Obama vs the Clown Parade

Last weekend I hung out with my pal Pelf, watching boxing and catching up. At some point he made the prediction "Obama will be the most accomplished one-term president in history", which brought me up a bit short.

Not because I'm a big fan- Obama's embrace & extension of key Bush policies in the realm of civil liberties and foreign policy combined with a legislative track record that reminds me of a moderate Republican from the late 80's/early 90s (rendering the shrieks and cries of SOCIALIST from the Right into parody) dampen whatever enthusiasm I might otherwise feel.

But I do think Obama's a shoe-in for reelection as there isn't a single candidate on the right the general public would trust to plunge their toilet.

Well, there's one....but he'll never make it out of the primary.
More on him in a bit further down.

The current Republicans party is ruled with an iron fist by its most retrograde, spiteful elements. Pandering to the loons has been part and parcel of their electoral success for my entire adult life, but guys like Reagan & Bush Sr were savvy enough to placate the base while maintaining deniability with everyone else. Lately either the nuts got hungrier, the politicians got dumber, or both- when a cartoon idiot like Trump boosts himself to the top of the field by embracing fundamentally racist birth certificate conspiracy theories, your party is screwed. And the devastating one-two punch Obama landed last week, knocking Trump's wig out of the ring and flattening his pretend candidacy for the ten count has been my favorite

There is one freak in the sideshow who'd be at least marginally acceptable in polite company- Willard 'Mitt' Romney. He looks the part and while he's renounced sanity in a bid for Teabagger support, he's done it in such a transparently opportunistic way that 'real' voters would understand he'd dump the kooks like a dirty diaper once he got into office.

Alas for the Mitt Who Would Be King.....he's a Mormon.
Sure, the disdain of one screwball literalist religious movement for the beliefs of another is amusing, but the fundies who rule the Republican primaries play for blood.
Mitt picked the wrong cult to join, so he's hosed.

Republican candidates are presented with a real quandry- they can't win primaries without getting the loonies on their campaign bus, but they can't win generals with the loonies always insisting on swerving into oncoming traffic.

And, the last couple of cycles, the loonies have been in the driver's seat.