GOP hijinks ensue: Election is Obama's to lose

The 2012 election is Obama's to lose: he's running against himself. The GOP field of candidates is looking a lot like they were turned down by the Society of Village Idiots for being too idiotic.

Obama has proven to be skilled at dealing with matters concerning foreign affairs. After eliminating Osama bin Laden, Obama continued his reign of terror on the terrorists by eliminating a bunch of bad guys with little more than unmanned Predator drones and a few SEAL Team 6 members. Killing terrorists with surgical precision is one thing, but fixing the economy can be more problematic.

Conventional wisdom would have Obama losing because of the slow pace of the country's economic recovery. But conventional wisdom does not seem to apply, since the GOP candidates are not conventional, nor do they have any wisdom.

The current state of the GOP’s idiot parade can be traced back to Donald Trump, who ran a fake campaign to boost the ratings of his reality TV show, and based the whole charade on promising to reveal Obama's true birthplace, which he assured was somewhere very far away.

Before dropping out of a race in which he wasn’t actually running, Trump left us with the term “birther”, which should have been his last contribution to society. However, Trump has turned out to be the clown prince of the GOP, giving political advice to all GOP candidates who pass through New York, or wherever Trump happens to own a hotel. Most recently, Trump has come to the defense of Herman Cain, suggesting that Cain probably settled the allegations of sexual harassment made against him by at least three women to avoid legal fees.

The sexual harassment charges against Cain date back to the time when he was the head of the National Restaurant Association, leading many to wonder what the head of the National Restaurant Association is doing running for president. The fact that Cain was leading in many GOP polls prior to the allegations, and his numbers haven't changed as a result, shows that either the pollsters are drunk or that the voters don't care or believe the allegations, and are also drunk.

Since the harassment allegations, Cain is bringing in wads of cash, even more than before, in addition to staying on top of the polls. The sex scandal has evidently given Cain the credibility to call himself a politician. Cain has never actually been elected to public office, a fact that might be working in his favor. The voters seem to like his straight talk, even though his political ideas are laughable. His “9-9-9” tax plan was devised by some guy who couldn't pass the CPA exam, and it has been criticized by pretty much everybody. Cain has also espoused some radical views regarding electrified fences, abortion, and negotiating with terrorists, only to say that he was “just joking” when confronted with specifics.

Rick Perry came into the race late and jumped to the top of the polls. After plummeting back to earth when people tried to understand what he was saying, he was polling as low as single digits. Trying to get things back on track, Perry recently revived the “birther” issue. When he realized this was not getting him anywhere in the polls, Perry explained that he was “just having some fun with Donald Trump”.

Perry has jumped back into double figures in the polls, and is now running a solid third behind Cain and Mitt Romney. His sanity again came into question a few weeks ago, however, when he delivered a bizarre speech in New Hampshire, appearing to be drunk or stoned (or both). Comedians had a field day, but it's not really that funny when you think that this man was once leading in the race for the GOP nomination. He was a heartbeat away from being trounced by Obama, scaring the bejeebers out of some Republicans who know that Perry can't stand up to the rigors of a presidential campaign (i.e. debating Obama). As it stands, Perry is running third in most polls, so it's too early to count him out.

Perry could get the nomination because Republican voters might just give up and decide that if they have no qualified candidate, a debate between Obama and Perry would have as much entertainment value as a Charlie Sheen meltdown. I am definitely registering as a Republican for this election so I can vote for Perry, even though I've been a Democrat my entire adult life (except for the time I was in college and got stoned and went out and registered for the “Birthday” Party).

The most logical choice to be the GOP contender against Obama is Mitt Romney. He's in a statistical tie with Cain in most polls, with Perry a distant third, but in the end he'll probably win the nomination because he's the most presidential. Just because he looks like a president, however, doesn't mean he can win the nomination. First of all, conservatives have been reluctant to rally behind Romney, feeling that he's just too moderate for the Tea Party nut jobs who have hijacked the Republican Party. They cite the statewide healthcare plan similar to the Obama's national plan that Romney pushed through as governor of Massachusetts.

If Romney does win the nomination, Obama will be helped by the disruption caused by the Tea Party, in addition to the fact that Romney is well known for changing positions whenever it's politically expedient. To win, Romney will have to convince voters that he's not a complete and utter hypocrite.

In addition to the top three candidates, Michele Bachmann leads the pack in insanity and ridiculousness, but is at the bottom of the pack in IQ. The queen of the Tea Party has never been one to care about accuracy. She knows that telling her base what they want to hear will get her further than telling them the truth. Bachmann makes things up as she goes along, whether it’s about American history, the economy, or President Obama.

“Under Barack Obama's watch, we have expended $805 billion to liberate the people of Iraq and, more importantly, 4400 lives...He's been a disaster on foreign policy,” Bachmann told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in a recent interview. The fact that George Bush started the war, not Obama, is not important to Bachmann, although she's correct about it being a disaster. This is just one example of how Bachmann can distort the truth either because she's ignorant or she just wants to distort the truth because she thinks that it will get her votes.

Bachmann isn't the only Republican making things up as she goes along, to which Mitt Romney will attest every time he changes his mind on an issue. And while flip-flopper Romney continues to accuse Perry of flip-flopping, bit player Rick Santorum continues to hammer home his homophobic ideas and radical thinking, outlining a social policy reported this week in the Des Moines Register that would include reinstating “don’t ask, don’t tell,” pursuing a constitutional ban on abortion, enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act and abolishing the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which he obviously finds too liberal-minded.

That leaves Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, who have enjoyed brief moments of weirdness and unintended lapses into comedy when left without their teleprompters, and of course Newt Gingrich, who is obviously going through the motions in order to increase his speaking fees.

With unemployment hovering around 9 percent and the economy in the doldrums, despite Obama's stimulus measures, it would seem that 2012 will not be the year of the incumbent. But how can anyone from this odd group of Republicans win? It is a reassuring thought for liberals, but also a potentially complacent and catastrophic one. Republicans do not have to win in 2012. They just have to watch Obama lose. If you stop looking at the obvious Republican weaknesses and instead look at Obama's problems, then the picture for 2012 doesn't look good for the Democrats. There will be only one winner if Obama loses, and that would be a Republican.

On the other hand, most voters realize that Obama inherited an economic catastrophe that could not conceivably be fixed in a single term. If the economy continues to improve even a little, and Obama can assure the electorate that he is the one to continue that trend, the White House will remain his.

Democrats are eying the GOP's current pathetic situation, in which Bachmann sees Hurricane Irene as a sign from God on government spending, Perry questions evolution, Romney changes his position more than his underwear, and the number of women accusing Cain of sexual harassment is sure to reach nine. But the Democrats in no way feel that victory is assured. The GOP does not have to win the White House, Obama has to give it away. And that won't be an easy thing, given the lack of a qualified opponent on the GOP side.

Election 2012: Why the GOP is D.O.A.

It might not look like it at the moment, but President Obama has a pretty easy path to victory in 2012. All he has to do is sit back and wait for the Republican Party's slapstick band of weirdos, religious fanatics, and angry white racists driven mad seeing a black man in the White House, implode from the weight of its own ridiculousness.

Recent polls have shown that a generic Republican candidate would beat Obama, but the problem with the current crop of GOP candidates is that they are anything but generic. When Ron Paul is your sanest candidate, you know your party is in trouble.

The Republican Party had a major credibility problem even before Donald Trump claimed that Obama was not born in the U.S. and demanded to see his birth certificate. But as the media followed Trump's every idiotic word, most of his party just agreed with him, and the GOP looked like a bunch of racist lunatics. When Trump claimed that Obama wasn't smart enough to get into an Ivy League college, but only got there because of affirmative action, the rest of the party watched and incredibly seemed to agree. This bolstered the logical theory that the Republicans are indeed a bunch of racist idiots, driven mad by a black man more intelligent, articulate and even-tempered than any of their own misguided and bizarre leaders.

Not only did the GOP as a whole fail to dismiss any of this birth certificate outlandishness, but had no comment on candidates who raised the specter of Sharia law in America or dismissed global warming as a socialist plot.

The fact that political lightweight Rick Perry is the newest and best GOP choice sums up the state of the party. Perry has been described as a “stupid George Bush”, but the median IQ of the rest of the GOP hopefuls falls somewhere between Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul.

Although a bit cartoonish, Ron Paul is very articulate, and has attracted somewhat of a cult following. And he is looking pretty smart these days, when matched against the rest of the GOP airheads. However, he has shown some very radical views. For example, his national defense strategy is to allow Iran to have their nuclear weapons because everyone else has them. The reasoning is obviously that the U.S. will always have more nuclear weapons than Iran, so that if they threatened us, we could simply blow them off the map. Paul does have a good point, though. We need to decrease our military spending and think more about our own economy. Obama knows this, but his views are less extreme than Paul's, and he was able to kill Osama bin Laden while simultaneously reducing our troop levels in Afghanistan.

Obama has taken a cautious, level-headed approach to national security, as he has with the rest of his presidential decisions, including the economic ones. You may agree with him or not, but considering the gridlock in Washington caused by the Tea Party and the resistance of the more moderate Republican base to stand up to them, it's amazing that Obama has been able to get anything done at all. The budget negotiations were a disaster, but they weren't Obama's disaster. In November of next year, when voters are alone in the booth, they will remember the chaos caused by a few right-wing nut jobs who were not willing to compromise, default or no default.

According to his Web site, Ron Paul is “America's leading voice for limited, constitutional government, low taxes, and free markets”. Once a fringe candidate, Paul's views are becoming more popular with some on the right simply because they are exactly the opposite of the Democratic positions. The fact that Paul has consistently stuck to his views without wavering sets him apart from the rest of the GOP field, many of whom take whatever positions are popular with their base at any given moment. Front runner Mitt Romney, for example, has turned political flip-flopping into an art form.

It would be an entertaining race if the colorful limited government advocate Paul was the GOP candidate, and Democrats would wholeheartedly approve. But we all know that won't happen, so the focus right now is on Romney and intellectually challenged Rick Perry, who Republican strategist Alex Castellanos says "benefits from an uncluttered mind". Besides not being very sharp on topics outside his comfort zone, particularly foreign policy, Perry's problems are obvious, starting with the fact that he's being compared to Bush. Tea Party favorite Michele Bachmann, winner of the meaningless Iowa Straw Poll, is ahead in many opinion polls, but Republican insiders know that she can't win the general election. First of all, her political views are based on religious extremism and not the facts, and second, she's a Tea Party favorite.

Of all the candidates, Romney looks the most presidential, but sounds the least presidential, at least from the GOP standpoint. Many in the Republican establishment are furious that Romney enacted a health care law in Massachusetts that required people to buy insurance, which was similar to Obama's plan. Romney said that his plan was not like the national law because it applied only to his state. In fact, it was exactly like the national law, expanded to all the states. Romney's consistent inconsistency is why the Democrats have said that he's not pro-choice, he's multiple choice.

The recent debt ceiling negotiation fiasco and subsequent credit rating downgrade seemed to be an indication that Obama is in trouble. Neither party was happy with the deal, and each party blamed the other for the way things were mishandled. But Standard and Poor's, the organization responsible for lowering the credit rating, blamed the GOP for causing it, at the same time the GOP was blaming the Democrats.

Americans are fed up with both parties, and politicians in general, but Obama's path to a second term is starting to look pretty good. The Republican Party is in disarray, and the nuttiness of the candidates compounds the fact that the party is being brought down by the Tea Party. This is not only causing political infighting, but is making the voting public aware just how far to the right the party has moved and how unpopular its positions have become. Not only are they talking about tax cuts for the rich, but cuts to Medicare, deregulating Wall Street and greenhouse gas pollution.

People are unhappy with the current political climate, but the majority don't blame Obama, and they sure as hell don't want to put the Republicans back in charge. Let's look at it this way: the odds are that the GOP will retain control of the House of Representatives next year, and they could theoretically win control of the Senate, given the number of seats up for grabs in 2012. If that happens, a Republican presidential victory would give them total control of the Federal government. Considering that nobody wants the Tea Party running the country, that may be the best argument the Democrats have for keeping Obama in the White House.

Even if the Republican Party could find a candidate more qualified than the current group of oddballs, the Tea Party has already done its damage. In addition, the far left of the Democratic Party may not like the concessions that Obama has had to give to the Republicans, but the liberal criticism aimed at him will position him well with moderate and independent voters, much as President Clinton was helped in his 1996 campaign against Republican Bob Dole. In that case, Clinton engaged in “triangulation”, a strategy by which he positioned himself as a moderate centrist. Clinton was aware that winning over the independent voters was the key to winning the election.

Once the debt crisis is safely in the rear-view mirror, Obama will be able to bring sanity back into vogue, and his critics on the left will at least vote for him, considering that he's their only real choice. By being cautious and level-headed, he has been able to compromise, even with the right-wing Tea Party stinking up the process. Obama will win in 2012 because the Democrats will unite behind him, independents will jump into his corner, and Republicans will split their loyalties between the moronic Tea Party and their more moderate lunatic fringe.

It doesn't matter whether Obama wins or the Republicans lose, it will be the same result. And it doesn't matter how many Democrats ubiquitous candidate Sarah Palin has in her crosshairs. When it comes to the 2012 presidential race, the GOP is D.O.A.