The Republican Presidential Field
The Republicans, known mostly for their lock-step conformity on everything from opposing abortion, gay marriage, taxes, all "government" and of course their obsessive hatred of all things "Obama", are acting with unusual dissonance regarding their choice of who will oppose him next November.
Yesterday Mitt Romney garnered the Maine straw poll with 39% followed by Ron Paul with 36%.
In last Tuesday's contests in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota (again non-binding straw polls) Rick Santorum was the runaway winner.
A week earlier Romney won the Florida primary and a week before that Newt Gingrich won South Carolina. What's going on here?
If anything it suggests the GOP is in complete disarray with extraordinary ambivalence with ALL those running and particularly with Romney, the man who changes colors faster than a chameleon,(the lizard that may soon be known as a "Romney"). Of course it's quite possible Romney will be the last man standing, but what's readily apparent is the "ideological" purists are choking on that possibility.
It's like an opera, tragic or comic, without knowing for sure which is the appropriate characterization.
Meanwhile the Obama crowd is snickering in the background watching the Republican sideshow farce unfold week after week.
But the really hard part to face in ALL this; there is no real meaningful alternative in whoever wins, whether it's one of the Republican stooges or Barack Obama that eventually wins out next November.
Yes there's Rocky Anderson and his fledgling "Justice Party", 3 rd party candidacy out there somewhere, but realistically, if he's not on the ballot in all 50 states and isn't permitted to take part in the televised presidential debates, what chance does he have? That's what killed Ralph Nader's candidacy.
Sadly, what it all boils down to is it's ALL a $ billion dollar plus extravaganza; much ado about nothing; a quadrennial fanfare that produces the same outcome regardless of who wins.
Barack Obama proved that with policies and actions hardly different than his predecessor, only with more eloquence and less the "cowboy" parlance.
Now we're hearing that Obama favors a Constitutional amendment "if necessary" to control the flood of Super Pac money inundating the entire electoral process in the aftermath of "Citizens United". But the hypocrisy of his favoring an amendment is contradicted by his accepting Super Pac largesse that favors him. Well so much for his advocacy.
As per usual the talking heads will spout this or that, pontificating on the gyrations in the Republican primaries and what it all means and then on to the months of the general election campaigns after the party conventions.
Of course it won't mean anything in the long run, but it will provide entertainment and the illusion that the outcome will be significant.
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