Let me just make it clear right from the very start: I happen to like crazy people. Some of my best friends are crazy people. Half my family is crazy people. I wouldn’t be who I am today without the guidance of crazy people. Still, political and religious zealots…they don’t make the cut. They’re not crazy simply for fun; they’re crazy because they believe in and won’t stop until they convert the rest of the world to whatever wackaloonery they’re selling.
Anyone can run for president, and many hapless nitwits without a snowball’s chance in a pizza oven have. Very few of them however have elicited the amount of support Michelle Bachman has, nor declared their candidacy at a juncture in history when all standards of intelligence, factuality, accuracy and truth had been defenestrated with extreme prejudice.
Of course, since the Republican Party has adopted crazy as its party platform, I’m not sure it even matters anymore exactly whom the candidate is. Bachman said today she wants to eliminate the minimum wage. Now there’s an enormous boost to stagnating middle class income and a genuine cattle prod for consumer spending. She also called for eliminating the capital gains tax. That sounds fair. If you’re working in a Tyson’s chicken plant for minimum wage, your income will continue to be taxed at thirty-something percent along with your payroll taxes. While the lucky son of a gun making money with money finally can be released from the torment of fifteen percent. Justice at last. And believe me, those credit default swaps the money bags spent all their money on before the economy crashed, those puppies create a lot of jobs.
Unfortunately, these are “mainstream” Republican positions now. Perhaps the only thing really separating Bachman from the rest of the Republican field is her appearance: her eyes actually can be seen spinning counterclockwise when she is giving a speech. Other than that, the Republican Party has moved entirely in her direction. I’m supporting her purely on the basis of her propensity to put history in a blender and whip her own kind of Ignoramus Daiquiri up. When it comes to making fun of people, I like the easy route, and it doesn’t get any easier than her.
But can she be elected? She’s currently running neck and neck with Mitt the Humanoid out in Iowa. Of course, it is Iowa. God’s ventriloquist, Pat Robertson won the Iowa primary in 1988, and was the certifiable Next Big Thing until, recognizing that he was unelectable the Republican establishment kicked in. They may not kick in this time. And if they do kick in, rank and file Republicans may simply ignore them, just as they did in so many state primaries in the 2010 election cycle. We know from that example that Republican primary voters will nominate a cornfield scarecrow or a bran muffin if it is to the right of Joseph Goebbels, which is just where the Republican base likes its candidates.
At one time, any real future for a candidate like Bachman, outside her own backwater, clearly non compos mentis congressional district would have been nil. But things have changed. Unhinged is the new normal in Republican politics. And American voters really don’t have much of a grasp of contemporary economic, domestic or foreign policy issues, complex as they tend to be in these times. So voters simply cast a vote on the basis of their own, or the perception of the country’s economic well-being early in the month of November. At the least, one should despair that a candidate of Bachman’s ignorance and instability is a “serious” candidate for the nomination of one of the nation’s two major political parties. And fretful that she has any chance whatsoever of being successful.
Don’t get me wrong. I do want the brightest future possible for America’s crazed. I’d just prefer they stay out of politics, and stick to entertaining me at parties and bars.
UPDATE:
This is breaking news. It is with deep regret that I report I did not make this up:
The Fictions of Ken O'Steen 