Although I don’t agree with his particulars, Ron Paul speaks truth to power, and that is why he will never be president or even the nominee of his party, same as Howard Dean, Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, Ross Perot, Gene McCarthy and countless other quixotic figures I’ve either forgotten or never had the chance to learn about in the first place. George McGovern and Barry Goldwater were two guys who slipped through the cracks and got their party nominations, and look how well those runs went. It seems like a bunch of you think that a wildfire will spread across the prairie and Ron Paul will be swept into office on a wave populist support, you crazy bunch of dreamers you. Ain’t never going to happen.
I wouldn’t put money on it, but don’t count McCain out. If there’s an actual Cheney driven putsch, it’s face could be something like, say, a McCain-Lieberman, both of whose faces are taking on the contours of the VP’s butt-crack. Or that might be the role assigned to Fred Thompson, who, when he enters the fray, will be the most disingenuous man or woman in pursuit of the crown, bar none.
Unless, something unexpected happens, like say the Hagel-Bloomberg ticket mentioned a few weeks ago blossoms, you guys are probably stuck with either Guliani or Romney, or Thompson on the outside. Hello President Hillary.
Ever since 1968 when Nixon devised the brilliant “Southern Strategy”, the Repugs have been able to rely on a coalition of about half of the traditional, white collar and suburban economic conservatives and a large majority of the white Southern crackers who were very pissed off at the 1964 Civil Rights legislation. Reagan wisely bulked this coalition up with blue collar workers who had recently joined the middle-class (thanks to their unions, ironically), and it was during the Reagan years that fundamentalist Christians were hoodwinked again, made to believe that Jesus was Republican, and became fanatically, zealous GOPers too. That coalition wasn’t enough to beat Clinton, 0 for 2, and it fought Gore to a virtual tie, just close enough to steal. Even with the help of 9/11 and John Kerry’s poorly run campaign, Bush’s victory in 04 was narrower than the Repugs spun it to be. We know what happened in 06.
The Jesus freaks are disillusioned with the less than pontifical Repugs, the racist vote is pissed about the brown hordes invading from the South, but worst of all, the educated and suburban economic conservatives, who are often social liberals, seem to be embracing Hillary with more relish than Democrats. More than the Repugs need the crazies who are waiting for the rapture, and more than they need insecure white people who feel threatened by the least powerful group of people in America– undocumented Mexican laborers– the Republican Party needs its share of the center. That, however, might have been lost to the Repugs for a generation or so because George W Bush exposed to a T (and a big bloody one at that) the inherent flaws of rampant Reagan conservatism, and as of now, the middle belongs to the Dems. More specifically, it belongs to Hillary.
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