Rick Perry was always the one candidate Obama and the mainstream media (and GOP establishment) feared.
With the help of Fox News, and sadly, Gov Perry’s staff itself, they’ve done a good job of ensuring Rick won’t be the 2012 Republican presidential candidate.
(Consultants who place their interests above those of their clients are always the biggest risk to any campaign.)
I should also give honorable mention to many of Rick’s erstwhile friends in the conservative media, who had gotten caught up in the game, and left much of the “reasons why we fight” on the doorstep.
Co-opting the conservative media was always a Do-this-first agenda item for the media and the GOP establishment. With a demographic mirror-image repeat of the 1980 election looming…an unpopular president, a failed president, an embarrassing president, and a horrible economy properly laid squarely at his feet, the nation clearly at the brink of of so many dark things, plus an enraged voting majority almost no one ever calculates for polling purposes…
…the leftwing media could not afford to get caught unawares as they did when the 1980 conservative candidate (Ronald Reagan) not only won, but won in a landslide.
For the media and GOP, this was not a hard call, so they moved quickly, as soon as the ink dried on the revolutionary results of the 2010 midterms, to marginalize some of the names among the conservative media so there would not be a repeat in 2012.
I admit I was surprised at the ease with which the media pulled this off, proving once again the sage old axiom that what everybody wants is to belong to a club (which explains why Rush Limbaugh left New York.).
Like Herman Cain before, another victim of the GOP’s “we can’t let this man embarrass us” pogrom, Perry had a few truly revolutionary propositions, from shutting down entire federal departments to putting Congress on half pay, and turning much of the DC parking lots into good grazing pasture for at least half the year.
He struck me as man who actually would push to get those things done.
But this time around men who can do things come in behind men who can talk well about things, so, we can also thank ourselves, at least that part of conservatism who believes that symbolism and style trumps substance when it comes to beating Obama. And there is really nothing more stylistic than a fine talker.
Newt Gingrich was always the best extemporaneous speaker of the lot. A man of giant ideas, and, alas, also giant negatives. Unlike the passionless Romney, he is full of it.
Moving on
So it is in this light I’m moving on from what will be a titillating process, the airways filled with today’s, and next week’s drama, when all I care about is that the process be drawn out as long as possible.
Like 2008, the best man (men) never even got close in the GOP primaries. In fact, the best men almost never even get in anymore it seems. And why not? Look at Herman Cain, or more subtly, Perry. It’s one thing to have a few skeletons in your closet, but quite another to have your Republican opponent sneak into your house and plant a few more. Believe it or not, Mitt Romney’s team, not Newt Gingrich’s or Ron Paul’s, appear to be best at this sport of creating history out of whole cloth, with a record going back as far as 1996, when he attempted to derail Steve Forbes campaign. I’ve never liked sneaks, which is another sign of low character.
So you can see what the process, when in the hands of the professionals, has wrought.
In saying this, I have just mentioned the three candidates in the GOP field I find generally lacking of character. On character alone, I believe the candidates who have dropped out, including Huntsman and Tim Pawlenty, as well the single conservative still standing, to be infinitely superior.
But this is not to say conservatism will lose this campaign this year.
And while the average citizen has little to say about this rigged primary process, we still control the final vote. And above all, we still hold the Ace of Aces.
The Ace of Aces
Why I say this is that this is America, and in America events often shape the leader. In fact, it’s in our wiring, and our wiring is unique.
You see, we have been looking for a Deliverer, expecting a George Washington to rescue us. It doesn’t always work that way.
If you believe that America was created by the hands of Providence (I do) then it follows that there was a purpose in creating us, and that purposes is not yet fulfilled. It is not intended, as Barack Obama wishes, that the America, as created by the Founders and Divine guidance, should just slip under the waves. Our work is not yet done.
Having wandered in the Wilderness for 48 years, all the way back to LBJ and the Great Society, we are just now beginning to figure it all out.
What I know is that our Invisible Hand can choose anyone, including the least among us, to lead and deliver us, as He had in the past. And He may choose the most unlikely of messengers to tell us, perhaps even Barack Obama, for surely, did not God save Israel by sending messages to Balaam through his ass? (Numbers 22)
(Works for me)
Being delivered by the least of men is not uncommon in America, while unheard of anywhere else in the world. We have been saved time and time again by men because of that one peculiar thing that made them quintessentially American.
Consider that lanky kid born in a log cabin in Kentucky, or a river rat along the banks of the Ohio, or that shy farm boy from Kansas.
Lincoln himself was transformed by events in this manner, then reached way down in his military kitbag to find a boozing general from Ohio to end the Civil War. FDR picked George Marshall and not Douglas MacArthur, who then passed over a stadium-full of generals to pick out a young brigadier named Eisenhower, who MacArthur called a “really fine XO” (and not as a compliment), all because Ike could organize and fight a completely different kind of war, which would bring an end to the world war in Europe.
And consider even George W Bush in 2001. Imagine if either Clinton or Gore had been on the watch deck that awful day. Why, we’d be paying half the treasury in Danegeld to those Barbary pirates today, and every American school would have a special room for prayer rugs.
Consider that cost versus the cost we’ve actually paid.
All these episodes expose something special about being American. It’s why high school grads can build a company buying and selling scrap, or HVAC installation and repair (these are the millionaires Obama really hates). And as our military has proved through several wars, and still teaches today, you can kill every officer and non-com in the unit and still some corporal or private will pick up the mantle of leadership and finish the job.
Both the Germans and Field Marshall Sir Bernard Montgomery hated that we could do this, for respectively, they couldn’t do it, and he refused to allow it.
America is unique, and if you think it’s simply by accident, a freak of nature, be my guest. I don’t.
So, as long as we are wired like this, God has several more ways to skin the Devil’s cat most of you never consider. That the system has become so corrupt it can no longer be the path to righting our national ship doesn’t mean there isn’t another way.
So while I consider the credentials of the remaining candidates to be pretty thin in the area of leadership, I have to keep in mind that they too can be changed by events.
Events, Events and more Events
I have a particular reason for wanting to drag the campaign out, even onto the convention floor. 1) It improves conservatism’s options and 2) it reduces Obama’s. Worse, for Obama, it messes up his timetable.
You see, the Obama plan is based on the weakest GOP candidate getting the nod as early as possible so that he can maximize his efforts to plan a total corruption of the election.
Long before I got into the political aspects of campaigns, in 2009 I wrote that the Left had gone “all-in.” This means, by hook or by crook they will use every device possible, from massive fraud to violence in the streets, and yes, possibly even exerting extra-constitutional muscle. They will not simply lose in November then slink away back to the sewers to await for the next opportunity. Even Mitt Romney has promised to tear down their major lynchpin to total national control, Obamacare. It would take them a lifetime to restore what they’ve built these past three years.
(Read this any way you want. This is analysis, not advocacy. I know these people….even better than Limbaugh, or my sagging, wart-riddled, naked body.)
My estimate today is that Obama has been so successful in pushing the constitutional envelope without even a hint of backlash, he may be encouraged to try bigger bluffs. His impeachable offenses continue to grow. And his departments, Justice the worst, but also State, Energy, the czars, have created clearly what can be called “a long train of abuses and usurpations.”
And our front line of defense, Mitch McConnell, is still doing stupid dog tricks for Harry Reid.
If I were a betting man, I think Obama will be encouraged to bet that with guys like McConnell in charge of the opposition, and men like Romney and Gingrich vying for the top spot, violence in the streets (unions and a reemergence of a much better prepared Occupy as soon as the weather clears) will intimidate voters, and suppress them.
And his reasoning will be sound, for Obama knows, even if the GOP doesn’t, that the simmering underbelly of uncounted voter anger is not falling but rising. He knows he can steal two, maybe three percent, but he cannot steal ten. He knows he cannot even whip his own base, including inner city plantation dwellers, to the polls to vote for him. He knows that even if he can depress total voter turnout by 20%, it still may not be enough.
He knows that we, the same people who have no voice in the primaries, will steam roll him in November, unless he can find some device to keep us home.
I would like for Obama to tip his hand earlier, not later, in part because the GOP itself, except maybe McConnell and the Delaware GOP, might finally have the scales fall from their eyes as to the true nature of the game at hand.
This means that he must be left wondering who the nominee will be as long as possible. that way even people not on the radar might turn out to be the nominee. And even if Romney or Gingrich, not to mention the string of A-teamers who have left, will stand united…all because God sent us a message through an ass.
So, I’m moving on, and leaving the campaign in the hands of Providence, waiting for Balaam’s ass to say the sweet words of perfidy that will unite us all. In the meantime I’ll be breaking out my trusty handbook on pouring sugar into gas tanks and slashing tires.
