By Howard Canaan
In recognition of those politicians and pundits who most notably embarrassed or disgraced themselves during this year’s election, we present The 2012 Republican Election Awards.
By insisting that Romney would trounce Obama in the election, Dick “Landslide” Morris wins the Cloudy Crystal Ball Award for partisan and off-target election predictions. Mr. Morris afterwards blamed the unforeseen outcome on demographic voter trends that skewed his otherwise astute prognostication. More minority voters turned out to vote for President Obama than he’d expected. This glitch, Mr. Morris implies, resulted from the proliferation of non-white voters, whose frenzied breeding habits are stealing voting power away from more sober and sexually restrained white people. Incidentally, Mr. Morris doesn’t necessarily reflect this Caucasian behavior pattern -- he was fired from the Clinton White House after he turned up in a hotel room with a prostitute.
Karl Rove wins this year’s Pot Calling the Kettle Black Award for accusing Democrats of “suppressing the vote” of would-be Republican voters by running anti-Romney campaign ads. The double-pronged hypocrisy of this remark garners it a special place in Mr. Rove’s crowded trophy room of distortions and lies – first, in the breath-taking chutspa of someone whose trademark is negative ads accusing others of them and second, in Rove misnaming this “voter suppression,” a term that in fact describes exactly what his party so shamelessly tried to do in state after state during the election.
The Zygote Protection Award for the care and defense of emerging humans goes to the 2012 Republican Platform Committee and its chair, Governor Bob “vaginal probe” MacDonnell – someone never shy about legislating matters relating to ladies’ private parts. The GOP Platform’s assertion of Fourteenth Amendment rights including property rights for fertilized eggs combats the evils not just of abortion, but of rampant contraception. While ignoring the concerns of people already alive, the Republican zygote protection platform provides added opportunities for developing embryos to share in the American Dream.
Speaking of zygotes, soon-to-be former Congressman Todd Akin receives the Advanced Uterine Studies Award for notable discoveries in the field of women’s reproductive functions for his statement that a trigger mechanism in victims of forcible rape , automatically “shuts down” women’s pregnancies. This award includes a grant to pursue research at Bob Jones University to test his theory. Scientific proof of this “shut down” phenomenon would eliminate the need for allowing abortion rights for victims of what Akin calls “forcible rape” victims and would compel women careless enough to participate in voluntary rape to live with the consequences. We wish Mr. Akin success in his research. He’ll have plenty of time now to work on it since he was soundly beaten in the Missouri Senate election after his rape statement was ridiculed by the entire country. We look to hear of further discoveries from the forcible rape candidate as he shines the light of science into the mysteries of human reproduction.
The Eternal Flame Award for relentless pursuit of a single news story goes to the Fox News team for its 24-7 coverage of the attack on the American Embassy and the killing of four Americans at Benghazi. Cool-headed, in-depth analysis of this continuously developing story by the likes of Sean Hannity, Lynn Cheney, and John “Yosemite Sam” Bolton solidifies Fox’s reputation for fair and balanced news. As a tribute to the “Eternal Flame” title of this award, for three months, Fox didn’t let twenty minutes go by without searing the image of the burning embassy into the minds of their transfixed viewers. Fox has already raised “Benghazigate” to the level of not just the Watergate scandal, but to world-historical tragedies like the fall of the Bastille, Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, and the Crucifixion.
The Hoist with their Own Petard Award goes to the entire Republican Party for its coordinated efforts to use the state governments they control to suppress likely Democrats from voting. The variety of tricks Republicans tried – trumped up fears of non-existent voter fraud, laws requiring various forms of voter ID, limiting early voting, purging minority voters from voting lists, sending out operatives to intimidate minority-looking voters, making urban voters wait hours in line to vote – is a tribute to their ingenuity. How surprised they were – and how sweet it was --when minority voters angry at this skullduggery turned out in even larger numbers to elect Obama.
Gambling casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson wins the Shekels Flushed down the Toilet Award for money wasted trying to defeat President Obama. While right-wing high-rollers like the Koch Brothers may have outspent him, Mr. Adelson earned this award by being willing to bankroll any Republican flavor-of-the-month nut-case who momentarily rose to the top of the polls – Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Rich Santorum, you name them and Adelson threw his money at them – before settling on his final losing candidate, Mitt Romney. Like one of his hooked casino customers, Adelson bet on every roulette wheel number except Obama’s, and – schlimazel -- the ball landed on that one! But what determination Adelson showed! If the GOP had nominated a trained chimpanzee to run against Obama, this toad-like multibillionaire would have funded it – especially if it was male and circumcised.
Though little more than a cranky Fox commenter these days, Sarah Palin earns this year’s Rectal Pain Award for statements that return to bite people in the ass. Her sneering description of Barack Obama as “a community organizer” in her 2008 nomination acceptance speech has been repeated by dozens of Republicans. Too bad for Ms. Palin and her party that Obama’s success in turning out the Democratic vote this year demonstrated his skill as – you got it – a community organizer.
Senator Mitch McConnell receives the If You Shoot at the King, Don’t Miss Award for missing the target of his very publicly stated goal of making Obama a one-term President– - never mind trying to help the country with legislation. His back-room arm-twisting to make sure that his party blocked every Obama legislative proposal of the past four years – even proposals Republicans had previously supported -- set a new standard for negativity, spite, and small-mindedness in a political leader. Thanks to McConnell’s scorched-earth politics, he and his Congress now have about the same approval rating with the American public as does Hamas. Now Senator McConnell can cash in on the vast reserves of goodwill he’s built up with President Obama as he negotiates with him about preserving tax breaks for the rich.
The St. Paul at Tarsus Award for instant election-night spiritual conversions goes to Sean Hannity, who saw the divine light as the election returns rolled in and shifted before our very eyes from anti-illegal- alien xenophobe to pro-immigration moderate – provided that suitable unspecified punishments are meted out to illegals on their path to rehabilitation. Others can decide whether Mr. Hannity’s remarkable shift was a genuine change of heart or a cynical attempt to put Latino votes in the Republican ledger. In any case, Hannity’s smug claim that this sudden about-face will send droves of Latinos to vote Republican in the next election confirms his central niche in the right-wing alternate-reality bubble.
Speaking of alternate realities, the Philip K. Dick Award for constructing and then getting sucked up into an alternate universe that blows up in one’s face goes to the entire Fox News team and supporting politicians for their election reportage. The most dramatic collision of their fantasy world with external reality came when Karl Rove’s fictional analysis of what was happening in Ohio ran up against the actual Ohio voting returns and Fox declared Obama the winner and the election over. The carefully constructed Fox universe popped like a punctured balloon. The bogus pro-Romney polls, the mythical Romney “momentum,” and the so-called Republican enthusiasm edge that the Fox team gushed about –all turned out on election night to be as imaginary as unicorns or Tea Party intellectuals. Watching Rove spout statistical gobbledygook as he clashed with Fox producers about the Ohio voting returns was pure Schadenfreude for many of us. For the Fox team, though, a cruel, hard world of recalcitrant facts stared them in the face, a world where real polls predict election outcomes better than touchy-feely intuitions by Fox pundits. Such cognitive dissonance was too much for Fox viewers. Once the election was decided, they turned off their TV’s and vented their frustrations in various ways: heading to the nearest bar, taking aim at their Nate Silver dartboards, emailing petitions to secede from the Union, or loading their guns for when the Obama White House tries to confiscate them.
The Barbarians at the Gates Award for dire pronouncements about how Obama’s reelection spells the doom of Western civilization was hotly contested for among conservatives. The plangent post-election laments of disconsolate right-wingers reverberated across the nation and could be heard from the offices of The National Review and the Heritage Foundation to the fields and bayous of the Old Confederacy, from the oak-paneled corporate board rooms of Goldman-Sachs to the wooded Christian militia boot camps of Montana. After much prayer and fasting, we’ve decided to give two notable figures the Barbarians at the Gates Award: Fox pundit Bill O’Reilly and VP candidate Paul Ryan. Mr. Ryan, something of a Tea Party Oswald Spengler, earned his share of this accolade for declaring Obama’s re-election the end of Judeo-Christian culture in America – whether because Mr. Obama is a secret Muslim, a secret agnostic –or both. Bill O’Reilly, a more veteran culture warrior, added a characteristically racial overtone to the discussion by mournfully noting that white Americans are now a beleaguered minority, a sign of cultural decadence that will soon spell the end of the values of hard work and responsibility so peculiar to the white race. We can draw comfort from these two leaders of the Kulturkampf as they pace the watchtowers and draw on their intellectual arsenals to rally conservatives confronting the darkening tide of liberalism.
The From God’s Lips to My Ears Award for insider knowledge of God’s plans -- -especially on female pregnancy issues -- goes to unsuccessful Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock. Mr. Mourdock earns this accolade for explaining in a debate that if a woman gets pregnant after being raped, that was God’s intention and abortion is out. Mourdock might have done better to keep his views on God’s intentions to himself since they clearly cost him the Senate seat. His follow-up attempt to explain his words – God intends pregnancies but not rapes -- caused further head scratching. Why is God’s sphere of moral attention limited to pregnancies but not rapes? With options in public service probably closed to him after his anti-feminist skid into the ditches, Mr. Mourdock might take the free time now available to him to brush up on the teachings of the Church Fathers, particularly as they touch on women’s matters, before getting further entangled in the thorny doctrinal thickets surrounding the nature of God’s providence.
Mitt Romney wins the Well-Oiled Weathervane Award for his astonishing shifts in political view during the campaign. By pandering to whatever audience he faced at any given moment, he underwent more shape changes than Plastic Man or the sea-god Proteus. By suddenly reversing prior positions on taxes, women’s issues, and health care, the Prince of Bain reduced Obama to a stunned, silent stupor in the first Presidential debate. Campaign evasions and inconsistencies are pretty standard in politics, but Romney’s Orwellian assumption that the past and his past statements and positions never existed, reached a level of duplicitous amnesia unlikely to be seen in the future – or so one hopes. As one Romney staff member put it, “We’re not going to be dictated to by fact checkers.” To understand Romney’s slippery campaign strategy, we can just take his own words -- “I don’t remember what I said, but I stand by it,” and negate them to: “I don’t remember what I said, but I don’t stand by it.”
The Samurai Warrior Award (with accompanying rubber sword ) for committing collective political hara-kiri goes out to all the Republican primary debaters as they took one doltishly extremist position after another to pander to the prejudices of their primary voters. This insured general-election defeat for whoever emerged victorious from their lemming-like plunge over the far-right cliff. Herman Cain’s slogan “I’m running to lead, not to read” perfectly expressed their hostility to intellect. Rick Perry’s brain fart when he forgot exactly which agencies he wanted abolished – he hardly seemed to care which -- embodied the mindless anti-government obsession of this Tea –Party-leaning crowd. Unanimous thumbs down from them to the theory of evolution and to even one dollar of tax revenue for ten dollars of budget cuts. A border fence to electrocute would-be illegals? Sure, why not? Loud applause from the bloodthirsty audience for letting a heart attack victim without medical insurance die in the street. Not even Romney’s eleventh-hour kabuki dance to distance himself from these repellent debate performances could wash their moral and political stench off of him. Parting from this collection of presidential also-rans is such sweet sorrow, and we wish them an extended and influential future in the Republican Party.
The Don’t-Let-the-Doorknob-Hit –You-on-Your-Way-Out Award– and a fond good riddance—are extended to two apoplexy-prone Tea Party congressional foot soldiers, Joe Walsh of Illinois and Allen West of Florida. Mr. Walsh’s attack on his opponent Tammy Duckworth for talking too much about her war injuries – the loss of three limbs during her service in Iraq -- further enhanced his reputation for maladroit nastiness, and he lost easily. His vitriolic diatribes against the government, delivered in his distinctive bullying, nose-in-your-face style were welcome fodder to Tea Partyers. So also were Mr. West’s impassioned attacks on President Obama and any program created in the twentieth century. His most notorious counter-factual claim – that 79 to 82 Democrats in Congress are Communists – recalls the heyday of Joe McCarthy and shines a light on West’s borderline-fascistic world view that thinks of socialists, progressives, and of course liberals as Communists Well, , toodledo gentlemen. Get back to us real soon – like ten years from next Thursday.
The Where Did All These Darkies Come From? Award for race-based charges of voter fraud goes to former Maine Republican Party Chair Charlie Webster for getting riled up about the number of African- Americans voting in one of his districts. “I never saw so many Blacks around here before, and neither did anybody else I know. They must have been bused in from out of state,” he observed. Back home in his own community after being fired, Charlie won’t have to worry about any unwelcome African-Americans showing up around him on the streets, in stores, or – worst of all – in voting booths.
But it’s not all bad news for Republicans. Mitt Romney wins the Great Leap Forward Award for spectacular success in reaching out to African American voters by collecting six percent of their votes, compared to Obama’s ninety-three percent, in the election. At a superficial glance, this may not seem like much of an accomplishment, but back in July, Romney got only 0.5 percent of the Black vote to Obama’s 99.5 percent. In just four months, Mr. Romney increased his share of the Black vote by 1,100 percent! How did he do this? By his relentless focus on urban issues? By bringing a claque of twenty Black Republicans to applaud for him in his speech to the NAACP? By the racial diversity of his campaign audiences? Was it Herman Cain’s influential endorsement of him? Or was it by successfully preaching his deepest religious conviction -- the gospel of wealth -- to Black Americans? Who knows? But hats off to Mr. Romney for forging new inroads between the Republican Party and African Americans.
By publicly and repeatedly questioning Obama’s citizenship and his right to be President, the modest and unassuming Donald Trump earns the Bait and Tackle Award for politically motivated fishing expeditions. Trump’s extended PR campaign in this effort garnered him enough support from the birther crowd to catapult him briefly to the top of the polls among Republican wannabe’s – a tribute less to Trump’s nonexistent Presidential qualifications than to the pathology of the current Republican Party. Not even Obama’s release of his birth certificate ended Trump’s fishing trip. His crack staff of special investigators returned from Honolulu still unconvinced of Obama’s birth in Hawaii, and they’re now examining the water marks on the birth certificate for proof of its inauthenticity.
In recognition of those politicians and pundits who most notably embarrassed or disgraced themselves during this year’s election, we present The 2012 Republican Election Awards.
By insisting that Romney would trounce Obama in the election, Dick “Landslide” Morris wins the Cloudy Crystal Ball Award for partisan and off-target election predictions. Mr. Morris afterwards blamed the unforeseen outcome on demographic voter trends that skewed his otherwise astute prognostication. More minority voters turned out to vote for President Obama than he’d expected. This glitch, Mr. Morris implies, resulted from the proliferation of non-white voters, whose frenzied breeding habits are stealing voting power away from more sober and sexually restrained white people. Incidentally, Mr. Morris doesn’t necessarily reflect this Caucasian behavior pattern -- he was fired from the Clinton White House after he turned up in a hotel room with a prostitute.
Karl Rove wins this year’s Pot Calling the Kettle Black Award for accusing Democrats of “suppressing the vote” of would-be Republican voters by running anti-Romney campaign ads. The double-pronged hypocrisy of this remark garners it a special place in Mr. Rove’s crowded trophy room of distortions and lies – first, in the breath-taking chutspa of someone whose trademark is negative ads accusing others of them and second, in Rove misnaming this “voter suppression,” a term that in fact describes exactly what his party so shamelessly tried to do in state after state during the election.
The Zygote Protection Award for the care and defense of emerging humans goes to the 2012 Republican Platform Committee and its chair, Governor Bob “vaginal probe” MacDonnell – someone never shy about legislating matters relating to ladies’ private parts. The GOP Platform’s assertion of Fourteenth Amendment rights including property rights for fertilized eggs combats the evils not just of abortion, but of rampant contraception. While ignoring the concerns of people already alive, the Republican zygote protection platform provides added opportunities for developing embryos to share in the American Dream.
Speaking of zygotes, soon-to-be former Congressman Todd Akin receives the Advanced Uterine Studies Award for notable discoveries in the field of women’s reproductive functions for his statement that a trigger mechanism in victims of forcible rape , automatically “shuts down” women’s pregnancies. This award includes a grant to pursue research at Bob Jones University to test his theory. Scientific proof of this “shut down” phenomenon would eliminate the need for allowing abortion rights for victims of what Akin calls “forcible rape” victims and would compel women careless enough to participate in voluntary rape to live with the consequences. We wish Mr. Akin success in his research. He’ll have plenty of time now to work on it since he was soundly beaten in the Missouri Senate election after his rape statement was ridiculed by the entire country. We look to hear of further discoveries from the forcible rape candidate as he shines the light of science into the mysteries of human reproduction.
The Eternal Flame Award for relentless pursuit of a single news story goes to the Fox News team for its 24-7 coverage of the attack on the American Embassy and the killing of four Americans at Benghazi. Cool-headed, in-depth analysis of this continuously developing story by the likes of Sean Hannity, Lynn Cheney, and John “Yosemite Sam” Bolton solidifies Fox’s reputation for fair and balanced news. As a tribute to the “Eternal Flame” title of this award, for three months, Fox didn’t let twenty minutes go by without searing the image of the burning embassy into the minds of their transfixed viewers. Fox has already raised “Benghazigate” to the level of not just the Watergate scandal, but to world-historical tragedies like the fall of the Bastille, Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, and the Crucifixion.
The Hoist with their Own Petard Award goes to the entire Republican Party for its coordinated efforts to use the state governments they control to suppress likely Democrats from voting. The variety of tricks Republicans tried – trumped up fears of non-existent voter fraud, laws requiring various forms of voter ID, limiting early voting, purging minority voters from voting lists, sending out operatives to intimidate minority-looking voters, making urban voters wait hours in line to vote – is a tribute to their ingenuity. How surprised they were – and how sweet it was --when minority voters angry at this skullduggery turned out in even larger numbers to elect Obama.
Gambling casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson wins the Shekels Flushed down the Toilet Award for money wasted trying to defeat President Obama. While right-wing high-rollers like the Koch Brothers may have outspent him, Mr. Adelson earned this award by being willing to bankroll any Republican flavor-of-the-month nut-case who momentarily rose to the top of the polls – Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Rich Santorum, you name them and Adelson threw his money at them – before settling on his final losing candidate, Mitt Romney. Like one of his hooked casino customers, Adelson bet on every roulette wheel number except Obama’s, and – schlimazel -- the ball landed on that one! But what determination Adelson showed! If the GOP had nominated a trained chimpanzee to run against Obama, this toad-like multibillionaire would have funded it – especially if it was male and circumcised.
Though little more than a cranky Fox commenter these days, Sarah Palin earns this year’s Rectal Pain Award for statements that return to bite people in the ass. Her sneering description of Barack Obama as “a community organizer” in her 2008 nomination acceptance speech has been repeated by dozens of Republicans. Too bad for Ms. Palin and her party that Obama’s success in turning out the Democratic vote this year demonstrated his skill as – you got it – a community organizer.
Senator Mitch McConnell receives the If You Shoot at the King, Don’t Miss Award for missing the target of his very publicly stated goal of making Obama a one-term President– - never mind trying to help the country with legislation. His back-room arm-twisting to make sure that his party blocked every Obama legislative proposal of the past four years – even proposals Republicans had previously supported -- set a new standard for negativity, spite, and small-mindedness in a political leader. Thanks to McConnell’s scorched-earth politics, he and his Congress now have about the same approval rating with the American public as does Hamas. Now Senator McConnell can cash in on the vast reserves of goodwill he’s built up with President Obama as he negotiates with him about preserving tax breaks for the rich.
The St. Paul at Tarsus Award for instant election-night spiritual conversions goes to Sean Hannity, who saw the divine light as the election returns rolled in and shifted before our very eyes from anti-illegal- alien xenophobe to pro-immigration moderate – provided that suitable unspecified punishments are meted out to illegals on their path to rehabilitation. Others can decide whether Mr. Hannity’s remarkable shift was a genuine change of heart or a cynical attempt to put Latino votes in the Republican ledger. In any case, Hannity’s smug claim that this sudden about-face will send droves of Latinos to vote Republican in the next election confirms his central niche in the right-wing alternate-reality bubble.
Speaking of alternate realities, the Philip K. Dick Award for constructing and then getting sucked up into an alternate universe that blows up in one’s face goes to the entire Fox News team and supporting politicians for their election reportage. The most dramatic collision of their fantasy world with external reality came when Karl Rove’s fictional analysis of what was happening in Ohio ran up against the actual Ohio voting returns and Fox declared Obama the winner and the election over. The carefully constructed Fox universe popped like a punctured balloon. The bogus pro-Romney polls, the mythical Romney “momentum,” and the so-called Republican enthusiasm edge that the Fox team gushed about –all turned out on election night to be as imaginary as unicorns or Tea Party intellectuals. Watching Rove spout statistical gobbledygook as he clashed with Fox producers about the Ohio voting returns was pure Schadenfreude for many of us. For the Fox team, though, a cruel, hard world of recalcitrant facts stared them in the face, a world where real polls predict election outcomes better than touchy-feely intuitions by Fox pundits. Such cognitive dissonance was too much for Fox viewers. Once the election was decided, they turned off their TV’s and vented their frustrations in various ways: heading to the nearest bar, taking aim at their Nate Silver dartboards, emailing petitions to secede from the Union, or loading their guns for when the Obama White House tries to confiscate them.
The Barbarians at the Gates Award for dire pronouncements about how Obama’s reelection spells the doom of Western civilization was hotly contested for among conservatives. The plangent post-election laments of disconsolate right-wingers reverberated across the nation and could be heard from the offices of The National Review and the Heritage Foundation to the fields and bayous of the Old Confederacy, from the oak-paneled corporate board rooms of Goldman-Sachs to the wooded Christian militia boot camps of Montana. After much prayer and fasting, we’ve decided to give two notable figures the Barbarians at the Gates Award: Fox pundit Bill O’Reilly and VP candidate Paul Ryan. Mr. Ryan, something of a Tea Party Oswald Spengler, earned his share of this accolade for declaring Obama’s re-election the end of Judeo-Christian culture in America – whether because Mr. Obama is a secret Muslim, a secret agnostic –or both. Bill O’Reilly, a more veteran culture warrior, added a characteristically racial overtone to the discussion by mournfully noting that white Americans are now a beleaguered minority, a sign of cultural decadence that will soon spell the end of the values of hard work and responsibility so peculiar to the white race. We can draw comfort from these two leaders of the Kulturkampf as they pace the watchtowers and draw on their intellectual arsenals to rally conservatives confronting the darkening tide of liberalism.
The From God’s Lips to My Ears Award for insider knowledge of God’s plans -- -especially on female pregnancy issues -- goes to unsuccessful Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock. Mr. Mourdock earns this accolade for explaining in a debate that if a woman gets pregnant after being raped, that was God’s intention and abortion is out. Mourdock might have done better to keep his views on God’s intentions to himself since they clearly cost him the Senate seat. His follow-up attempt to explain his words – God intends pregnancies but not rapes -- caused further head scratching. Why is God’s sphere of moral attention limited to pregnancies but not rapes? With options in public service probably closed to him after his anti-feminist skid into the ditches, Mr. Mourdock might take the free time now available to him to brush up on the teachings of the Church Fathers, particularly as they touch on women’s matters, before getting further entangled in the thorny doctrinal thickets surrounding the nature of God’s providence.
Mitt Romney wins the Well-Oiled Weathervane Award for his astonishing shifts in political view during the campaign. By pandering to whatever audience he faced at any given moment, he underwent more shape changes than Plastic Man or the sea-god Proteus. By suddenly reversing prior positions on taxes, women’s issues, and health care, the Prince of Bain reduced Obama to a stunned, silent stupor in the first Presidential debate. Campaign evasions and inconsistencies are pretty standard in politics, but Romney’s Orwellian assumption that the past and his past statements and positions never existed, reached a level of duplicitous amnesia unlikely to be seen in the future – or so one hopes. As one Romney staff member put it, “We’re not going to be dictated to by fact checkers.” To understand Romney’s slippery campaign strategy, we can just take his own words -- “I don’t remember what I said, but I stand by it,” and negate them to: “I don’t remember what I said, but I don’t stand by it.”
The Samurai Warrior Award (with accompanying rubber sword ) for committing collective political hara-kiri goes out to all the Republican primary debaters as they took one doltishly extremist position after another to pander to the prejudices of their primary voters. This insured general-election defeat for whoever emerged victorious from their lemming-like plunge over the far-right cliff. Herman Cain’s slogan “I’m running to lead, not to read” perfectly expressed their hostility to intellect. Rick Perry’s brain fart when he forgot exactly which agencies he wanted abolished – he hardly seemed to care which -- embodied the mindless anti-government obsession of this Tea –Party-leaning crowd. Unanimous thumbs down from them to the theory of evolution and to even one dollar of tax revenue for ten dollars of budget cuts. A border fence to electrocute would-be illegals? Sure, why not? Loud applause from the bloodthirsty audience for letting a heart attack victim without medical insurance die in the street. Not even Romney’s eleventh-hour kabuki dance to distance himself from these repellent debate performances could wash their moral and political stench off of him. Parting from this collection of presidential also-rans is such sweet sorrow, and we wish them an extended and influential future in the Republican Party.
The Don’t-Let-the-Doorknob-Hit –You-on-Your-Way-Out Award– and a fond good riddance—are extended to two apoplexy-prone Tea Party congressional foot soldiers, Joe Walsh of Illinois and Allen West of Florida. Mr. Walsh’s attack on his opponent Tammy Duckworth for talking too much about her war injuries – the loss of three limbs during her service in Iraq -- further enhanced his reputation for maladroit nastiness, and he lost easily. His vitriolic diatribes against the government, delivered in his distinctive bullying, nose-in-your-face style were welcome fodder to Tea Partyers. So also were Mr. West’s impassioned attacks on President Obama and any program created in the twentieth century. His most notorious counter-factual claim – that 79 to 82 Democrats in Congress are Communists – recalls the heyday of Joe McCarthy and shines a light on West’s borderline-fascistic world view that thinks of socialists, progressives, and of course liberals as Communists Well, , toodledo gentlemen. Get back to us real soon – like ten years from next Thursday.
The Where Did All These Darkies Come From? Award for race-based charges of voter fraud goes to former Maine Republican Party Chair Charlie Webster for getting riled up about the number of African- Americans voting in one of his districts. “I never saw so many Blacks around here before, and neither did anybody else I know. They must have been bused in from out of state,” he observed. Back home in his own community after being fired, Charlie won’t have to worry about any unwelcome African-Americans showing up around him on the streets, in stores, or – worst of all – in voting booths.
But it’s not all bad news for Republicans. Mitt Romney wins the Great Leap Forward Award for spectacular success in reaching out to African American voters by collecting six percent of their votes, compared to Obama’s ninety-three percent, in the election. At a superficial glance, this may not seem like much of an accomplishment, but back in July, Romney got only 0.5 percent of the Black vote to Obama’s 99.5 percent. In just four months, Mr. Romney increased his share of the Black vote by 1,100 percent! How did he do this? By his relentless focus on urban issues? By bringing a claque of twenty Black Republicans to applaud for him in his speech to the NAACP? By the racial diversity of his campaign audiences? Was it Herman Cain’s influential endorsement of him? Or was it by successfully preaching his deepest religious conviction -- the gospel of wealth -- to Black Americans? Who knows? But hats off to Mr. Romney for forging new inroads between the Republican Party and African Americans.
By publicly and repeatedly questioning Obama’s citizenship and his right to be President, the modest and unassuming Donald Trump earns the Bait and Tackle Award for politically motivated fishing expeditions. Trump’s extended PR campaign in this effort garnered him enough support from the birther crowd to catapult him briefly to the top of the polls among Republican wannabe’s – a tribute less to Trump’s nonexistent Presidential qualifications than to the pathology of the current Republican Party. Not even Obama’s release of his birth certificate ended Trump’s fishing trip. His crack staff of special investigators returned from Honolulu still unconvinced of Obama’s birth in Hawaii, and they’re now examining the water marks on the birth certificate for proof of its inauthenticity.
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