Tag: republicans

I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating

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It’s a cheap shot today and return after a long absence.

The Primaries are going on today in Virginia.  So far it looks like a par for course run; the races that are close are going to be driven by the grassroots support that is drummed up during these off-season primaries while strong incumbents and those who are historied within the wall of their respective parties will clinch their nominations with little difficulty.  That doesn’t bother me.  Shenanigans bother me, and I’ve been listening to them for months.

The purpose of the Republican Primary was to ensure that there was ‘purity’ in the selection of the candidates that were chosen last month.  There was the need for this to be ‘honest’ and ‘clear of meddling’.  Rush Limbaugh refers to these yet to materialize, and oft worried about, efforts at tampering ‘Operation Chaos’.  The gist is simple: open primaries mean that Democrats can roll in to the polling station and supposedly pick the weaker of two candidates, effectively setting up their “strong” candidate with an easy win.  If the yarn sounds familiar, it was kicked around in 2008 when McCain was winning much to the chagrin of the Republican party.  It was rolled out again in 2012 when Mitt Romney was facing supposedly impossible odds against the titanic political powers of Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachman, and (seriously?) Rick Santorum.

Therein lies the problem.  Since the end of the Primary, and the wretched result that has me wincing each morning I have to listen to John Fredericks talk about the latest train wreck of a video someone has dug up on the Virginia Lieutenant Governor nominee E.W. Jackson, the discussion has shifted from the need for purity in the selection process to encouraging our team to go out and vote during the open primaries for the other side.  Granted, there are primaries today for Republican candidates, and to those I say go nuts, have a ball.  For the Democratic candidates and races I wonder where the wagging tail ends and the dog begins.

Now, I enjoy Mr. Fredericks’ show, and have so since I discovered it on a drive to work one morning last year, but I take pause with his notion that voting in the Democrats open primary is perfectly acceptable after our party went to such great lengths to prevent such actions.  It is, of course, his choice, and he chose to exercise that, and in no way am I saying it’s bad.  I’ve met Senator Northam, at the end of election night where I was working for the team that was trying to take his seat, and found him most agreeable, articulate, and, to borrow common vernacular, very real.  As Fredericks said, and so I shall reiterate, what you see from Northam is what you get.   No, I have no problem with his selection, but I’m saying the action of voting for a democrat after you’ve selected your Republican candidate feels…awkward.  It invites analysis by others, and recognition of the inherit weakness of the primary system; any Tom, Dick, or Harry can roll into a polling station and vote for a rep from their state or district.

After the utter, pardon the following, shitcan mess that was the Republican primary in May, why on earth would we advertise, nay, encourage our huddled masses, who were terrified of the bogeyman of cross-platform voters, to go out and do the very thing we decried as fouling the process?  It is hypocritical to demand a pure representation of a party, then to encourage our team to go out and muddy the waters for the other side.  There is no honor in it.

Stars out of the eyes, I understand that, mathematically, the Republican turnout for a Democratic primary is going to be low (maybe 0.25-0.5% of the Republican voting block, so 0.10-0.35% of the overall voting block for the district), but the notion is noxious to me.  If we are going to claim moral high ground it means constant diligence.  Moral strength comes from the ability to act consistently, and in the political world consistency, if measured in gold, would be worth the national debt and a few dollars more.  Lastly, if Mr. Fredericks is going to champion the notion of selecting a candidate based on his authenticity and amicable nature in working across the aisle, maybe closing a post out by talking about the unique opportunity to take Senator Northam’s seat in a special election should probably be saved for another day.  Especially when you are reminding folks that Northam’s vote, if taken, would tip the balance to 21-19 in favor of the Republicans who, at the moment have a very, very weak candidate running for the coveted tie-breaker known as, you guessed it, the Lt. Governor of Virginia.  I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you, Mr. Fredericks, to cover yourself; your machinations are showing.

Fear is the mind killer

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It’s a quote from Dune, I highly recommend reading the books or watching the films.  Fear is the name of the game in politics anymore.  See that guy over there, he’s going to take away something valuable to you, and the only way to protect it is to vote for me.  It’s played by both sides of the aisle, and the application of fear in campaigns is well know, well documents, and flat-out nonsensical at times.

Why do I bring this up?  Fear goes both ways.  We’re afraid of the pending failure of our government to be able to pay its bills, so the President and the dutiful denizens of the left in congress roll out additional taxes and new spending to engage the economy in what could be the most over-estimated recovery that has yet to happen.

Meanwhile there is the argument from the President that the Deficit is going down (as a side now, each projected pseudo-budget that has been touted out for the last five years has been a ‘deficit-reducing’ budget) and yet we’ve tacked on $6 trillion to the national debt.  So, there’s our fear.  We’re deep in the hole and we need money.  So, how do we get this money.  We limit how much goes into Roth IRA’s.  It’s a short story put up by The Hill pointing out that the super wealthy have been squirreling away money in Roth IRAs, which they can’t touch until they’re 59 and a half without some heavy penalties, and in a desperate attempt to raise some additional coin, the government thinks that the amount of dough saved in those accounts shouldn’t exceed a specified amount.

I understand the logic.  There’s money there, and, after pouring through more pages of the IRS website than I care to do ever again, it turns out you pay an excise tax of 6% on excessive donations, and early withdrawals are taxed at rate, and then 10% more on top (again if withdrawn before you are 59 and a half).  So, in all that, there’s money.  How much money?  I’m not certain the numbers are solid, but according to the article from The Hill roughly $9 billion over the next decade.  Yup, over the next decade they’d square away 0.005% of last year’s deficit.

Solid plan there.

Nominally, it’s going to take work, and I hope to god they’re working on it because right now I don’t think it’d pay for the paper it’s being printed on.

The other side of the sword is the delivery method.  Like I said, we’re talking about fear here, and the need to make people afraid.  Why are we talking about this?  Because it’s scary.  Because the Government is going after our retirement savings, or so the Drudge Report would have you believe.

If you hit the Drudge Report over the weekend you would have seen the hyperlink to “Obama budget targets retirement accounts…”.  Rolling off the recent move by the EU to soak the owners of money laden accounts in the national bank of Cyprus, there is an expectation of the government in the United States doing something similar to ward off a fiscal boogeyman (don’t get me wrong, we have serious money problems) but to snag 40-60% of the value of all accounts that hold more than $100,000…can’t happen, won’t happen, and will break the financial system faster than the housing bubble of 2008.

Now, rank and file readers aren’t expecting this.  Most folks are pretty certain that their money is safe, and it is.  The Cyprus situation was a state run and controlled bank, we don’t have that in the US. We have a fed that feeds into banks, but those accounts are ours, and the money comes out of the hides of the bank, not out of Uncle Sam.  However, it’s still a scary thought.  It’s in red, of all colors, against all the black text.  It’s important.  It’s also inaccurate based on the text of the article linked.  Not wholly inaccurate, but omits the focus on the wealthy aspect of the donors being targeted.

So, boogeymen abound on both sides, and what do we have.  People worried that their retirement funds are now the target of a government siege on savings to slake their ever-growing thirst for funds to toss at social projects, and politicians who are offering weak tea solutions to monumental budgetary issues.  This is not a good-get.  This isn’t even a good story.  It’s about as bottom of the barrel as you can get when it comes to dialogue.  There is no genuine interest in doing what is right, just in making sure that someone is scare, and what they are hoping is that someone is you.

When the banker wants to pick up the policeman’s gun, no one is safe

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A recent story out of Seattle states that an amendment proposed for a bill that would safeguard employee passwords from being requested during job interviews, however should an internal investigation be started that protection of the employee’s private information goes right out the window.  Thankfully the provision was pulled a day later and the bill protecting potential employees from having to divulge unnecessary private information went to the floor without the excessive intrusion attached.

It’s not the first time an amendment/ provision/bill like this has been introduced, nor will it be the last.  The horrifying part of the story is not so much the provision, but the intention of the representative who added it (quote from The Columbian story linked above):

On Wednesday, House Labor and Workforce Development Committee chair Rep. Mike Sells withdrew the amendment. He had introduced it at the behest of business groups, who say the original bill would open an avenue for possible illegal activity by employees, such as divulging proprietary or consumer information to outsiders.

The fear by business groups who were concerned that this would open up an avenue for possible illegal activity apparently forgot that should illegal activity occur there is a process by which they contact the police and then the proper law enforcement agencies, who are trained and the only bodies by law who can do this, SUBMIT A WARRANT for the personal information directly to the site in question.

I respect a need for businesses to protect their trade secrets, yet it seems that Apple’s latest iPhone doesn’t so much show up on an employee’s news feed or blog spot, rather in a bar after they’ve had one too many.  If there is potential theft of intellectual property, embezzlement, or or other such criminal activity going on, my first advice to a business owner would be to get the police involved (i.e. get the folks whose job it is to sort this kind of thing out) rather than trying to play cowboy and find it on their own.  The process, should it have proceeded, would have been, as privacy advocated pointed out, rife for abuse, and could lead to lawsuits from employees should other private information be divulged to a company who has not right or reason for having said information.

Lastly, to the state and federal representatives of the nation.  Take a moment to think on this matter when it comes to you.  Realize that anyone looking to pick up a duty of law enforcement must be addressed with great care and skepticism.  Any effort by a business to take on a responsibility or to take an action that would circumvent the law of due process, those pesky warrants that police need in criminal investigations, needs to be shuffled off, and documented for public consumption.  These business leaders should be named, and their organizations chastised by the public, but I feel comfortable in saying that none of the barking voices that decry the vices, real and imaginary, of the government will raise a word against the corporate sector.

Simply because people work for a company does not mean that they are to have access to every nook and cranny of their employees lives.  If we as a political body fear the encroachment of a nebulous, faceless monstrosity trying to worm its way into every aspect of our lives, why should we treat the businesses who are not restrained by the rules of our Constitution with less caution than the government which we can control?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

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A curious note was passed my way regarding a recent court decision to prohibit the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors from holding a pre-meeting prayer that included the name Jesus.  Couple that with the knee-jerk reaction from some state representatives in North Carolina who submitted a resolution to establish a state religion, and it’s another spin on the ‘religious freedom’ movement.

Going back to Virgina first, The article regarding the court decision can be found here and the ACLU has it’s own take here.  In short, the County Board of Supervisors had deviated from the religious neutral prayer that most government organizations insist upon at the beginning of meetings for a clearly identifiable Christian one.  This raised the hackles of one Mrs. Barbara Hudson, and she informed the Board that what they were doing was unconstitutional…which it is.  The board more or less told her to shove off, and, true to form, the ACLU became involved.  Mediation failed, and ‘lo the Judiciary is brought in to lay the smack down.

A similar incident occurred in North Carolina, in the district the that is represented by the state congressman that presented the resolution.  The judicial response to the prayer is what inspired these two representatives, one of which wears the tea party badge with honor, to file this amazingly unconstitutional piece of legislation.

The ground level I’m getting to is this: They were informed that it was unconstitutional, and when informed of such they didn’t bother to research their position nor did they take it under consideration.  They blew the challenge off for self-indignant or self-righteous reasons, failed to come to a compromise in court mandated mediation (a simple acquiescence would have sufficed), and in the end cost the taxpayers significant time and energy better spent addressing the issues of their respective county as well as the thousands, if not millions, of dollars in legal fees that will be assessed after the dust has finally settled.

The need, not desire but flat-out need, to invoke God at public government events also makes me wonder, as I have many times before, about the personal relationship with God that the believers are suppose to have, but seem very eager to show off in public.  My understanding was that it was a deeply personal, one-on-one kind of relationship.  One that cannot be impressed upon by the government, and, through that same clause, cannot be impressed upon others.

The comments on other articles claiming this is another attack on religious freedom by the Judiciary, the resolution goes on to itemize how these decisions are just that, but here’s the thing; the government, any government beholden to the Constitution of the United States America, cannot endorse any religion. The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution overrides state Constitutions and local legislatures.  Its not an attack on religion when those affected are asking that the rules that apply to the situation be enforced accordingly.  Somewhere along the line those who are pushing for “religious freedom” forgot what it was about.

The Representatives from North Carolina, short on civics lessons or long on sleeping in class, fail to realize that the federal government does have a say in what the states do.  The power of the states lies in their people and the states capacity to represent themselves at the federal level.  They rage about judicial oversight with regards to these, and many other social matters (and religion is a social matter), but fail to recall that the legislative, executive, and judicial branches are to balance each other.  Should the legislative, or we’ll say the most representative body of the electorate, get a wild hair up it’s ass, it is up to the Judiciary (since the executive cannot directly interfere on state affairs) to apply the law as it is interpreted.

Does that mean that the “majority” might get a black eye supporting specific causes, yes.  I’d point to school integration, inter-racial marriage, interstate commerce, property rights, voting rights, freedom of speech, and several thousand other decisions made by the Judicial branch that have in some respects hindered the majority from being a collective dick to a select group of people, but also protecting the body politic from those in both the state and federal realms from doing long-lasting harm.

There isn’t a gun being held to their heads saying that they must worship Allah, Amaterasu, or Cthulhu because there are explicit protections prohibiting the government from enforcing a state religion. That protection, however, does not guarantee that a specific religion will remain in the majority over the existence of a nation, or that the majority religion receives any special privileges or protections because it has the most, or most influential, followers.  It appears that those that normally decry religious freedom forget that the government is designed to protect not only those practicing a religion from government interference, but also to protect those of us who don’t share their beliefs from being steamrolled by the them.

The ever growing elephant in the room

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What is $474.15 Billion dollars?

The fiscal cliff looms in the distance like a funnel cloud on the hard-packed plains of Texas.  The key difference is we can avoid that wicked looking mess coming our way.  Functionally, this is a historic opportunity, wrapped in gilt and handed to the parties with the same bows and trappings of the holiday preceding the impending fluster cluck that is about to go down.  That gift; a moment to finally stop bullshitting and come together to get this nation on a path to a balanced budget, an aim at reducing the national debt, and reigning in the last decade and change of madcap spending that has gone on.

Those hoping for this know better.  The only thing we, the American public, will get out of this deal is coal in our stockings which will be summarily taken away because it is neither green nor ours to use as an energy resource.

The New York Times has a fantastic Infographic available to the public where you can see firsthand what grew, what shrank, and what is owed to who and where.  I will be frank, if the President or Congress is serious about cutting the deficit and balancing the budget then all the programs they swore to protect must share in some of the bloodletting.

Medicare and Medicaid account for nearly one-third of the budget by itself.  Toss Social Security into the mix and over half the budget is consumed by these two programs alone.  Defense spending.  It rings in, for the first time, lower than the cost of Social Security, and is quickly being outpaced by the interest on the national debt.

This brings me to my beginning question; what is $474.15 billion dollars?  That number is what is owed in interest on the national debt.

It is staggering to look at, and,  mind you, that is the interest.  Not some credit card minimum where part of what you pay hits the principle and we will ever so slowly knock it down.  Nay good reader, this is pure interest without a dime set to the principle.  I’ll be honest, that would be the first number I would be set to tackle for that number will be what kills us.

If the President’s moratorium on discretionary spending (which would freeze the large majority of defense spending but leave social security and Medicare/Medicaid alone) goes through then we’ve only slowed the train down, but it will chug along.  Mayhaps you can knock out some of that principle.  Hold back the rising tides, but the moratorium cannot last forever, and if it is not adapted to, the glut of costs that will come cascading down and crush any gains made.

So, while our elected officials piddle away the hours playing games of imaginary chicken and peek-a-boo with the press, handing out reports of  “nothing to see here” we are getting buried.  The interest grows, and will eclipse the costs of social security and Medicare/Medicaid if left untouched, all the while pledges are being made to not raise taxes on anyone and no programs will be cut.  Looking at the reality on paper/webpage and listening to the news brings two conclusions to mind.  Either those in power want this world to burn for the sake of petty feuds and broken ideologies, or they are, much to our chagrin, monumentally clueless as to what they have brought down upon all of us.  It will come to a day when that cost, just to cover the interest being made on the debt, will choke us out, and we will be forced to cut to maintain or default.  Best to do them now, with flexibility and foresight on our side than a later time when we must cut because there is no other option.  When a monthly social security check is short $21 a month for living expenses versus hundreds of dollars short because there isn’t any money left to paid those who are owed.  Petty promises and pledges won’t mean a damn thing then, and, to be frank, shouldn’t mean a damn thing now.

Stop frothing at the mouth for a moment and realize the long game moments

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My stomach fell out when the decision on Thursday rolled down.  I was a staunch believer that any variation of the individual mandate was a legal faux pa and had to be struck down.  Then I read the Roberts decision and was illuminated to an entirely new way of operating in the government.  I was seeing, for the first time, not a decision based on party politics or personal interest.  No, I saw a straight out of myth ruling based on pure constitutional reasoning. Okay, there may have been some political wranglings in there, and I am thrilled that other pundits and writers like Michael Medved and Paul Begala were quick to point out the true victory for Republicans in the bill.

At the root of the Roberts decisions, aside from defining the mandate as a tax and throwing the life of the bill back into the hands of Congress which may very well fall into Republican hands in November, there was this little gem:

2. CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS concluded in Part III–A that the individual mandate is not a valid exercise of Congress’s power under the
Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. Pp. 16–30.
(a) The Constitution grants Congress the power to “regulate Commerce.” Art. I, §8, cl. 3 (emphasis added). The power to regulate commerce presupposes the existence of commercial activity to be regulated. This Court’s precedent reflects this understanding: As expansive as this Court’s cases construing the scope of the commerce power have been, they uniformly describe the power as reaching “activity.” E.g., United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549, 560. The individual mandate, however, does not regulate existing commercial activity. It instead compels individuals to become active in commerce by
purchasing a product, on the ground that their failure to do so affects interstate commerce. (link)

Roberts effectively stopped the government from mandating that a lack of participation in a specific filed of commerce amounted to having a direct impact on interstate commerce.  In writing the decision this way he took the congressional, and largely Democratic, insistence to tell Americans what to do with their money, even when they are not spending it, and locked it away in that nasty little box known as ‘unconstitutional’.

Labeling the mandate as a tax was something the President was specific about avoiding during the creation and vote on the bill.  Even after it was enacted they President and Democratic members of congress were adamant that it was not a tax, but when they went to the line the only legal way to argue it, and to save any resemblance of the mandate, was to label it just that. However, in doing so it lost that shiny aspect of a social program that could be administered by an Executive Branch organization, and was put back in the hands of Congress.

Lastly, there is the matter of the tax itself.  I’ve seen the posts on social websites and heard my conservative friends gnash their teeth and scream to the heavens about how individual liberty is dead, how freedom is no longer found in the United States, and I chuckle.  The issue will be revised. CNN pointed out, not 30 minutes after the decision was made, that the tax can only be challenged, by law, after it has gone into effect.  That means in January of 2014, the first year the penalties, excuse me, Taxes are in place, there will be another lawsuit, another challenge, and another Supreme Court decision,

Chief Justice Roberts looked to the future on this decision, and he ruled, not as a conservative or a liberal, but as any judge should.  He put the balls back in their respective courts, taking the power to create taxes away from the executive and giving it back to the legislative, and told the nation that the President would not be playing with that ball anymore.  At least, not in that capacity.

UPDATE: A site I frequently visit (www.neveryetmelted.com) has a fantastic article on this and links to several other articles.  I’d strongly recommend bookmarking it if you get a chance.

Sanity reigns in the Old Dominion but it isn’t stopping the show

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On Friday a highly anticipated decision regarding the appearance of Primary candidates who couldn’t muster enough support to be placed on the Virginia ballot came down, and it was an absolute delight.   The Hon. John A Gibney Jr. echoed what many had said over the weeks leading up to this (copy of the decision provided care of Politico): “In essence, they played the game, lost and then complained that the rules were unfair.”

I saw former Speaker of the House New Gingrich as being the sole individual who might even have a modicum of a chance in the challenge, with the disparate rules regarding those who get over 10,000 signatures and those who get over 15,000 signatures.  So, when he didn’t file the suit, and it was Rick “I barely pulled off half of what was required” Perry, it was doomed to fail.  When Santorum and Huntsman jumped on board, it was an obvious grab, like those who aren’t directly affected by a particular event, but jump onto a civil lawsuit pocket some ill-gotten reward, the theatre of the situation only worsened. The most galling of notes, aside from the Huntsman/Santorm scam attempt, was that Gingrich did not file  notice of intent to run for office in Virginia until 22 December 2011.  For those unaware, signature collection began on 1 July 2011.

The argument that if the candidates had access to the horde of out-of-state petition gatherers (of the paid variety I imagine) that they would have easily trumped the 10,000 signature requirement is dubious at best.  Judge Gibney pointed out in his decision that there are over five million registered voters in Virginia, and close to two million participated in the last statewide election.  Cut down the middle that means that there were one million active voters that should have been available to had their doors knocked and said yes or no.  If all candidates had hit those doors, and assuming a one in ten chance of success, that still leaves roughly 100,000 voter signatures, more than enough for all of the candidates combined, and room for a few more.  Another point of disclosure, a registered voter can sign for more than one candidate.

I will give a local example to ply exactly how poorly these men failed: Ben Loyola, a local businessman, ran for State Senate last year.  During his campaign he is said to have knocked on over 50,000 doors personally.  After the campaign events were done for the night, barring it wasn’t too late, he along with his campaign manager and body man would head out to a section of the district he was running for and started on a block, and away he would go.  Sometimes only 20 houses in a night, sometimes north of 100.  Either way, he was on the ground personally.  Come election day Mr. Loyola, sadly, did not win, but pulled in over 10,000 votes.  Those in the game have said the door to actual vote ration is somewhere in the 10:1 range.  If a local businessman can walk from the Hampton Roads area to the border of Maryland looking for support on what would be even less than a shoe-string budget compared to a national campaign, then all of these individuals running for President could have gotten the word out, or, at the least, made a damn appearance in the state.  A Gingrich event at a park, cordinated with one of the Tea Party organizations would have brought hundred, mayhaps a few thousand.

What happened in earnest, is that the candidate didn’t put their foot forward, and in the case of Santorum and Huntsman, they flatly didn’t give a damn (Santorum did gather signatures, but since he never filed a notice to run in the state of Virginia, the signatures were turned away).  Those in Virginia now roaring to the Heavens about the intolerable nature of it all, and the vile laws that govern the way it goes have forgotten that their signature and their options on the ballot are driven not only by their keen interest in a candidate, but in the candidate’s campaign to do the bare minimum.  Santorum is a perfect example with the  thousands spent in Virginia to gather the roughly 8,000 signatures, then to have them turned away because he didn’t fill out the needed paperwork.  He, himself, and his campaign managers, national and Virginia, are bearers of  blame there.

Virginia is not some evil society of string-pulling puppeteers winnowing the field of choices down to the guy they kinda-don’t-like and the one that is getting run over because he sounds crazy saying in public what we’ve been chatting about over kitchen tables for the last twenty years.  The law is in place, followed for decades, and performed as intended.  Should someone fail to follow the letter of the law, there is a punishment that goes along with that.  Those who cannot even follow that simple dictum have no place running for the highest office in the land.  If they can’t figure out one state’s requirements for a simple primary petition, how can we have any faith that they will be able to grasp the issue then  provide educated insight and leadership on topics far, far more complex?

Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves…

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We’ve now seen the full Circus.  The major players have performed their acts.  The clowns are in their car puttering off the floor, the rings are thoroughly beaten down with the prints of every elephant contending for the spotlight, and the audience is just as confused and disoriented than they were upon entering the tent.  Tragic, is it not, how easily the pageantry and absurdity of the circus reflects the ebb and tide of the pre-primary seasons for the Republican party.

What we saw was a rise of individual stars who would burn out as quickly as they blazed into the spotlight leaving behind only hollow bodies in the vast expanse of the political space.  Like those burned out stars, they leave husks that either disappear with time, or continue to flicker on, acting more as an irritant or pouring out continuous drivel and noxious commentary that provides nothing more to the current political discourse than a nauseating reminder that at one point a significant number of people believed them capable of winning an election for President.

No, this thirteen ring circus has done nothing for our party, and it surely has done no good for the political process.  A fellow follower of politics stated that he believed this was a maturing of the party’s political savvy.  A method by which the body politic separated the wheat from the chaff and would winnow our candidates down to those most deserving.  I wanted to agree with him, but I had the feeling that this was too “celebrity” with the likes of Palin and Trump toting about the ever ambiguous hash of a campaign not yet announced.

I, along with a goodly number of people, look back and realize that it wasn’t about winnowing the wheat from the chaff.  The process was not about locating the best candidate, nor was it about finding the best Republican to run.  There was an ebb and flow to the entire affair.  Someone came in, shined brighter because the harsh spotlight was on someone else, and they, by lack of close scrutiny, became the best candidate for the job by proxy.  The light would shift, the audience would become enthralled with the new champion of the right, and so the cycle began anew.  It was faddish in the most derogatory form of the word.  The herd ran where the press led with signs highlighting word choice and bold, but ultimately mindless, plans.  Catchphrases replaced worldly experience, education on policy trumped by showmanship, and knee-jerk responses became the headlines rather than the cultured response of, not those who happened to read the paper from the day before, but from those who had done this sort of thing before.

The most sickening part of the show comes from two sad players in the run of any show.  There is a director, an individual who through instruction and cultivation of his actors has created the spectacle before you.  In this sad and sallow case we happen to have two on hand.  The litany of Tea Parties and the surprisingly quiet Republican National Committee.

The Tea Party has rushed to the center of the ring as a barker possessed of a need to upstage the existing ringmaster.  It has become a monumentally disastrous initiative that has done little more than chisel away at a what little firmament there was in the base of the party.  All the while the RNC, the chosen ringmaster of this show for nigh on decades now sits somberly by, not wishing to interfere or to interject itself into state level politics, having been burned or spurned by those groups in the last round of elections.  The rally cry and subsequent victories of the tea party in the public eye shocked the RNC into a sort of fugue state that now threatens to undermine the organization as a whole.

We have one ringmaster who has a faint idea of what they are doing and another who appears to be asleep at the wheel, and one wonders why the field has yet to be winnowed down.  I understand that are arguments to the effect that the voters must decide who is the most viable candidate, and to those arguments I will concur wholeheartedly, but that only applies if the voters are willing to decide.  The day of the primaries is not the time to hop into a booth and play enie-menie-minie-mo with the candidate pictures on the touch screen.  If they have been weighed and measured then the truest test comes when asking if they are found wanting.  Only when the audience decides to boo one of the shows off the stage will the ringmasters even begin to pay attention.  Then, and maybe then we will see some serious discussions.  The time for debate is, sadly, over, and now we are to march out of the tent and to the polls to decide which elephant danced the best in the center ring.  To wait for one of the performers to be shamed off stage out of their own self-interest rather than because the audience finds them unfit is a horrifying indications of how desperate the voter base is to hang on to an idol no matter how temporary.

Should we ever reach the conclusion that none of the candidates could put on a noteworthy performance and were being held up by gross expectations of the biggest player in this entire farce we are well and truly lost because “a good try” will guarantee a failure in 2012.