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The informed and sophisticated intellectual political class....New York City, San Francisco - Oakland, and the District of Columbia belt (including Chappaquiddickia) all know that the greatest enemy menacing Captain Planet is some amorphous mass of disorganised people known as "The Tea Party". All people who are associated with "The Tea Party", even in the most peripheral way are to be isolated, zeroed in by the Obsolete Press, ridiculed, discounted, harassed by the IRS, OSHA, EPA and other agencies of the National Socialist Geheime Staats-polizei Network and finally fed into the wood chipper of History.
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| Hands Across the Aisle |
On the other hand, the Tea Party types, and yes, even the Republicans, always leave the sites of their get-togethers cleaner than when found.
Leftist demonstrations and rallies almost always either threaten violence, warn that violence will occur if "demands" are not met, or serve to kick-off a two or three week period of looting, killing, brutalisation, and trashing of the effects of.....well, of whomsoever gets in the way.
Some humour can be derived from the simple, basic fact that the Tea Party has some vestiges of Conservative thought and philosophy, and perhaps even purpose. It is not, however, a classically Conservative entity. It is certainly not "right wing". It combines bits and pieces of Southern Ruralism, Mid-West Ruralism, hard-money thinkers, populists mistrustful of large institutions, traditionalists, and folks who prefer bowling alleys, picnics, and beer to country clubs and champagne. To each his own.
El Gringo Viejo is Right-wing. El Gringo Viejo is a pseudo-intellectual, studied monk of the realm of conservatism in politics, religion, social and cultural organisation, and philosophy.
It is because of my true right-wing orientation that I snort when it is heard at each juncture that the party must "stake out the middle" and "have a big tent". The GOP poobahs are quick to point out that we are going to face a formidable opponent in 2016, who is essentially unbeatable unless we fashion a candidate who is exactly like her. They are enamoured of Christi, Romney, and Bush.
My opinion is that these are all fine men. They are all moderate men who do not frighten anyone. They are conservative, but their plough digs shallow. That is my opinion.
To prove the point let us analyse the nature of their choices, just in the recent past. They forced Ford onto the ticket in 1976 although the rank and file Republicans were more in favour of Ronald Reagan. Gerald Ford lost to a dolt such as James Earl Carter.
Reagan postulated for President in 1980 and 1984. In both cases the moderate and reasonable leadership declared that Reagan was too extreme to win...against the dolt Carter, and later against the very suave, much more intelligent than Reagan, Walter Mondale. Mondale barely carried one State, his home State of Minnesota.
The really nice guy George Herbert Walker Bush, who had served as Vice-President to Reagan ran in 1988 as something of a "third Reagan term" candidate. Upon election, however, his inauguration speech pointed to the shining city on the hill and declared that it needed to be "kinder and gentler" than it had been during the previous years. Of course, within a couple of years we were embroiled in a full-scale war in the Mid-East. We won the war decisively, but Bush could not win re-election, although he was opposed by a loon named H. Ross Perot who had no philosophy beyond "fixin' things" and a white-trash, crooked, pervert Governor of Arkansas named Billy Jeff Clinton who declared to the masses, "I feel yer pain...!"
Bring on the wizened and privileged, moderates....and lo and behold they run the old Senate Majority Leader against Billy Jeff in 1996. Clinton has managed to destroy his Democrat majority in both chambers of Congress, and his moral lapses had been more than can be reasonably imagined. The "moderate" Bob Dole, a World War II wounded hero and Father of the Americans with Disabilities Act...(Empty Parking Spaces in Front of Every Building ACT)....and, he like Ford before him...and Bush to a degree...lost.
George Bush then ran in 2000, gaining the nomination against another war hero, McCain....both men were actually moderates, country club types but Bush had been elected to two terms as Governor of Texas and postured as a movement conservative. Bush took the nomination, and barely eked out a victory against Al Gore, Clinton's Vice-President. He went on to be re-elected in 2004.
After that, the Republicans nominated McCain in 2008....and he lost in a near-landslide. McCain ran a milquetoast campaign that found his staff spending most of their time not fighting Obama, but in fighting their own Vice Presidential designee, Sarah Palin.....because she was too conservative and mean and low-class. They equated her to being a hillbilly.
The GOP made up for the error of selecting McCain by making the error of selecting Mitt Romney for the 2012 go-around. Nice guy, successful, moderate, friendly, and chewed up...making a one-point landing after being considered a shoo-in due to the disastrous record of Obama's first term.
This is the record of the "moderate experts" from the Country Club wing of the Republican Party. On a scale of 0 - 100....let's give them a 19.
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Truth be told, the distaste for Obama on the part of the informed rightwing crazies....the foot-washers....the snake-handlers....was so intense, that they were actually going to go out and vote for the Mormon. Many of the cave-dwellers who had decided never to bother with voting agin', cause there ain't much difference twixt the Mommy D. Socialists and the Daddy R. Socialists had girded their loins just the one last time.
And then, just before they went out to vote, Romney wilted before the two man tag team....at the last debate...and also made several remarks that reminded them that the similarities between the two candidates were massive and the differences were slight.
Even this humble servant was almost moved to not bother voting. The notion of saying, "We want to keep the good parts of the Affordable Care Act and improve them, and get rid of the bad parts....." Lord Help Us!!!! Or, "I agree with much of the President's programme in the Middle East...." Oy Vey!!!
Now we are told that we must choose between Romney again, or Old Rough and Common Core Bush, or Old Barry's Huggy Buddy Christi....or the Hispanics and the Jupitereans and Jumping Jehoshaphat seniors will never vote for us. We simply must buy their votes fair and square or it's over!!!
The swooning over the declaration by Governor Bush to establish his exploratory committee on the part of the entire panoply of the East - West Coast Obsolete Media, with even FOX News globbing on in concurrence left us with moderately severe nausea and a furrowed brow.
El Gringo Viejo
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