Looking at politics as of late just makes me fume.
The main thing I want to hit head on is the dog pile known as the Never-Ending Republican Presidential Primaries. There have been numerous debates, enough to choke a horse, and judging from recent columns in Pipe Dream, there will be more than enough columns to beat a dead horse back to life and choke it again.
Is there really so much to repeatedly harp on? The debates and news surrounding the debates are becoming so repetitive, but the language and rhetoric just keeps getting nastier, and cheaper shots are taken again and again. Thankfully, however, the pool of candidates has been narrowed down to four: Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Congressmen Ron Paul and Rick Santorum, which does make it easier to focus on the candidates.
We’ve got Mitt’s wealth, the fact that he believes that corporations are people and his Mormonism, which really shouldn’t be an issue. Hello, religious freedom under the First Amendment? The country wouldn’t be comfortable with a Mormon president? We seem to be doing all right with an African American president, and race and religion are two totally different worlds.
As for the wealth and corporations business, if you’ve got money in accounts in the Caymans and say that you connect with the people, you’re probably talking about corporations, not “people” people.
Then, we’ve got Newt’s multiple incidents of infidelity and his talk of building a base on the moon. First, there are the marriage vows “In sickness and in health, ‘til death do us part,” right? Newt split from Wife 1, Jackie, around her cancer diagnosis after roughly 18 years of marriage.
He married Wife 2, Marianne, whom he had been cheating with, six months after the divorce. Newt split from Marianne when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis after another 18 years. Now would probably be a good time to mention that he had been cheating on her with Callista, his current wife, for roughly six years and had asked Marianne for an open marriage.
Newt, you are for monogamy and all, right? Well, isn’t an open marriage not monogamy? Do you care to correct my logic here, if it needs correcting? Also, we’ve been to the moon, but it’s been a little over 40 years, and NASA isn’t going to be doing much in the way of missions any time soon, thanks to budgetary cuts.
Ron Paul hawks the gold standard, which is just a monetary value that has been assigned to gold over the years. Who decided that something golden, shiny and metallic would be worth a certain amount of money? Why not an iron standard? Sure, it’s not golden or shiny, but it would make Iron Man the most expensive superhero, or the one someone would least want to damage for fear of devaluing him or the dollar.
As for Rick Santorum, you’ve got his last name, which was made web-infamous by Dan Savage, and his stance on marriage. Actually, everyone but Ron Paul has a similar stance on marriage, and by that, I’m referring to gay marriage, which should just lose the “gay” because it’s marriage, plain and simple.
There is no unity or civility left in the Republican Party, or so it seems, based on the current state of things. There is still no single candidate the party can unite behind. Yes, it seems like Romney is surging and has more of a chance of securing the nomination, having just won the Nevada caucus, but how can you expect a major party with a conservative Christian base to organize behind a Mormon governor who, among other things, passed a health care bill that has been deemed akin to “Obamacare?”
I guess this is one of those situations in which we need to wait and see how things will pan out in the long run.