Imagining Debaters In A Brawl
Wednesday - January 18, 2012
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Del.icio.usIn my last column, I wrote about all the reasons to be positive in the new year. Now I’m going to talk national politics.
Cringe.
Not that I don’t like politics. Thanks to my mother, who was a Barry Goldwater conservative, I’m a bit of a political junkie.
I especially like watching the debates. I think there have been 14 (or maybe 400) so far. The men may be running out of debate ties.
Actually the debates have all been pretty interesting and insightful for me, and the candidates have handled themselves well despite questioners with ulterior motives. The various networks, hosts are just itching to start a brawl between the candidates, aren’t they?
Wouldn’t that be cool? Rick Santorum just goes over and decks Mitt Romney. Then Ron Paul, the medical doctor, won’t fix Mitt’s broken nose because as a libertarian, he feels Mitt should just be left alone. Newt Gingrich then whacks Santorum over the head with one of the 32 books he’s written on civilization. Texas Gov. Rick Perry whistles and his horse “Jobs” gallops onto the stage. And even though they don’t like each other, Mitt is scooped up on the saddle, and like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid they ride to Massachusetts to use some Romney care to fix his nose, which ends up permanently crooked and that works out because now he looks less perfect, thereby endearing himself to South Carolinians. When Santorum comes to, he leaves the building, but still woozy from the book injury, he accidentally wanders into a gay bar, where he converts everyone to Catholicism. What a debate! Oops, I forgot Gov. Jon Huntsman. Let’s see, he slips on some chow mein, bangs his frontal lobe and now can only speak Mandarin Chinese.
Gee, I miss Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann.
Have you noticed how the debate hosts always report their polls results that determine what voters are concerned about so the debaters can address the critical issues at hand? The issues are always the same: jobs, the economy, cutting spending.
In the last ABC debate, Diane Sawyer must’ve gotten hit in the head with one of Newt’s textbooks, because she just wouldn’t quit probing about what the candidates would say regarding same-sex marriage to a gay or lesbian couple if they were sitting in their living room. Sawyer has a kind country club East Coast voice that doesn’t match her folksy, I’mone-of-you delivery. She’s an expert at luring candidates into thinking she’s not asking a “gotcha” question, Newt’s word for a veiled attempt at trying to illicit a sound bite designed to make any one of them sound like Sarah Palin with Katie Couric. Oozing with concern, Sawyer sounded like she was talking about the orphans of Sudan instead of people who now have all legal rights of married people. Besides, every Republican is for keeping the institution of marriage between a man and a woman, and so is Obama unless he’s changed his tune. Her ploy didn’t work no sound bites that round.
U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, who got little attention four years ago, has learned to debate without sounding likes a really ticked off old futz. He’s actually funny and has some appealing political ideas, especially with regard to the Federal Reserve and the monetary fund.
But when the Iranians block the Strait of Hormuz, which much of the world’s oil passes through, like they’re currently threatening to do, President Paul might just send Mahmoud Ahmadinejad some Texas pralines and return to the business of not interfering with anything or anyone.
It’s doubtful that the campaign ads will even reach Hawaii. We’re so politically predictable, national politicians will save their money and ignore us, thus losing all those advertising dollars that battleground states get.
I predict that Romney will win the nomination, and if he wins the White House, as he fixed the scandal-ridden 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, he’ll also fix the economy. And his nose.
Oh, yeah, I made that up.
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