On the GOP target-rich lineup of Squirrels, Near-Imbeciles and one very dangerous SOB

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon—

In all the years that I’ve been interested in politics and elections, I’ve never seen the Republican Party offer such a target-rich lineup of squirrels and near-imbeciles, even multiple Mormons, and yet there is still time for more candidates to join the fun, particularly with the line has grown so blurry between candidates, former candidates, non-candidates and maybe-candidates.

Was it only four years ago that the GOP Laff Riot Comedy Team had just two players, moose-fed Sarah Palin and the utterly unselfconsciously stupid Joe the Plumber? Where the heck is Joe and his plumber’s butt these days, anyway? So fickle were his supporters, where did they go?

This election cycle, the characters are coming so fast and opining so frequently that it’s hard to keep up.

We owe this phenomenon in large part to the proliferation of cable TV and radio “news” channels with 24 hours to fill each day, and about 45 minutes of actual information to give the padding a veneer of topicality, and the extreme partisanship that dominates GOP primaries.

The rancor on the right is so extreme that the killing of Osama bin Laden is as swiftly forgotten as the fact that it was the Bush administration that set the nation into economic freefall just two short years ago. These people are not going to let themselves become confused by either facts or history. There’s less than a 50% chance that what the GOP candidates say is in the Constitution is actually in there, not that their base can tell one way or another.

For example, GOP “No-longer-a-witch” and soon-to-be-perennial cable nutball Christine O’Donnell is getting some national cable TV face time over something she calls a “book,” that ought to come bundled with crayons, like Sarah Palin’s.

Herman Cain is running a vanity campaign with absolutely no chance of success, attempting to make a direct transition from right wing cable TV commentator to president of the United States and, when you think about it, that’s pretty funny. Everything he says evaporates into thin air the moment the words come out of his mouth, but his presence on the debate stage masks the racism that inhabits the Republican base.

Although not officially campaigning, former Alaska half-term Governator Sarah Palin (aka “The Quitter”) has found life if not intelligence on cable TV, where she fills those spots when they have run out of actual news. I look forward to another Palinesque lesson in American history like her take on the famous ride of Paul Revere, who warned the British that we colonists have guns and so on and so forth. A camera and a microphone are like crack cocaine to Palin, which brings us to….

Michelle Bachmann’s bright-eyed declaration that she is going to bring back $2-dollar-a-gallon gas stirred some interest for half an afternoon, and the more she talks, the more she will take her campaign into Wackyville, where, to be fair, she will not be alone….

Ron Paul isn’t an actual Republican. He’s a Libertarian, but none of those nutballs ever get elected as a Libertarian, only as a Republican, and most hard-line Republicans can’t tell the difference anyway, because that would involve reading actual books….

Newt Gingrich is understandably mostly an embarrassment to the rest of the field, and this just 13 years after his run ended, ruling the Republican roost. Most of the GOP electorate has long forgotten whatever it was that he did back then that they liked the sound of so much, something about a Contract with America….

Tim Pawlenty’s candidacy was doomed when he demonstrated that he didn’t have the cojones to confront Mitt Romney to his face on national TV. Whenever the USA gets around to electing a woman president, she’ll have pa-lenty more cojones than Pawlenty ever dreamed of, let that be a lesson to somebody out there….

Mormons Mitt Romney and John Huntsman are keeping their heads down, avoiding public exposure even at this stage in the race and the questions about their Mormon magic panties and why God loves Salt Lake City best, and which planet do they plan to rule over in the afterlife, and do they think that their experience as President of the USA will make them a better God, that will surely be coming their way, better later rather than sooner….

The 2012 GOP presidential bench is as deep in numbers as it is shallow in brainpower, with this list of declared candidates that you probably never heard of, and with this writing probably the first and last time that you will ever see their names in print. I will boldface them so as not to give the frontrunners yet another advantage: Jon Greenspon, Gary Johnson, Fred Karger, Andy Martin, Thad McCotter, Jimmy McMillan, Tom Miller, Roy Moore, Buddy Roemer and Vern Wuensche. You’ve probably heard of Rick Santorum. He’s in there too, and just to prove that I didn’t make any of this up, here’s the link:

http://2012.republican-candidates.org/

While it is easy to laugh at the inane antics of much of the GOP field, some candidates warrant attention for the potential dangers they pose to the nation, for the way they animate the lunatic fringes, none more so than Rick Perry.

Rick Perry’s blustery suggestion that Texans might treat Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke “ugly” recalls the ugly way they “treated” JFK down in Dallas or the “good old days” when Texas justice was meted out with a nearby tree and a rope.

There is no question that sort of talk appeals to the Timothy McVie’s out there, the gun nuts and White Power crazies. Even the Bible-thumpers out there on the religious right are drawn to this line of thinking, Old-Testament blood and slaughter, and a world only about six thousand years old, ruled by God’s Chosen People, who have formed the Tea Party….

Perry’s Texas swagger channels George W. Bush just when the former Moron-in-Chief was disappearing into the history books, if not the trillions of dollars of indebtedness and thousands of grief-stricken military families he saddled the nation with in eight very recent years….

The last thing this nation will ever need is another president who believes that the sun revolves around Texas and that God drawls into his ear….

John Kitzhaber proves he's ready to lead; Dudley offers mumbo-jumbo

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon--

Former basketball player Chris Dudley confirmed throughout his debate with former Governor John Kitzhaber that, while he can manage a mouthful of rhetoric, he cannot manage it over the course of an entire hour without a prepared script.

He did especially poorly when he took questions from the audience, such as this one:

Q. “Where do you stand on taxation of food and beverage and also tobacco and liquor?”

Dudley:  “Well, we have, I mean, in addition to what we already have in place?"

A. “Yes.”

Dudley: “So, what we have, I have not brought up changing what we have in place and, uh, so I think we should continue it, and that is something, by the way, that our cities and counties rely on as well, uh, for their funding and so, it’s not something that I’ve talked about changing.”

I listened to Dudley’s response to this question in semi-stunned silence, because not only is it complete gibberish, but one of his big “new ideas”, championed on his website and in his several multiple-pointed Plans to Make Everything All Better in Oregon, is his determination to privatize the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, and “put a fee” on the sales and distribution of liquor in Oregon.

It’s his own plan, it’s right there on his website, been there for months, that he wants to “put a fee” on the sale and distribution of liquor to make up for the loss of revenue supporting local governments that privatizing the OLCC would cause.

The more Dudley spoke, the worse it got, and it is appalling to think that we could possibly have to listen to this mumbo-jumbo beyond the first week of November.

If this was a boxing match, they’d have to ring the bell every fifteen seconds to keep this man on his feet.

KGW could perform an important public service by rebroadcasting this debate at different times and dates. If this is the only debate we've got, then it won't hurt to see it several times.

We all have too much at stake to allow Oregon to fall victim to the Tea Party mentality that is at the root of the Dudley campaign.

John Kitzhaber is clearly ready to lead the state through this critical time.

Oregon needs a leader ready to come to work, not a person whose principal accomplishment is being tall and reasonably athletic, and certainly not a candidate who cannot remember his own rhetoric.

Oregon GOP Candidate Chris Dudley offers 20-point Tea Party plan to create one job

by Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon--Once again, GOP candidate Chris Dudley tosses out a randomly numbered “plan” that contains no cost information at all, but lots more free ponies!

Throughout its tedious length, Dudley’s “Jobs” plan identifies only one job that the plan would create: the new Budget Manager position that would be part of his super-sized office of the governor. The Budget Manager’s job would be to explain the budget to Dudley.

Chris Dudley's supporters want to put a man who cannot be responsible for his own decision making regarding his personal finances, and who has no experience managing anything at all, in charge of a multi-billion dollar state budget, and at a time when the state and the nation is in grave economic crisis.

They want to put a man who cannot give clear answers about just about anything he's asked, whether personal or political, even about his campaign "ideas" promoted on his own website; a man who cannot be clear even on his residency, into a position that demands transparency and accountability, and real personal commitment to the state of Oregon.

They want to elevate a man whose campaign strategy depends upon his avoidance of any open discussions about the problems facing the state, into a position that requires its occupant to discuss those problems openly and on a full time basis.

They want to support a candidate who says he wants to shrink government and control spending, but whose plans call for a drastic enlargement of the office of the governor, the creation of new state government positions, open-ended new spending, and the imposition of new fees and taxes, all stated on the Dudley campaign's website.

That makes perfect sense to the Tea Party mentality driving the Dudley campaign, the same mentality supporting the fringe candidates haunting GOP primaries in pockets around the nation.

These candidates, like Chris Dudley, aren't offering real solutions, in large part because their supporters don't care whether they do or not.

They can't be bothered with solutions, they just know what they don't like.