Some schedule their lives around The Office or Diners, Dumps and Drive-In’s. I like the GOP debates. And after a painful a 3 week hiatus, they’ve returned in full tilt. “Holy crap there’s a debate on” I’ll routinely shout, fumbling to find the feed and log into Twitter to see if I had “missed anything”. Part Survivor, part Real Housewives of the Deep South, the GOPDs are splashy affairs with 3 wall sets, in front of live studio audiences, brassy intro music and a stage that looks like a flag vomited all over the Ape Hall of Justice. The simplistic bromides, political point-scoring and half-assed non-solutions are peppered with gold; Perry and Romney fighting about lawncare; “Let’s see. I can’t. The third one, I can’t. Sorry. Oops“; Bachmann being asked if she’d submit to her husband; Ron Paul telling us all to mind our own business. Folks, as painful as this sometimes is, this is a moment of monumental historical significance. America has never been this dumb and will never be this dumb again.
The first ever GOP debate holiday special – THE GOP THANKSGIVING FAMILY FORUM – was held last weekend in the sanctuary of the First Federated Church of Des Moines, at tables shabbily laden with ceramic pumpkins. The GOPTFF was not a debate, but a festive series of values-oriented conversational topics, a friendly collegial discussion of moral and religious philosophy. CSPAN cancelled its coverage due to “budgetary issues” (or because this charade is a direct violation of Article VI of the US Constitution). The illegal GOPTFF was streamed online. Both Mormons wisely stayed away (the forum’s sponsor, “The Family Leader”, an Iowan evangelical group and political arm of Focus on the Family, authored “The Marriage Vow” that began with the words “faithful monogamy”). But all the Christians were there, and the Roman Catholic, sermonizing and proselytizing like your worst relatives at Thanksgiving dinner, unashamed of their ignorance, whose posturing and bitter arguments over politics, religion and lifestyle choices are only interrupted by embarrassing bouts of phony sentiment and tearful mawkishness.
Michelle seemed particularly unhinged, possibly mistaking this for an actual Thanksgiving dinner, robotically and Stepfordianally serving each man water from a pitcher. Perry and Cain looked comfortable and pleased with this arrangement. Now THIS is something they can really wrap their heads around.
The highlight of the GOPTFF was when our candidates were asked to relate a personal challenge they had endured. Both Cain (Stage 4 cancer) and Santorum (not loving his youngest daughter, who suffers from a grave genetic disorder), broke down. Rick Perry, who could only conjure up “finding Jesus”, grabbed Cain’s shoulder in a show of manly support, while Newt looked on in disoriented horror/envy. Bachmann’s dramatic tale was one of her father abandoning the family, leaving her mother forced to sell their wedding china – “the pretty dishes”- at a garage sale, a befuddling tale that built into a predicable Horatio Alger payoff. Ron Paul, not surprisingly, proved himself incapable of public soul-bearing. Newt, who apparently thought himself worthy of participating in a discussion of personal morality, could not summon up a feeling of his own. Instead, he summoned the tale of a friend’s misfortune, then choked up and railed against Obama’s health-care reform law. Oh, he tried valiantly to jump on the weeping, atonement bandwagon, eventually conceding that despite being “remarkably successful,” in the 1990’s he felt emotionally hollow inside. He said he read the two main Alcoholics Anonymous books, NOT because he was drinking, but because he had “precisely the symptoms of someone who was collapsing.”
As the debates wear on (11 with no end in sight), our candidates show signs of coming apart at the seams. Michele Bachmann, looking tired and badly in need of emergency antipsychotics, continues to shrink from relevance with each debate, never reliving her shining moment of accusing Rick Perry of causing Texas children to become inflicted with spontaneous Downs Syndrome. If this is a circus, Michele Bachmann is the écuyère, her face drawn back ever more severely under a whole platoon’s worth of war paint, and in outfits reminiscent of The Stonecutters. John Huntsman, running for God only knows what party’s nomination with his crazy evolution talk, continues to flounder, invoking Nirvana and nervously counting his days. He should be ashamed of himself, anyway, for associating with these shitheads. Wooden power-suit dullard Mitt Romney continues to inspire aggressive indifference in everyone around him, desperately trying to project warmt. When not spinning wildly out of control with his flibs andflubs, Perry looks positively concussed, springing to life when given the opportunity to vie for the biggest baddest bible thumper on the stage award, or when he appears momentarily terrified that he is stuck in some never-ending nightmare loop in which he shows up at a Republican debate for which he is unprepared. His face is positively thrilling – a beauteous cross between Burt Reynolds and Dorian Tyrell from The Mask . Ron Paul, a picture of a man on the verge of old cootdom, spouts self-reliance like Grampa Simpson, ranting vainly on foreign policy, never succeeding in not coming off as half-cracked. Newt Gingrich is the only one I don’t find funny, because when you mix stupidity with persistence and determination, it’s usually lethal. Rick Santorum is just always a hoot, as is Herman Cain, with his casual misogyny and lack of grasp whatsoever of the very basics of foreign policy, economic policies or their timescale, totally out of his mind, at one point mistakenly calling Wolf Blitzer, “Blitz”.
To talk about winners and losers in the debates makes no sense. Like the Battle of the Somme, any gains are measured in inches. Perry had already used up all his lives with his painful botched attack on Romney and the “oops” moment, while Cain squandered his inexplicable lead in the polls by being utterly clueless about everything one too many times. The mid-season National Security Debate had Huntsman repeating that the real national security threat was the economy, which seemed like a cop out, while Gingrich’s long government experience and ability to rattle off facts served him better than when having to discuss “feelings” (the producers must have employed a new director for the mid-season episode titled “National Security Debate”, because the camera kept cutting to a harried looking Ron Paul for no apparent reason).
These kooks are only executing their Koch-mandated role of Neronic entertainers. The audiences, however, the Republican/Tea Party mob, they are a problem, the blood-lusting, solipsistic crowds. One audience applauded the state of Texasʼs record-breaking (200!) government mandated executions, another the prospect of a comatose, uninsured man left to die. One crowd booed Perryʼs defense of public education for children of illegal immigrants, another a gay soldier serving in Iraq, and another Ron Paulʼs skeptical remarks about American exceptionalism. This is a crowd that would rather have their teenage daughters die of HPV-induced cervical cancer than have them vaccinated, a creepy, pseudo-christian crowd that wants to do away with universal health care insurance, Social Security, Medicare, Human Rights, the EPA, education, culture and science. The hooha heartlessness and racial road rage from their own electorate seems to alarm even the candidates, their faces bowing to and from their shabby lecterns in a fog of stupefaction. Welcome to Blood Night at the Colosseum! As Gene Wilder said in Blazing Saddles, “they are the common people, the salt of the Earth… morons.”
The upside – other than the strong entertainment value – is that 6 million people are seeing that there is not an electable retread, pontificating, arrogant goofus in the bunch. One of Barry’s stellar skills is baiting his opponent into flubbing/overreacting, eliciting things that he can jump on without technically being “negative”. Like offering McCain a joint statement on the banking crisis, only to have Gramps “cancel” his campaign and insist on an emergency meeting he had absolutely nothing to say about. The Dems need to just roll that one clip of them all debating waterboarding. Or Michelle schooling an out of control Perry on why we shouldn’t be antagonizing Pakistan. These candidates haven’t even had the good sense to use teleprompters, or at least write shit down on their hands. Because they are less informed than George W Bush and stupider than Sarah Palin. And they are live, uncensored, unplugged. And seeing as the election is still a YEAR away, there’s a whole season of hand wringers and cliffhangers, bromances and plot twists, red herrings and psycho dramas ahead of us. And who knows, there may be a deus ex machina comin’ round the bend, during “sweeps”. Debate Schedule