. (“Hope” for what exactly, I’m still not sure, but it’s easier to stretch a vacuous speech into an hour if the theme is “hope” rather than “Quaaludes”.)

It’s a perilous endorsement, of course, and I’m not even referring to the fact that it pokes the Clinton machine squarely in the eye. No, above and beyond that bridge burned, Ted Kennedy’s brave hop into Obama’s “Hope” camp will likely draw him the ire of the vast and dangerous “anti-Hope” crowd. God bless your political courage, you pudgy grey drunk. For your next act of maverick defiance, you and your friend from Illinois might try introducing a Senate Resolution endorsing Pounds, Miles, and Gallons; thereby pissing off the well-heeled and influential Metric System lobby.

Another word on Ted: When Bush proposed fortifying the No Child Left Behind act, Senator Kennedy simply sat and maintained his inebriated scowl. Does the phony bastard think we have no memory? He co-wrote NCLB! How can you not applaud it when the President is complimenting its results??

On the topic of the ladies, Condoleezza Rice looked fabulous as always. Hillary Clinton I don’t have much to say about, except that that number she was wearing looked to be the same shade of red as Laura Bush’s lipstick.

The real story of the State of the Union, of course, doesn’t break until Good Morning America the following day, so that the President’s message can be diluted with pundit spin. I don’t watch GMA (or Today or The Early Show or American Morning), but no doubt it was laced with snippets from Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius’s Democrat response. Which actually started off somewhat inspirational (if stilted) but rapidly decomposed into lame entreaties for Bush to drop his mean-spirited, right-wing agenda, and reach across the aisle to help the Democrats implement their well-intentioned (read: half-baked) plans.

This brings me to my central frustration with Washington. It’s not that there’s too much fighting. It’s not that there’s too much special interest money. It’s not even that Kool-Aid drinkers like Dennis Kucinich don’t have to pass a sanity screening before serving in office.
It’s that the people in Washington act as though they’re putting on a stage production for an audience comprised exclusively of nitwits. Seriously, dear Reader, don’t you get sick of all the puppet shows and window dressing?

The nauseatingly overused stock phrases, like “my opponent was for blahblahblah before he was against it”. Wow. Original. The endless anecdotal parade of victims to tug at your heartstrings, like the Eskimo Girl a few weeks back who broke down into tears before Congress because Global Warming (she claimed) had melted some Alaskan snow. Please. The flat-falling, decidedly unclever turns of phrase that they use to try to appeal to the baser forms of human cognition. I heard one fat suit comment to Bush after his Address, in reference to his tax rebate plan, “How can you give a rebate to folks who didn’t throw in any bait in the first place?” So goddamn lame. The fact that I agree completely with his sentiment doesn’t diminish my desire to crush his nuts with a pair of pliers.

The press, I might add, makes this lamentable state of affairs even worse; packing their news reports with “dispassionate” pedantic analysis of this political bilge. And then presenting it as though they and their viewers alone can see above the fray, and ergo can busy themselves with the higher pursuit of wondering how the D.C. circus show might be swaying the opinions of the great unwashed. I can just hear it on “Face the Nation”: “For analysis, we turn now to our South Carolina political correspondent, Wilford Brimley. Will, how do you think Mike Huckabee’s threat that terrorists ‘will see the gates of hell’ might play with Evangelicals?”

!The posturing, the pontification; it’s all so sickeningly formulaic. It’s like
watching “Small Wonder” or “Step by Step”, but without the wholesomeness r the humor. The next politician to call for “a return to civility in Washington” deserves to get capped. Somebody throw a fucking punch