gracchusdixit

In the run-up to our last two Presidential elections, the field of potential Republican candidates had all the hallmarks of an old-fashioned night of Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey under the big top, when there still was a big top.  There was Sarah Palin, whose claim to expertise in foreign affairs was being able to “see Russia” from her house.  There was Rick Perry, who intended to eliminate three federal agencies but could only remember the names of two.  And of course, there was Rick Santorum, who solemnly proclaimed: “One of the things I will talk about, that no President has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country.”  What an amazing and amusing crew they were!  Who could ever have imagined that we might someday see the likes of them again?

Yet here we are, still a year and a half away from the next Presidential election, and it is already plain that we are about to be treated to a reprise of the same spectacle.

First to queue up was Ted Cruz, the junior Senator from Texas—and a dead ringer for Robin Williams in his role as Popeye.  Cruz’s announcement was attended by all the suspense preceding the punchline of a Catskills comic, since it has long been clear that patience and humility are not on the Senator’s list of personal qualities.  It is said that, when he was at Harvard Law School, Cruz refused to study with graduates of the “minor Ivies”.  Being a “Princeton man” himself, he presumably didn’t want to demean himself by consorting with mere mortals.  That such a man would now want to run the government he so recently tried to shut down should surprise no one.  His hubris is as irrepressible as his smarmy grin.

Cruz the Condescending was quickly followed into the ring by the Paul the Pugnacious.  Rand Paul is notoriously thin-skinned about any criticism of himself or his sometime loony opinions, but he is said to love a good fight—as long as he is the only one to deliver the blows.  Thus it was that he immediately chose the safest punching bag for any Republican hopeful, Hillary Clinton, slandering her as an example of everything that he imagines to be wrong with Washington.  Which, of course, is quite literally everything.  Like Cruz, however, this does not seem to deter Senator Paul from wanting to run the place himself.

Just a few days after Paul delivered his punches, Marco Rubio decided to take a swing.  Rubio is the poster child for that rather delusional wing of the GOP that hopes to attract Hispanics, all the while it denies them the most basic legal rights, let alone the prospect of citizenship.  It hasn’t dawned on these people that Rubio is Cuban.  Cubans have about as much in common with other Hispanic Americans as Italian Americans do with Julius Caesar.  In any event, Rubio announced his run with grandiose talk of an “American 21st century,” which, under his leadership, will not repeat the tax-and-spend mistakes of “last century” leaders, like Hillary’s husband.  It appears to have escaped Senator Rubio’s notice that we had a budget surplus under Bill Clinton, which was promptly squandered—and then some—by the new century’s first Republican President.

And all this is only for starters.

It is nearly certain that Ben Carson, whose social and political views would be at home in the Stone Age, is going to run, as is Mike Huckabee, who simply cannot shake the quixotic notion that a jowly Southern Baptist preacher and sometime Fox News Channel host is qualified to become the country’s next commander in chief.

Then, there is Scott Walker, nominally the governor of Wisconsin but in actuality an employee of Koch Industries, whose inspired free-market leadership has taken his state to the bottom of the list in job creation and economic growth.  Not to be outdone in the contradictory competition between fact and fantasy is the jolly old elf from New Jersey, Chris Christie, who lumbers on, unfazed by unending scandal, unembarrassed by the abysmal economy of his state, and apparently uninterested in the dismally low regard in which he is held by voters who now overwhelmingly regret having elected him.

And last of all, we are still awaiting the inevitable proclamation from His Royal Majesty,  John Ellis Bush, set to become the third member of the Bush dynasty to pursue his anointed destiny.  Prince Jeb may get all the way to a coronation, since he is already the de facto front-runner, being able to raise more cash with a few before-lunch phone calls to rich Bush cronies than all the other Republican hopefuls put together.

What all this says about the Republican Party’s prospects for winning the White House in 2016 is beyond my reckoning.  What it says about the state of the party itself is another matter.  We haven’t heard a substantive word from any of these circus clowns—just the same old clichés about the evils of big government, the looming catastrophe of “entitlements,” and the sad plight of victimized, over-taxed “job creators”.

There may have been a time when the Republican Party had a coherent and constructive political philosophy, but if so, that time is gone. It has become little more than a three-ring circus, replete with dancing elephants, fire-breathing sword swallowers, and slap-stick clowns who smother themselves in grease paint.

Once it was said that the Roman emperors gave the people bread and circuses to sustain them and entertain them.  Having forgotten about the bread, at least the Republican Party still knows how to put on a good show.  It’s time to sit back, be entertained, and get some cotton candy.