Bad Nerves In Fat City...

"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes.
Some kind of high powered mutant never even
considered for mass production. Too weird to
live, and too rare to die..."
― Hunter S. Thompson

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - By sundown, it'll be four primaries down and the dawning of a forced march to next summer for the Republican Party. Aboard that rudderless sailboat will be the billionaire Mitt Romney and, it appears, the southern adulterer Newt Gingrich, each fully believing a victory against President Barack Obama in November is possible.

Not this cycle, boys.

If anything, the GOP's candidates for its presidential nomination have struck out for boredom, not one catching the electrifying spark that propelled Democrat Obama to the White House in 2008. For non-Republican America, this one is an exercise in watching grown men crying themselves to sleep. Romney is doing his best. The former Massachusetts governor, son of a Mormon family that birthed him in Mexico, is now singing the national anthem at all his campaign stops. Gingrich, a two-time loser in marriage and an expert at enriching himself off the public trough, is banking on a single Las Vegas casino mogul to fuel his expensive campaign. These are the two frontrunners for the Republican Party's flag.

A step behind them is former Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, who lost his re-election bid by a whopping 18 percentage points, and Libertarian Ron Paul, an anachronistic candidate with visions of 1963 America.

It for a reason that the White House sleeps nicely these days. President Obama must be laughing, knowing that a Romney win in his party's contest will throw him up against a man whose health care plan in Massachusetts was the embryo for the president's national plan. If it's the insipid Gingrich, the president has a fat windbag with so much baggage that his targets will be 50 feet across. No, this cycle's candidates from the Grand Old Party do not inspire anyone, other than the small tent of Redneck voters forever quick to hate. America awaits, but America knows the Democratic president will be back at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue this Fall.

When Obama chased the prize, he had George W. Bush to play against. These Republicans, try as they may to paint the president as a bad president, do not have such ammo. Obama's successes are there: saving the economy from a virtual Depression left behind by Bush, Jr., killing Osama Bin Laden when Bush, Jr. said the terrorist mastermind was "out of my mind," ending the costly Iraq invasion/war that drained billions from the national treasury and blew the treasury's deficit skyhigh - all Republican Bush, Jr.'s doings.

There is a reason why the Republicans Party does not wheel out George W. Bush to push its candidates. Bush is a serious negative, one still as powerfula s it was at the tail-end of his service. The hits on the federal budget wrought by Bush, Jr.'s administration, have yet to be totaled. This is known: his cronies, Halliburton and the oil industry as a whole, made out like gangsters. He didn't fare badly either, translating his White House days into a veritable financial windfall. Not bad for a West Texas oilman who was dead broke only two years before he ran for governor of Texas, when his father got him a seat on the board of Dallas-based Harken Energy, a post that quickly earned him $600,000 in shares, which he used to buy 1 percent of the Texas Rangers baseball team.

Today, Bush, Jr. lives in a stately home in a ritzy section of North Dallas.

Money is central for Republicans. They chase it for themselves. It is not a sin in a capitalistic society, but, in political definition, it is the single clearest difference between Democrats and Republicans. A look back at modern history reveals little, if any, Republican action that benefitted the poor and, lately, the Middle Class. Republican Bob Dole is credited with brainstorming the national food stamps program, but he did it as an aside to earmarks on a bill that helped his state gain expensive projects paid for by federal funding. And even at that, these Republican Party candidates now on the campaign rarely go a day without blaming Obama for the millions of Americans availing themselves of food stamps.

For Mitt Romney, a man whose investments earn him a reported $57,000 a day, food stamps likely is nothing more than a talking point. Romney hasn't worked in 10 years, since leaving his Bain Capital, a company he started using El Salvadoran wealth and a company that came to be known as a job eliminator. He now lives off residual income from that enterprise. He could care less about the program, or about the Americans who need it to feed their families - the larger portion of them being Whites. Aside from his adultery, Newt Gingrich forgets he was forced out as Speaker of the House of Representatives for a number of ethics violations - forced out by his own party. It cost him $300,000 in fines. But he's the one for some Republicans, the savior, the future.

Barack Obama may not have been what voters in 2008 hoped for, and he may not have accomplished all he wanted thanks to a recalcitrant, Republican-led House, but he's got one thing going for him that the others don't: He's clean...

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