Mishugina

My political affiliation, my Grand Old Party, has gone mishugina. Every candidate for the Presidency is tipping the insanity scale on some level. Sarah Palin is sounding more and more normal and that’s an instant sign of insanity. Even the level headed Olympia Snowe has given up and gone home.

Like most anyone who is being honest, there are positions every candidate has I can agree with. Ron Paul wants to legalize marijuana, prostitution and gambling.  I’d bet that if these three were legalized and taxed by the IRS, President Obama would have a budget surplus during his last year in office. By the way, yes, Obama is going to win reelection because the Republican candidates are going to be confused with patients of Nurse Ratchet when we go to polls in November.

Getting back to Ron Paul, his suggestion for improving the education of our children is to eliminate the Department of Education. That’s like trying to improve voter turnout by eliminating elections. The only thing concerning education that was nuttier from this group of Republicans was when Rick Santorum said that public education was not present when our founding fathers wrote the Constitution. While Rick has personally said nuttier things, this one ranks right up there with the nuttiest of the election season. Mr. Santorum needs to pick up a history book that actually has history in it, not the writings of Mark Twain. The first “public” schools, where the community built a schoolhouse and hired a teacher to teach the kids in the town was created about 1700. Most of our founding fathers weren’t even born yet. By the time we declared our independence, public schoolhouses were ubiquitous.

What are some things Rick has said that are even nuttier? It is Rick Santorum who says we can’t separate our faith from our politics then turns around to tell President Obama he should. Santorum says the President is wrong for apologizing that we mistakenly burned several copies of the Koran. I wonder what the big Rick would think if the Afghans were burning a US flag. He tells us he wants public opinion to be tolerant of his religious issues with abortion, birth control and homosexuality while he is intolerant of the Muslim religion and atheists. Must be because his religion is the right religion, the correct religion, which even god has a laugh at. I know because mine is the one true religion. I talk to god regularly.

Then we come to Nuke Gingrich. Isn’t this the guy who thinks he’s on the Tea Party side of the sanctity of marriage but has left two wives - one on a sick bed - to marry other women?  Talk about “do as I say, not as I do”. Nuke….ummm….Newt, is the only Republican who has flip-flopped on the issues nearly as much as Mitt Romney. Gingrich claims to be a Reagan Republican which, like the big Gipper, must mean that he believes that trees pollute and that catsup is a vegetable. The only way I would vote for Nuke is if the remaining candidates were named Berkowitz, Manson and Koresh.

Finally, we get to the original two headed coin, Willard “Mitt” Romney. This guy is really amazing. He’s going to connect with the middle class of America by telling us that he’s been unemployed for years now. Also, that he likes being able to fire people that are servicing him. And that he drives two American made cars; his wife even drives a couple of Cadillacs. I’m sure the middle class will see their savior as a guy who thinks the average middle class income is only a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year. Romney bring a whole new meaning to oblivious.

I’m not happy with Obama either. I hope we hasten our exit from Afghanistan now that we're sorry for burning the Korans. I’m not sure what we have accomplished in that country, but after more than a decade, we’re not going to accomplish much more. Let’s not tell the Afghan government so they don’t tell ­Al-Qaeda, but let’s high tail it out of that country and go somewhere friendlier, like New Jersey. There is no good solution to choosing sides when comes to countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Syria. That’s like choosing which side of a baseball is your favorite.

At least Obama has made some decisions I agree with as President. He’s gotten rid of the silly Every Child Left Behind program. That's a program that being disastrous would have been an improvement. Truth be told, I think it was conceived by a committee of illiterates. Also, Obama was got rid of DADT only a couple of years into his first term. I suppose with the Congress he’s had to deal with, that is fast.  I know the Republican perception is that Obama is a flaming liberal socialist who wants to bring down the American way of life, but I don’t think he’ll be giving gay folks the rights married people have even during his second term. Let’s not confuse Obama with LBJ.

This election season, the Republican primaries have become an election caricature. How unreal can they get? Romney prepares to stand on top of the mountain of disbelief, but then some Not Romney comes along to find an even higher mountain. Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain (insert a 3 stooges joke here) all took their turns being the Not Romney. There are three Not Romney’s left named Nuke Gingrich, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Romney or Not Romney? Wow….should I cut my lego off or blow up my arm? There are never enough hours in the day.

I feel so alone. Sometimes I think I’m the only liberal Republican on the planet. Maybe I am, but I won’t give up. If I’m the last one standing, so be it. I won’t abandon my Republican Party. The nuttier they get, the more they need me!