GOP 2012

The GOP debates are starting to feel like media enhanced waterboarding. If they go on much longer, I can see myself in the not-too-distant future screaming, “Stop! Stop! I’ll tell you anything you want, just call off Bachmann, Cain and Company!”

On the other hand, I have to grant that the torture has helped reveal the candidates’ characters and personal quirks. They haven’t really clarified much about policy differences, though, since all of the Republican candidates are slavish followers of the same handful of principles:

1. Barack Obama is unworthy to be president because he is (choose all that apply): socialistic, Muslim, Kenyan, wrong about EVERYthing, just plain evil.

2. “Obamacare” is a communist scheme designed to deprive us of all our customary liberties.

3. The government is the enemy of freedom. Only when we shrink the government and let Goldman Sachs, BP, ExxonMobil, R.J.Reynolds, and so on be themselves, will we be free once more.

4. The money we pay in taxes to the (evil, alien) government never does us any good (except when it pays for bombs to drop on Middle Eastern people).*

5. The economy was in great shape until Obama ruined it.

6. Abortion is murder and so are many forms of birth control. And so is Obamacare.

7. Ronald Reagan descended from Heaven to lead us to the Promised Land and if we keep saying his name over and over, we may get there yet.














But back to the candidates’ characters: for starters, Michele Bachmann is just plain dumb. Admittedly she does have a kind of cleverness, the kind that enables you to say things that appeal to the grossly ignorant, i.e., her base. But this won’t save her. What's truly amazing is that Bachmann believes that she can be president, even though she understands less about the world than a bright fifth grader does. How dumb is that?

Rick Perry, ditto. Although, to his credit, he seems to have proven that you can be Governor of Texas while understanding less about the world than a bright fifth grader does. Hmmm.


Herman Cain. Wow. The fact that he still commands a respectable following says something about the human capacity for self-deception. The self-deception I’m talking about is that of his followers, not Cain himself, who, I believe, knows what he did vis-à-vis the women who have complained about him. OK, there has been no trial, but the evidence made public so far, and his ever-changing explanations, are compelling enough that only an absolutely self-deluded fan could believe his claims of innocence. If he were to get on the GOP ticket (very, very unlikely), we could look forward to the pleasure of him on the campaign trail saying “I did not have sex with that woman. Or that one. Or that one either. Nor those two. Nor…”

Ron Paul, Mr. Ten Percent, has the most devoted coterie of followers in the GOP. I wish his unique foreign policy ideas could get more play in the media, but his economic notions are just as doctrinaire and irrational as those of his fellow Republicans. Like them, he claims that he wants to shrink government and thereby give Americans more freedom; he doesn't seem to understand, however, that the ones who will fill the power vacuum if our government is weakened will be those very undemocratic institutions that control the nation’s wealth: e.g., ExxonMobil, Citigroup, etc.

Newt Gingrich is, for me, the scariest of all the GOP candidates. He’s an intelligent man, but one who seems to think ethics are for wimps. I won’t take the time to go further into details about him here, but whenever I hear Gingrich’s words, I’m reminded of what Lily Tomlin once said: “No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.”

Not with Newt, anyway.

Which brings us to John Huntsman, a smart and seemingly decent guy. He doesn’t have a chance.

Mitt Romney is almost certain to get the nomination. He does have problems, many of which stem from his having run for governor on a reasonable platform in Massachusetts, but now having to back away from its most sane principles in order to conform to the right-wing nuttiness that dominates the GOP primaries. This makes him look like a champion flip-flopper, a problem he could have avoided had he been smart enough to start his career in, say, Mississippi or Oklahoma, where right-wing nuttiness is the equivalent of comfort food.

Assuming Romney does get the nomination, he’s going to have to pick a right-winger for his running mate in order to secure the GOP base. He certainly will not pick Bachmann, Perry, or Cain, which means he just might go for Gingrich. Is America ready for such a ticket? A classical stuffed shirt that spins this way and that in the wind, backed up by a conniving schemer of Nixonian proportions? Time will tell.









Suburban Americana











*Ron Paul gets a pass on this parenthetic clause, which is probably why Republican voters aren’t going for him.

Beware Oprah

We Americans have a constitutionally guaranteed right to our own beliefs no matter how loony they may be. If we want to believe that God flooded the entire world and annihilated humanity because he thought we had a tad too much attitude, we can.

But what about our right to subject everyone else to our own belief system? There doesn’t seem to be such a right, at least not according to the American Constitution as I remember it. However, don’t try telling that to the leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation or NAR.

Last Wednesday on NPR’s Fresh Air, Terry Gross spoke to Rachel Tabachnick, a researcher who has been looking into the NAR and finding some surprising things. For starters, the NAR folks are hard-core fundamentalists. Really hard-core. They make ordinary fundamentalists look like a bunch of abortion-loving sissies.

According to Tabachnick, the NAR guys believe in Dominionism, which is the idea that it is their duty to take over government, business, education and all other major institutions in order to help bring about the End Days. According to them, these institutions, as of now, are under the control of demons. Yes, demons.

Obviously, most of us do not believe that demons are running everything. So far, all they seem to control are Goldman Sachs and some of the other major investment banks and corporations. But are we to believe they also control the Red Cross? Our public schools? The University of North Carolina? Duke? (Well, maybe Duke).

Are we to believe that Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood is controlled by demons? Most Americans, I’m guessing, would agree that the NAR is overestimating the extent of demon control here.






They're Everywhere!
(According to the NAR)







The NAR sometimes gets quite personal about its accusations. They believe, Tabachnick says, not only that gay people are controlled by “demonic spirits,” but that “Oprah Winfrey is a precursor of the Antichrist.”

Wow. Does Stedman know about this? Or could he be…? Never mind.

I suppose that those of us who don’t see Oprah as Antichrist material can dismiss the NAR’s ideas out of hand. After all, what influence do they have in America?

Hmmm. Maybe not a lot right now, but here’s an interesting tidbit that Tabachnick turned up: Texas Governor Rick Perry, who recently vaulted to the status of front runner among Republican presidential candidates, preceded his campaign start-up with a prayer rally that was organized with the help of NAR-linked people.

Tabachnick specifically identifies Lou Engle and Mike Bickle, the latter being affiliated with The Call and the International House of Prayer (not to be confused with IHOP of pancake fame).

Now, I do not believe that Rick Perry is going to be our next president. His beliefs are just too nutty. (Full disclosure: Back in 1980, I thought the same thing about Ronald Reagan.)

But no, even for Republicans, I think Perry just goes too far outside the boundaries of What-a-Sane-Person-Can-Believe Land. And his affiliation with the anti-Oprah fanatics is just one example of his loopiness. There is also his famed declaration that it might just be time for Texas to secede from the United States.

Admittedly there were more than a few among us who raised no objection to the idea of Texas leaving the union. Indeed, the thought can be downright comforting. But nonetheless, does it make sense that the voters would choose as U.S. President a man whose most famous declaration before entering the race was “We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot.”?

What really might cause an eyebrow or two to be raised here is not Rick Perry per se, but the association of Rick Perry with a bunch of people who think the rest of us are now under the control of demons and that only by our falling under NAR “Dominion” will we be saved. It’s enough to make an atheist say, “God help us.”

And, by the way, why aren’t there hundreds of Americans out there on the front lines right now with fists flying against these fundamentalist wackos? I imagine the wackos themselves have a theory: Their enemies, they might argue, have orders from Oprah telling them to cool it for the time being.