esrosedotblog

Below, in an earlier post, I discuss the relative joy of the Demo-candidates.

I should give equal time and say that as far as I can see there is no fun in GOPville.

If I go down the list of the 20 something people who are running for the nomination, only Trump comes closest to being fun. But he is more comic fun, amusing. The kind of joke that keeps running and fuels itself. Trump trump trump. Ha ha.

But he is not fun. He is too much connected to his self-image. No self deprecation that I have seen.

What about the rest of them?

Let's work from this. Sing along Dorothy.

Who is Running For President?

BUSH: No fun here. He is desperately trying to be not-George and so he has pretty much abandoned the true bad-boy charm that even I admired.

CHRISTIE: Can be fun. Fat fun. He is the fat guy who is always laughing at the party to redirect the attention from his obesity to his possible charm. None is evident. And Christie is a bully. Bullies are no fun.

CRUZ: Flat out not fun. Not even mildly amusing. Not even as a target of derision. He is a sharp nosed noise maker with nothing inside.

In no particular order.

FIORINA: Actually has charm and a sense of humor. Even about herself. But they have now cosmeticized her to such a degree that she seems frozen. Look. She was a CEO. A successful one. I think, once, a happy warrior. No more. A mask.

GILMORE: The only funny thing about him is that no one, not one fucking one person, knows who he is. What? Gilmore?

GRAHAM: The sissy boy. A closeted homo. Which in its way can be amusing but not when he is running for President. He is the one the old ladies in the church chuck under the chin. I know. I used to be one. Has a anyone else inferred he is gay? You heard it first here. At least a southern sissy. Of which there is nothing sissier.

HUCKABEE: He is so scary and self involved. A bad accident on the highway. Keep moving. Nothing to see.

JINDAL: This is fun. He is not though. The fun is watching a black man posing as a white supremacist. Turning the tables. What? An Indian is not black? Ask the Indians how that works please. I mean the Indian indians not the American kind. I had two business partners who were of Indian heritage. They were brown. They were smart and they suffered some discrimination. Jindal has it uphill in this regard. I do not think he can make it. In the South he can be seen by blacks as one of them but I do not think this will hold up in the white "bible belt".

KASICH: Simple. Easy peasy. I would vote for Kasich in a minute and, if he is nominated, would be hard pressed not to pull his lever. Especially with Hillary on the other side. I made this line bold so that some of you who read this who play for the other team will see that I am not all that one sided. Yeh Kasich.

PATAKI. A bureaucrat. A good one. But boring as toast and probably as cold as toast too. A maybe, like Kasich. I like governors.

PAUL: Save us please Higher Power from a Paul presidency. Under that curly head lies a damaged brain. He is Ron Paul's son after all. He can never recover from that. The sins of his fathers and so on. Also, pure libertarians are extremely boring people. They are ideologues. The polar opposite of the commies who are also no fun at all. I have known a few in my time. The real thing. No laughs.

PERRY: Should he wear the serious glasses or take them off? Or should he hold them in his hand. This is about the depth of the ex-Texas Governor. Texas is different enough that even Ann Richards the Demo-ex-governor didn't have enough gravitas for it. She was a lot more hilarious than Perry though because she had great material and knew she had the comic gift. Used it well.

RUBIO: I take a little pause here as I think that he has something potentially for high office. He is a bit of a snot and all that. Not very likable. But he has some bona fides and he has the chance at some Hispanic votes.

SANTORUM: All I can think of is the line that Dan Savge came up with, that his last name sounded like the medical name for what leaks out of a well fucked asshole. Sorry. Very offensive language here. But it always makes me laugh. The other thing his name makes me think of is "sanctorum". A humorless blob of right wing god warrior flesh. But I like the asshole definition best.

Did Trump. Trump, trump, trump!

WALKER: he looks like a mean son-of-a-bitch to me. The eyes. Close set. I do not think that works for him. And it goes with the venomous snaky talk. He is a mean bastard, I think.

So that is it. A compendium of rascals on the right.

Have I left any one un-offended here?

Look. Politics is a nasty business and if you don't like my talk then you will have to move to higher ground. No passion there. Too bad. You are missing the mud fight.

Remember. I am from the mid century MIT where we had the annual "glove fight"(See photo--this is from 1964, eight years after me but the same squash and squalor in the mud). Now gone. Sophomores on one side with red gloves, freshman in the other side with blue gloves. The idea was to have as many of the other's gloves as possible at the end of a period of time. Which seemed like an eternity. Always played on muddy ground, specially prepared for the day.

Pandemonium. Violence. Extreme cruelty in some cases.

These were also the days when the Sophs depantsed the Freshmen. Yes. So, on the mud field, it was not only gloves but bare asses.

Somehow I survived both years and mostly kept my glove and my pants. I yelled a lot and made motions of violence and stayed with the other friends who were of the less violent persuasion.

That is politics. No surprise that the guys who "won" the glove fight, collected the most opposite gloves, were also the ones who had the high cum ratings and were the best at school politics. I was in another tier. I got ahead through sly avoidance of the fray and worked the sidelines. At the end I chaired the biggest annual tie and tail dance. No mud. Just the victory dance.

What does that have to do with these political mudslinging days?

The ones who will emerge at the top are the ones who will slyly work the margins. Watch Kasich. Watch Pataki. They have done this before. Executive positions in large states. They know how to count the gloves.

Labels: GOoPers, politics