Sperman Cain and the No-Soul Train

    

     As if the multiple allegations of sexual misconduct weren't enough. As if the Libya gaffe wasn't enough. As if the smoking campaign manager wasn't enough. As if the silly 9-9-9 economic plan wasn't enough. Now we get the closer: a Georgia businesswoman has just opened up to a local Atlanta station about a 13-year "inappropriate relationship" with the pizza guy turned presidential aspirant. And she's got proof. Not that it matters. Like Governor Oops, Herman looked good through Republican beer goggles for about five minutes. But the true damage wasn't that he opened his fly. It was that he opened his mouth. Now he's polling in single digits, and as he "reassesses" his campaign; i.e. gets ready to bug out, we're on to the new flavor of the minute: Newt. I guess, in Republican politics, everything old is Newt again.

     Newt the sage, the historian. The three-times married traditional family guy, who could've given Herman some advice: if you're going to fuck around, you gotta marry 'em. Otherwise you look like a hypocrite spouting the old-time values. But compared to the misfits they keep throwing up on that stage, Newt is a genius. And through it all, Mitt's still sitting there polling in the low 20s and acting like the chick in high school who wouldn't put out but knew the boys would come back around when they were ready to settle down. 

     It must be even tougher to endure this debacle from the GOP side. The only honest statement out of the mouth of a Republican in the last three years was uttered by Mitch McConnell: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term President." Everything they've said and done in all that time has been in the service of that one objective. So, it must be torture to have spent three years grooming a champion to take back the White House only to end up with this non-tourage. This clown college. This movable farce. I imagine, for the more sober, old-school Republicans, at some point you have to look at this group and think: "it really doesn't matter who they fucked. What matters is that they're fucked."

     And while one can take some delight in each gaffe, each misstep, each oops, and each "I barely knew that woman" the joy is not pure. Because as soon as one incompetent derails it just opens the field for another one even more onerous. Cain disappears. Great. Bachmann babbles her way into obscurity. Whew. Still, that leaves Newt and Mitt. There must be some schadenfreude-like word for the momentary joy one feels at each fool's disappearance only to have it quickly replaced by sadness brought on by the realization of the fools who are left.
  
     For all the rancor that has permeated the political debate over the last three years, the only thing we may share during this process, both Democrats and Republicans, is the knowledge that this group is just fucking sad. Though given the tired Republican platform, maybe Perry the fighter, Mitt the statesman, Newt the scholar, and Bachmann the waitress are the true standard bearers of some very tired, mean, outdated, discredited ideas.

     Still, by the time they're done, the dull Mormon at the end of the bar nursing a diet Coke may end up being their guy. The man who made hundreds of millions of dollars buying companies and stripping them for parts while throwing people out of work. That's the job creator. The man who brought health care reform to Massachusetts but still can't find the right door to open so he can moonwalk away from it. A suit and a haircut in search of a personality and some conviction. This is the great white hope. That's got to hurt.

    Emotionally, it must be like that joke about the neophyte in Hell who sees the denizens standing knee-deep in shit and thinks "Hell doesn't seem so bad." Then a voice bellows out of the speakers: "Ok, break's over!  Everyone back on their heads!"