Count me among those who don’t believe there is more than a salami slice’s worth of difference between the Republican candidates. While it’s true Newt and Santorum are more overtly comically daff and Luddite; and while it’s true Romney does not dribble saliva when he speaks and previously has stopped at every juncture along the ideological spectrum, he is now just another Great White Reactionary Hope.

Of course one may be saying, “But wait, what if those loony Republicans had control of every branch of the American government?” That my friends wouldn’t be the worst of times, it would be end times for all intents and purposes. In all likelihood, thank god, Americans will reject the ultimate candidate of this manifestly bonkers sect in the general election. That could still leave them in control of the House and with filibuster capability in the Senate, meaning another four years of Republican Hide the Policies that Improve the Country politics.

How insurrectionists in the Republican Party wrest control away from the primordial bog people who are the de facto masters of the party now in order to return it to the good old days of modestly less overt racial strategies, traditional Voodoo Economics and stealthier bidding for the rich and corporations one can not really envision. Garden variety Republicans cower in fear in the face of the medievalists in the same way the press has cowered in trepidation in the face of Republican pressure for forty or so years. Until that grip of fear is broken (in both cases) there is little chance for any intellectually respectable or realistically problem-solving dialogue in the country for the foreseeable future.

What most needs doing in these United States, in other words, that which draws us into favorable comparison with other modern, post-industrial nations in health care, education and infrastructure will remain little more than lusty gleams in the eyes of progress-minded Americans until the frozen sea of our ridiculous politics is cracked apart.

Likewise, Republican apparatchiks marching for the banks and oil barons and trough hoovering one-percent will see to it financial and consumer reforms set forth in Dodd-Frank designed to rectify the foolish absurdities precipitating the Great Recession end up at the bottom of the river wearing cement wing-tips. Shockingly, alchemy for reducing gas prices to sub- three dollar levels so benevolently offered to us by presidential aspirants and interchangeable Republican yakkers is nonsense, though actions by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission could make a difference in the seamy speculation driving up the price of oil if they were actually ever taken.

At least for four years and change the reality-based community will have President Obama standing between us and the Dark Ages, when Republicans, in full control repeal fire, the wheel and running water. Three cheers for blah and stagnation: hip hip…ah, never mind