Mr. Right Now

It's a strange climate in which to be a top-flight amateur political thinker. Don't get me wrong, it's easier than being a professional one. Those poor bastards are hampered by an expectation to pay attention all the time. Yes, they get paid for their efforts, but I would bet dollars to inflatable post-rectal-surgery seat-cushion donuts I get way more done in the realm of watching YouTube homemade lightsaber duel videos. Yeah, they'll be able to afford to send their children to college, but that's only going to put them on the American job market. My time-use is way more cost effective, considering what I'm getting out of it.


Luckily for me, I only have to be top-flight amateur political thinker when the mood strikes. Normally that means it's Thursday, I have to write and the well's run temporarily dry in the dick-joke department. Don't worry, though: unlike actual water, dick jokes are a self-sustaining, permanently renewable resource. The more pollution, the better.


So I've bent my keen powers of perception and observation to the latest flurry of activity among Republican candidates for the presidency. It's been a busy week what with the fat guy, the black guy and an inflatable sex doll making occasional headlines. And if that weren't enough to process, the headlines all got swept aside by the press fawning over some dead hippie. We've got honest American public servants and Sarah Palin contemplating how best to save the country from the iron-fisted grip of a pro-terrorist dictator whipping the American electorate bloody with the twin lashes of Consensus-building and Rationality and all the Lamestream Media can find time to do is sing dirges over the scrawny body of the only person ever to have left a commune AND earned a living. Typical.


Well I've got my eye on the prize. It's not always easy, especially with this field. That Chris Christie blocks out a lot of light.


I've analyzed the data and as far as I can tell, the message from the GOP voters is this: we hate Mormons. 


They've tried everything not to push Mitt Romney out front. Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Christie until he opted out... We're so far down the list, Republicans are actually now favoring an actual black person. But, to be fair to them, he's also the only candidate to openly espouse a blatantly racist position, a non-negotiable party platform plank since Strom Thurmond switched sides in 1964, so that more or less balances out.


Romney's problem can only be the Mormon thing. He seems in every other way very desirable. Every instance in which Obama agrees to compromise, originally Republican positions immediately become anathema, so you need someone totally fluid on every subject, utterly unhampered by conviction, consistency or cognitive harmony.


And unlike the melanin-overblessed Cain or the genital-innie Bachmann, he certainly looks the part. He's stamped out of the finest medical-grade plastic. Not that cheap, toxic crap Chinese people use to make toys, the good stuff Chinese people use to make replacement knee joints. White teeth, resonant speaking voice, penis... it's all there.


So I don't really get it unless it's that the Party of Specifically Protestant Jesus gets all squirmy when they hear he's reading from Jesus II: Jesus Takes Manhattan. It doesn't square with their worldview based entirely around the selectively constructed central figure of the Messiah. It's hard enough holding that picture together with the effort expended willfully disregarding the inconvenient messages of social justice, universal love, forgiveness, tolerance and communal responsibility in the Book they already have agreed to accept. Bringing in a whole 'nother text is only going to make treading the choppy flood waters of hoped-for eschatology that much more difficult.


Plus, the leading indicator of Republican vote-for-ability? A guy you'd wanna drink a beer with. And Mormons? No beers. EVER. How do you trust a person when you can always trust them to be sober?


It can only be the Mormon thing. Unless it's that he's half Mexican. Neither of those is going to poll well in Gobbler's Knob or whatever that place is called.