Maybe the Republican presidential primary will winnow out the two marquee candidates, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. From across the Great Divide, I hope not.
Michele Bachmann exposes the raw, irreconcilable edges of conservatism: the fear, glamor, and assertiveness in pursuit of the unprovable. (You almost want to watch the interview with her 24 foster children: as foster parents, what were Mom and Dad really like?)
In the last debate Bachmann took her colleagues to task for not supporting a fence on every yard and every foot of the Texas border with Mexico. I am not a big fence supporter. What I see in the "fence idea" is the TSA on steroids. Miami International Airport every two miles. Military drones turned on people scurrying through the Texas desert night, matched to commandos with night vision goggles in Toyota pickup trucks with machine guns. Border crossing recividists with dog chip implants by border patrol/TSA so Team America can sort out the repeat offenders.
I summon a paranoid vision of Bachmann ideal, because paranoia edges in and out of the conservative hierarchy. Sometimes you see it. Sometimes you don't. But one thing is for certain: the more billions we plow into the military and defense, the less stable our individual rights and liberties. This is an idea that Ron Paul has no difficulty articulating.
I recently named Paul the "wacky dad" in the group of GOP candidates, but his homespun delivery hits some solids that Mitt Romney and Rick Perry both avoid. When Paul was asked about his earlier "debate" comment, of fences being erected to keep Americans in-- and not just to keep illegal aliens out-- he didn't hesitate and here is my interpretation: all the conservative yearning for a more pure, more traditional, more value-oriented America invests ideologues with the power to flick the switch to target cultural opponents with different views and preferences. (He also added that in hard economic times, money tends to leave the country and that fences could be erected to prevent that, too.)
I don't know whether the awful, horrendous TV "debate" format wrings all life from the expression of political ideas in depth, helping to reduce audiences to cheerleading squads interchangeable with those on American Idol, but one harkens through the comparison of Bachmann and Paul, to Lee Atwater's Big Tent Republicanism. Now there are invisible fences and visible fences too barring entry. Bachmann doesn't have a chance in a general election. Nonetheless it would be refreshing if instead of the Gingrich "Iron Wall against Obama", that Republican candidates would focus on a simple question: why is it that they talk a good game about limited government, but once in the White House, they can't deliver the goods?
1 comment:
Obama's numbers are low; but he is being compared to a mythological
savior who can balance the budget and create jobs; one who can multiply the loaves and walk atop the waters of a sea of bad loans and foreclosed homes. But once Obama is compared to any of the Republican lunatics vying for his office; the equation changes.
Michele would like to build a fence from one end of the border to the other; an impenetrable one. A wall that could not be dug under, scaled over, or cut through.
Perry insists that this is physically and economically unfeasible, that what we need are more boots on the ground. Yes, shrink government so you don't even know its there, but hire 4,500 men to man this border.
Lunatics all, and with plenty of baggage to boot. To reiterate, Obama can't measure up to a miracle man that will cure all our economic woes, but up against these flesh and blood lunatics; Obama is a shoe in for re-election.
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