"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." 1 Corinthians 13:11
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| Another NDP Leadership ho hum debate |
The same can’t be said of the GOP campaign to elect a candidate for the impending presidential election in the United States.
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| The Republican Candidates prepare for another debate |
My goodness but it has had its share of drama, excitement, controversy and…well…confusion. I say confusion because it appears that there are many who have forgotten that the candidates are actually on the same team, including both the candidates and many grass roots Republicans.
Initially, it was a horse-race with some polite, if assertive, exchanges of ideas. Various candidates seemed to be the front-runner for a bit and the early debates did what they were supposed to do. They provided a platform that allowed for comparison of the candidates on a level playing field.
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| Mitt Romney |
It became clear early on that some of the candidates who have since dropped out probably shouldn’t have been in the race to begin with. Not knowing that Libya is in Africa is one thing but proudly announcing that to all and sundry during a televised debate as Michelle Bachman did is not a game winning strategy. Rick Perry’s oops moment came when he forgot his own three priorities to address upon becoming president.
The primaries themselves were even more interesting and even exciting. Rick Santorum won a primary, then Mitt Romney even Newt Gingrich had his moment or two in the sun and for a short while it seemed like it could be anyone’s race.
Those were fun times weren’t they? Even Democratic pundits got caught up in the hoopla and put on their best suits for their CNN appearances.
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| Rick Santorum |
But now we’re getting down to the short strokes and the writing is pretty much on the wall about who the eventual candidate is going to be. You would think that might start to rally folks, including the other candidates around the flag for the good of the party but exactly the opposite has happened.
The rhetoric has heated up and is becoming more extreme. Etch-a-sketch props have appeared and every misspoken word is now treated by supporters of this candidate or that as a major policy gaffe. On Twitter, the most rabid supporters of specific GOP candidates attack the others in the race as if they were to the left of Barrack Obama.
You remember President Obama? He’s the guy the GOP want to defeat in the upcoming presidential election. For some reason, many in the Republican party have decided that the best way to achieve that is to not only undermine their own party but their eventual candidate as much as possible before the presidential campaign even begins.
Conservative evangelicals, the Tea Party and the old money bag boys make public pronouncements against the candidates they don’t like rather than simply showing a polite preference for their candidate of choice. It’s war folks and it seems like too many Republicans have seen the enemy and the enemies are…well…the other Republican candidates. Barrack Obama has almost become secondary in this battle.
I am not a politician, thank the Good Lord, but I suspect that the best way to defeat a political opponent probably isn’t found in fielding a final choice from your own party that you have so publicly trashed, he looks anything but presidential.
How can Republicans begin to believe that Americans from all sides of the political spectrum can be expected to have confidence in their final nominee when they have spent the primary season attacking each other’s candidates as if they were Democrats on crack?
This is particularly true of the candidates themselves. Instead of trotting out children’s toys as props to attack some fatuous comment by a Romney staffer as if it actually meant something, why aren’t they putting the party first? I don’t have a crystal ball and don’t know who will win the nomination but as it stands right now, it seems obvious that only Mr. Romney or Mr. Santorum have any real chance.
Isn’t it really time for both Mr. Paul and Mr. Gingrich to show some loyalty to the cause, if not some self-respect and common sense, and step down? Isn’t it time for them to work to rally and unite the party rather than clinging by their fingernails to some desperate, fading hope to assuage their own egos?
I know that won’t make me too popular with their supporters but remember, I don’t have a dog in this race. I’m looking at it from an outsider’s perspective and wondering why the key candidates and their supporters in a political party are less concerned with the overall objective which I thought was to win the White House, than they are with doing whatever they can just to stay in the race.
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| Ads like these have hurt the GOP the most |
Instead, they’re spending obscene amounts of money to beat up each other, money that could be used to carry a united battle to the presidential campaign. They’re providing unbelievable material to the Democrats to use against the eventual Republican nominee and in the end, they will field a candidate so wounded by his own party during the primary, he’ll be limping before the presidential campaign actually begins.
Seems like a strange way to try and win. It’s sort of like having tryouts for quarterback but beating them up so badly during those tryouts, they’re too bashed up to play the game on Friday night.
I think, in the end, the Republicans have not only lost sight of the objective but of just how much with which they had to work. Gas prices are out of control, there are issues with SOPA, PIPA and how the current president tends to overlook constitutional niceties like Congressional approval for military action. There is a $15 trillion deficit which is far from capped and an economy that is as fragile and delicate as centuries-old French lace.More important, there is a confidence deficit as more and more Americans, like citizens in democracies all over the world, are increasingly losing faith in those who would lead them and in their governments.
Those are real issues and worth addressing. The GOP Primaries were a perfect opportunity to focus on those issues while presenting alternative ideas for addressing them from which Republicans could have chosen rather than simply providing reasons not to vote for the other candidate.
Instead as usual, the real issue has once again become winning at all costs and in the end, when politicians and their supporters confuse winning with actually having ideas, we all lose.
The Etch-A-Sketch moment was cute but in the end, it will come back to haunt the GOP. It isn’t just Mr. Santorum who has access to one and you can be damn sure one will pop up in the Democratic presidential campaign. It’s unfortunate that the GOP Presidential Candidates couldn’t go back and turn the campaign upside down and give it a shake to erase some things but then politics, like life, is never as easy as an Etch-A-Sketch.
It is even more unfortunate that political candidates always look for the easy way, usually the trashy way to win rather than having the same confidence in their ideas they expect the rest of us to have in them.
Unfortunately, the only winner right now seems to be seems to be Ohio Art, the manufacturer's of Etch-A-Sketch. Their sales have doubled since the Etch-A-Sketch was used as a political prop and you have to believe that President Obama was one of those who picked one up.
LINKS
Etch-A-Sketch Sales double since GOP used it to trash each other - CNN
Romney and birth control - CNN
Republican candidates in one word - Washington Post
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