Mods, I am posting this in its entirety with the author's (Steve Pizzo) permission.
An opinion piece:
2012 Snoozeroo
Just a short couple of months ago the 2012 presidential election looked like it would be a real rumble. Now it's clear it will be anything but that. In fact, it promises to be nearly irrelevant, if not completely so.
In fact, if it were not for recent Occupy Wall Street phenomena, there wouldn't be a shred of suspense this year at all. At least that virtually leaderless movement offers the promise of surprise and, who knows, maybe even real solutions to real problems. None of which can be found in what's become an increasingly corrupt, cynical and irrelevant electoral process.
One of the chief reasons this year's two-party-kabuki-dance-of-death is hardly worth the effort to watch is because it's been "blessed" by a stable of GOP candidates only the Tea Party or Monty Python could have dreamed up.
And, on the other side, we have the recumbent-incumbent, a man who talked his way into office promising a chicken of hope in every pot. Two years later his supporters would just be happy with something edible to put in their pots - that is if they still have a stove to cook it on. But millions of Americans now don't, because the stove went with the house during foreclosure.
Nevertheless, Obama will very likely be re-elected anyway. Not because voters are just dying for another four years of a president who seems to believe words are deeds, but because of his opponents in the coming race.
At this point, if I had to put my hard earned Social Security check on the line, I'd bet that the GOP ticket will be Romney/Rubio.
Of course Obama could get extra lucky, and the ticket might, in a stretch, be Cain/Rubio.
Now the Rubio as Veep thing is not exactly a choice for which ever of those two head the GOP ticket. If it's Herman Cain then he will need Rubio to reassure the 40% of hispanic voters the GOP needs if it's going to win. True, it would be a thankless task, but Rubio is the only prominent GOPer who can explain, in Spanish, Cain's vision of a border fence decorated with the bodies of still smoking Mexicans, like one of those electric patio bug zappers. (It would be worth learning Spanish just to hear how Rubio explains that one away.)
If the GOP candidate is Romney, Marco Rubio would still be needed to reassure and attract Hispanic voters who wonder how a man that strapped his own dog to the roof of his car for a trip to Canada would treat undocumented immigrants. Rubio would also add a much needed element of color to a ticket topped by the Pillsbury Dough Boy of whitey-white candidates.
But Rubio brings a bit of his own baggage - at least for large hunks of the Tea Party; he's a Catholic. Oh come on, you and I both know that there are large swaths of Tea Party folk who don't like or trust Catholics. So, as their own book says (GALATIANS 6: 7-9 ) "You shall reap what you sow."
Tea Partiers are about to reap a bitter crop, something they never, in their worst nightmares, could have imagined during those heady days when they shouted down members of Congress at town meetings. Ah, those were the days... or is that "daze," now?
They so lowered the "how-crazy-is-too-crazy-to-be-president," bar that they succeeded in scaring away sane and electable Republicans. That was the sowing part.
Their early frontrunners, particularly Bachmann and Perry, turned out to be so jaw-droppingly, vapidly stupid that they withered quickly under the glare of the Kleig lights.
Now comes the reaping part: They are now left with only these two candidates:
Mitt Romney, who is someone they not only don't trust, but who they don't even like. On all levels, human, political and religious, the Right thinks Romney is the wrong one... as in "not one of us."
And they are just now beginning to wonder how their mostly conservative/fundamentalist Christian Tea Party managed to end up with a Mormon on the top of their own list. ( So much for the whole "founding fathers created America for Christians" business, since evangelicals don't consider Mormons to be "real Christians," but rather a cult created over a century after the Founding Fathers did their founding.)
Which is why there is a possibility that Christian conservative opposition to Romney could result in Herman Cain heading the GOP ticket. If I had to cook up a quick description of Cain I'd describe him as the flip side of the Al Sharpton coin. Cain, who has been spending time during debates traveling the nation selling his new book, seems to be a guy caught by surprise. I'm guessing he cooked his candidacy up as just part a book and self-promotion marketing scheme, that suddenly got out of hand.
Now that Cain's stated positions are being examined it's abundantly clear he never even thought them through, or even beyond the marketing slogan stage.. you know.. "9-9-9" and "Twenty foot fence with barbed wire on the top and electrified," kinda stuff. Ask for details and Cain explains he'll get some good advice from good advisers... So far his only advisor he actually named is a friend of his that happens to be an accountant. Think of it as the sequel to the movie "Dave" - only without the funny.
So that's the way the somnolent Mr. O will get to nap in the White House for another 4 years. Because neither Cain nor Romney will be able to attract enough Americans crazy enough to vote for them.
The November 2012 Presidential election will come down to a simple choice:
- A startlingly ineffective President who, while doing no good, has at least not done any substantial harm - like invading the wrong countries.
- Or Mitt Romney, Mormon, former head of Wall Street venture capital firm, Bain Capital,
- Or Mafia themed pizza palace magnate, Herman Cain, who likes to tell the 20 million unemployed Americans that it's their own fault
All of which is why, if you are politically, socially and/or morally bent towards seeking relevance and reality in your life, forget the 2012 race. It's over already and it won't mean squat. Instead, keep your eye and mind on the Occupy Wall Street movement. While it may not be entirely clear right now where all that energy and anger will take us, it promises to be far more relevant than Barack Obama's re-election.
Have a nice day,
Steve
http://www.stephen.pizzo.com
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