First Round: Lesser of Two Evils

Mr. Irresistible: Yes, I'm THAT big! by AP photo


Dumbfounded Herman Cain is not in Kansas anymore -- storm-tossed and dislodged from his outsider "good guy" candidacy to frontrow Wicked Witch of the West.   A third, now visible victim of his puffed up, manly prowess testified Monday, dispensing the ugly skywriting that foretells a political drenching.   Overplaying his 15 minutes of infamy, Cain's political honeymoon as straight-shooting restaurant wiz, quick-baked with sham character claims, is cycloning away.  
 
Even if he stumbles along, what standing could he have now with women, let alone good churchgoing folks?   His vacuous non-solutions have been discredited far and wide.   Now he's a defensive sex predator who harassed women with overtures so crude he must have thought himself irresistible.
 
Topping off serial sexual belligerency is his serial tunnel vision -- with such a transparently inept cover-up the focus shifts from his character flaws to his basic intelligence: is he simply dumbfounded or just dumb?   Here's the classic rightwing vanity campaign, scornful of core knowledge, savvy organization in key states, even a national fundraising push.   Serves him right for ignorance about China's nuclear arms, a blunder so monumental the NY Times' Timothy Egan quipped, with more wit than accuracy, that Herman makes "Sarah Palin, with her eagle-eyed view of Russia from Alaska, sound like a Council of Foreign Relations scholar on a gasbag high."    Well, not even Homer Simpson does that.
 
Living by Sound Bites Alone
 
The curious result -- post-decline and fall of small fry Trump, Bachmann, and Pawlenty -- or larger fish, like Giuliani, Gingrich, Huckabee, and Perry -- catapults the cultist shape-shifter Mitt Romney into default center stage.   Curious because he's the least popular, least trusted, former frontrunner (especially by the evangelical-Tea Party) since a guy named Romney lost to McCain in '08.   Things are bad for the fringe when the unstable McCain outshines this gang of non-achievers.   Indeed, before the nation opts for the lesser of major party evils -- as hardened realists put it -- rightwing primitives must select the lesser, or this year least unhinged, from a gang of miscreants.   No easy task when mentally-challenged zealots rush to anoint the next political messiah, however indistinguishable from the newly disgraced loser by sound bites alone.
 
What could outlast Cain is the injury that Tea Party-FOX apologists inflict on their Family Values wedge politics.   Hypocrisy on display, the right defends the indefensible by assailing now multiple victims.   What if five more surface?   No doubt Bible-bangers covet the 2500 year-old decree that women obey men, servicing whatever appetite-driven patriarchs demand.   You'd think, though, even clods like Cain would refine appalling come-ons -- so bad there's more than poetic justice when   crudeness self-destructs.   Presumably, were the female targets more willing, harassment would dissipate.   But here -- charmless, dumb, and abusive -- the firepower for a pizza Casanova.
 
Historically, Democrats snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.   Not this time, for rarely have so many idiot candidates done so much to help re-elect the dubious wizard in the White House.   However shredded is the curtain hiding his corporate-loving, entrenched theatre of betrayal, President Obama the Lucky may cruise into a second term.   Or rather, be handed a second term when the dilemma isn't the lesser of two evils but one lesser evil vs. a certifiable, terrifying agent of disruption.   Palin or Bachmann or Cain aren't just dangerous because they broadcast false, evil propaganda inflamed by regressive politics -- but because the majority still usually separates the Sanity + Evil Connivance incumbent over Insanity + Evil Connivance challengers.   Really, there are always some distinctions enough Democrats will not ponder long -- and the less time mulling over the actual Obama record, the better for the president.    
 
In the Raw, Good vs. Evil
 
Consider: the incumbent will channel three-quarters of a billion bucks to make two simple arguments: 1) we likeable folks (68% still agree) did as well as humanly possible under impossible burdens, not one caused by us; plus 2) the other guy answers to his brainwashed FATE (Faith-Alone-TEa Party), a subsidiary of Citizens United-Koch Bros.-Chamber of Commerce -- with secret advice from the likes of Rumsfeld, Cheney and Karl Rove.    And if it gets neck and neck ugly, then expect allegations that some invisible anti-Christ covertly endorses the other side.   
 
We've already decimated once paramount lines between church and state.   At the rate we're going, even the thin line between religion and politics is jeopardized.   Votes won't be for candidates or parties but projections of whose right side some God is on.   In any war, after all, God must eventually favor one side.
 
Cronyism in Heaven?
 
Of course, this president manages by continually avoiding clear statements whose side he's on, whatever the issue.   That's what "devoutly non-ideological" means, two ends against the middle.   Is Obama for or against the current power structure in Iraq, those stubborn ones sending us packing?   Is he truly supportive of Mid-east governments, or uprisings for that matter?   How does he really feel towards Israel, our uncertain ally?   Does he side with or against public unions under siege?  Will Obama mildly sympathize with OWS protesters, expressing pain he can play on -- or stand by brave protesters?  Right.
 
Waiting for Obama on the OWS invokes waiting for Godot.  Eventual Obama voters may well sigh, "Imagining Godot as hope and change beats conceding defeat and the end of workable government."  Of course, for the right, there's no question whether their God-ot arrives, with the Rapture.   I suspect evangelicals believe in their faith-driven hearts of hearts the Final Judgment will tabulate whether there's D or an R or an A (for agnostic) after every sinner's name.  
 
And you thought politics was just fun and games.   What if Republican cronyism extends to heaven?