This presidential nominating process has me fired up. I can’t believe this bunch of idiots.
The idiots to whom I refer, of course, are my friends of the Democratic persuasion. I’ve never seen a group so simultaneously smug and ill-informed. And here’s the problem: they don’t know their country. They’re not exposed to people or ideas any more conservative than, say, Senator Joe Lieberman.
Me, I’ve got family so conservative it’d peel the paint right off your Prius. So when I sigh at someone who says they hope former Senator Rick Santorum takes the Republican nomination because he’d never win in a general election, I sigh with authority. Some problems with the Dems-for-Santorum strategem:
One: Santorum could be elected, and that undoes the whole premise. He could be elected under any number of scenarios, ranging from economic or military catastrophe to, believe it or not, just good old campaigning. He’s got the support of people to whom sensible policy doesn’t matter much. He’s measured by a different standard — one foreign to my friends here.
Two: Process! A parable: You’re planning a wedding. You are vegetarian and don’t want anyone to eat meat at your wedding but for some reason, you have a terrible caterer. You must choose two of the following three options to go on your final menu: baked pasta, a soup made with beef broth, and rancid turkey sandwiches. You choose the baked pasta and the rancid turkey because no one’ll eat rancid meat. But it makes your wedding smell like something died and the few people who do eat it vomit all over the dance floor. If Santorum is the nominee, I guarantee we’re in for more puking than dancing, and pretty soon everybody forgets how to dance.
Three: This isn’t entertainment. It’s not a game. I know some people thrill to the fantasy of a smackdown, replete with pomp and circumstance, between the sitting president and a fire-and-brimstone-spouting dweeb who wasn’t quite done baking before coming out of the oven — but this is not reality television. It’s the highest elected office in the land. It should be a debate of issues at such a high level that most voters don’t understand most of what’s going on. Instead, it’s a debate of issues at such a shrill pitch that most voters can’t stand to read further into most of what’s going on.
Dean Radovich
Boulder
