Instant Lame Duck

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice...

- 22 Amendment to the US Constitution ratified in 1947.

In January either Governor Romney or President Obama will be sworn in as President, (get it right this time John Roberts).

But, whoever is sworn in may not be able to govern.

One reason is the hyper-partisan nature of Congress. The Republicans have committed themselves to making Obama fail regardless of the cost to the country, and will continue to obstruct Obama at every turn. If Romney wins the Democrats will go into pay-back mode and block every proposal he makes. Nothing will get done and gridlock will continue for at least another four years.

Another is reason is the 22 Amendment to the Constitution, prevents President Obama from running for re-election. From the moment he lowers his hand after taking the oath of office in January he is a lame duck. Since both sides know this, the election is less about winning in 2012 and more about positioning for 2016.

The logic of the 22 Amendment was to keep the Presidency from being turned into a sinecure by a popular incumbent. FDR’s fourth term was seen as a sign of the future. Who knew whether Eisenhower would become President in 1952 keep on to 1964? (Think of what the world would be like if FDR had been forced to leave office in 1940 to be replaced by Vice President Henry Wallace or Republican nominee Wendell Willkie).

In an era when a Presidential campaign didn’t start until August or September of an election year, a second term President still had three years to make things happen and could easily nail down a third, (or if he were young enough) a fourth or fifth term.

That was then.

Now Presidential elections run for years, not months. News cycles last seconds and minutes, not days and weeks. The 22 Amendment has warped re-election campaigns and second terms.

A President who is running for election has the power to reward his or her friends. A second term President who can’t run, doesn’t. Who wants a patronage job that the opposition won’t confirm you in until the Administration is just about to dismantle? Why give money, time and effort, when you can’t get your just reward?

If you can’t be rewarded you can’t be punished.

It is no accident that in modern times all the major Presidential scandals have happened in a second term. Watergate, Monica, Iran-Contra. The opposition has nothing to fear taking on a lame duck incumbent. But maybe the prospect of “Reagan ’88” buttons or “Clinton in 2000” bumper stickers would have made the opposition less likely to pursue impeachment or Iran-Contra against popular Presidents.

Once a President takes that second oath of office, power slips away with every tick of the clock. They have no political capitol to spend and can safely be ignored.

George Bush found that out the hard way. He said he would expend all his political capitol he amassed in his 2004 re-election on Social Security reform, only to discover he didn’t have any. Why? Because Senate leaders were all testing the waters for their own 2008 Presidential runs and didn’t want to touch something so unpopular.

Then there is the impact the Amendment has on the elections themselves.

In 2012, Democrats, like Gov. Andrew Cuomo, know all they have to do is keep their heads down and tend to their States. Obama will do all the heavy work of getting the economy rolling again and they can reap the benefits when they run four years from now. A potential Democratic candidate like Cuomo sees his chances improve as long as he keeps his distance from the President. Significantly the Governor isn’t even planning to attend the Democratic Convention this year.

The Republicans have made the same calculation. They know they don’t have to defeat Obama, just out-wait him. They can spend four more years simply blocking his programs and run a strong candidate next time around.

That is why all the major Republican powers stepped aside and let Mitt Romney win the nomination. They calculated Romney would loose and clear the way for a stronger candidate from the younger generation like Gov. Chris Christie, or Rep Paul Ryan. These men are young, so why damage themselves now, trying to unseat an incumbent who will be term limited out later?

The calculations would be much different if Obama were able to run for a third term. Obama has a steady lead in 2012 with a weak economy. With the economy growing in 2015, Obama would be a formidable candidate. Democrats like Cuomo would have to support the President, fall in line and really work for him.

Republicans would have to make a choice as well. They simply couldn’t run out the clock on Obama and hope to pick up the ball at the whistle. They would have to make the case of why they would be better for the country than the President.

But, thanks in part to the 22 Amendment, both parties are treating their candidates in 2012 as seat warmers for the bigger show in 2016.

The Red 14%

14% - Congressional Job Approval Rating

(http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/congressional_job_approval-903.html)

Tuesday Romney won Pennsylvania, and four other states, locking up the Republican nomination.

Money can’t buy you love.

He didn’t get 60% of the vote in Pennsylvania which is a weak showing for presumptive nominee running unopposed. More than 40% of voters still favored someone other than Romney two weeks after having the Republican primary field to himself.

The Tea Party and other extremists that control the party will blame Romney, if President Obama wins re-election. They won’t look at their ideology that is shared by a very small slice of voters.

They don’t see how their zealotry turned off the independents, and conservative Democrats they needed to win. Instead the Tea Party will blame Romney and in 2016, nominate an even more extreme candidate rather than pulling back to the center where the voters are.

If the Republicans do that, they can look at what happened to the Democrats in the last century to see what they have to look forward to.

In 1968 the Democrats narrowly lost the Presidency. Their response to that loss was to nominate increasingly ideologically pure liberal candidates. Between 1972 and 1992 Democrats won the Presidency one time, in 1976 as result of Watergate.

Only when Bill Clinton and the DLC stood up to the left wing of the party and pushed the Democrats back to the center did they start winning the White House again.

Between 1992-2008, the Republicans won the White House by a statistically significant margin one time - 2004. They lost in 1992, were crushed in 1996, lost the popular vote and took the Presidency by chicanery on 2000, and lost in 2008.

Each loss pulled the Republicans further to the right. “compassionate conservatism” in 2000 gave way to the “swift-boat” campaign of 2004. The danger for the Republicans is a loss in 2012 will pull them to the fringe. If anyone other than a Rush Limbaugh conservative runs next time it will be very hard for them to win.

Even now the Tea Party crowd is openly talking about waiting out the 2012 Presidential race and focussing on the Senate and House races. They want to build their bench for future Presidential runs in 2016 and 2020 with an ideologically pure candidate from the ranks.

These candidates appeal only to small activist base. The Congressional Job approval rating of 14% is an indication of what Americans think of the Tea Party agenda. After all it is the Tea Party agenda, not a liberal left wing agenda that is debated in the House and used to block progress in the Senate.

With their hard support of “papers please” anti-immigration laws and their solid opposition to any form of the “Dream Act” the Republicans have alienated Hispanics, who are the fastest growing voter population in the country. With their recent moves against fair pay acts, contraception, and medical privacy, Republicans have also alienated women who make up over half of the electorate.

If this alienation locks in broader voting patterns, Republicans could be starting a long period of being the minority party. Over time, demographics will reduce their power in the House and Senate and create a long term Democratic majority. The Republicans nationally could look like the Republicans in California.

Will that be a good thing?

Between 1955 and 1988 the Republicans carried California in every Presidential race but one. (http://articles.boston.com/2012-04-22/news/31383123_1_swing-state-unemployment-auto-industry) Since 1992 the Democrats have carried it in every Presidential election. It is not even competitive for the Romney in 2012. Today, there is a 15% gap in voter registration with the Democrats firmly in the majority. Republicans are all but locked out of Statewide office.

So what happened?

In 1992, then Governor Pete Wilson (R-CA) supported Prop 182 which at the time was the strongest anti-immigrant statute in the country, denying a range of social services to “illegal aliens.” The growing Hispanic vote which had been reliably Republican because of the Party’s stance on social issues moved firmly to the Democrats. Southern California Congressional Districts once represented by the likes of arch conservative Bob Dornan elected the Sanchez sisters.

Locked in as a political minority, the Republicans became more partisan, and unwilling to work with Democrats to resolve California’s tough issues. The Democrats, released from the responsibility of working across the aisle also moved to more extreme positions. The result was the State simply ceased to work effectively. Budgets haven’t passed on time, the higher education system has been dramatically cut back (the CSU system is not taking in new students this semester - it can’t afford to), roads crumble while Sacramento bickers.

California is often seen as a bell-weather of future trends nationally. If this is true the trend is for the country could be political gridlock and decline. What we have seen so far in Washington is just taste of what's to come. We are faced significant economic problems, a civil conflict in Syria that could spread, a restive and North Korea and nuclear Iran. Let’s hope we can break the trend.

57 Years Apart

“Thar he.”

The black sharecropper Mose Wright identifying the white killer of Emmett Till in open court in Mississippi in 1956.

On Sunday night, August 28 1955, two white men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, came to the home of Mose Wright, a black sharecropper and local preacher, to kidnap Emmett Till because Till had allegedly flirted with Bryant’s wife. Bryant and Milam, took Till, a 14 year old black youth visiting from Chicago, beat him beyond recognition, shot him and threw him into the Tallahatchie River strapped by barbed-wire to the blade of an industrial fan.

When Till’s mother, Mamie Till Bradley, recovered his body for burial, she insisted on an open casket funeral. She wanted the world to see what she couldn’t describe. The photos in the Chicago Defender of the pulp that had been Till’s face electrified the world.

On Sunday night, February 26, 2012, Trayvon Martin a 17 year old black youth, was walking back to the home where he was staying in central Florida. He was accosted by George Zimmerman, a member of the neighborhood watch, and within 5 minutes Martin was dead with a gunshot wound to his chest.

Two young black men, barely adults, visiting family members, were killed on Sunday nights 57 years apart. Till was kidnapped and killed because Bryant thought Till had whistled at his wife. Martin was killed because he was wearing a hoodie and may have been reaching for a pack of Skittles.

We have come a long way in 57 years.

It isn’t socially acceptable anymore to take a black man, and turn his lynching into a town festival complete with picnics and souvenir postcards. Between 1882 and 1968, 539 blacks were lynched in Mississippi, and 257 blacks were lynched in Florida. (http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingsstate.html). Many of the victims “crimes” were “insulting” a white women.

Now, in the South, interracial marriage between whites and blacks is above the national average. Black and white interracial marriage rates in Mississippi are in line with the national average. (http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/02/16/the-rise-of-intermarriage/7/#appendix-2-state-and-regional-rates).

But, it is still socially acceptable to be suspicious of a young black man simply because he is a young black man.

In the New York Times, Michael Powell points out the New York Police Department, stopped and frisked over 685,724 New Yorkers in 2011. That is more than the population of the City of El Paso, Texas. Of those, 603,437 (more than the population of Washington, D.C.) were innocent and weren’t charged or cited for any reason. Powell, who is white, asked his two sons, 19 and 24 years old, how many times they had been stopped and frisked.

Neither had.

Powell then asked 8 black male students in his class at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, who were the same age as his sons, the same question. Together they had been stopped a cumulative 92 times. One had even been asked to remove his shoes on the subway. Their only crime had been to be black in the wrong place. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/10/nyregion/reducing-crime-squandering-good-will.html).

Like Powell’s students, Martin was judged not by the content of his character but by the clothes he was wearing combined with the color of his skin. Tracy Martin, Trayvon’s father, warned his son he would be stereotyped and could be the target of violence. “I told him that society is cruel.” (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-04-14/african-american-parents-talk-to-sons-about-race/54258448/1).

The same fear behind “stop and frisk” is the fear behind “stand your ground” in Florida.

In 2005, Florida changed State law to say if you felt threatened in a public area, you didn’t have a “duty to retreat” and you could respond with deadly force. The police would determine if the person stood their ground and the homicide was justifiable. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law). In the five years before “stand your ground” there were an average of 12 justifiable homicides a year. In the five years since the average is 36. (http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2012/mar/26/christopher-l-smith/sen-chris-smith-claimed-deaths-due-self-defense-fl/).

The way the police handled Zimmerman fits the way the law is written. They investigated the shooting, they heard from the only surviving witness, and they determined it was a “stand your ground” case and let the suspect go. The law is so broadly written it will be very hard to convict Zimmerman of anything.

When “stop and frisk” meets “stand your ground” a case like Trayvon Martin’s is inevitable.

In 1956, Mississippi’s judicial racism was open for all to see. Few doubted Bryant and Milam would be acquitted. The defense argued that Till was alive, and the body that had been buried in Till’s casket was a corpse stolen and used by the NAACP to create a story. Jury deliberation took 67 minutes. As one juror said: "If we hadn't stopped to drink pop, it wouldn't have taken that long." After Bryant and Milam were acquitted, and protected from further prosecution, they admitted their guilt in an interview in Look magazine.

At the trial of Till’s killers, the Defense argued Mose Wright couldn’t have seen who took Till, because the only light to see by was a flashlight. They asked Wright to identify who took Till from his home that night. Against centuries of fear, and the risk of violent death, Wright stood in the witness stand, pointed at J.W. Milam and said “Thar he.” There he is.

With a thin outstretched hand Wright touched the glacier of fear, and it began to break. Who will touch the glacier this time?

The Great Separation

“I don’t believe in an America where the separation of Church and State is absolute.”

- Sen Rick Santorum (R-Pen)

The former Senator went on to say, “What kind of country do we live in where only people of non-faith can come to the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up.”

To turn the question around, what type of country would we live in if only people of faith were allowed in the public square to make their case?

In the same year that Christopher Columbus “sailed the ocean blue” in 1492, Spain expelled their Jews. In 16th century England, alternating Catholic and Protestant monarchies spent their time burning and torturing the “heretics” who made up their political opposition. Spain held a formal debate on whether the natives they found in North and South America had souls. If they didn’t they could be enslaved or killed, their land taken and their gold confiscated.

Guess which side won.

Theocrats use religion as a way to settle political and social scores, to neutralize their enemies and hold on to power. Since the beginning, religion in America has been used as the basis of repressive policies. Rhode Island was founded by refugees from religious repression in Massachusetts. Southerners created an extensive theological framework to support slavery and Jim Crow.

The current target for American Theocrats is the economic, political and social power of women.

Now I am not suggesting that Santorum is going to pull out the rack or a new set of thumbscrews, but his fellow travelers have no problems with trans-vaginal probes. The Republicans try and describe this proposal as a medically sound requirement. But it is really a thinly disguised religious based attack on a woman’s right to choose the appropriate course of her medical treatment, in privacy, with her doctor, without the interference of the Government.

Religion is being used to put women in their place and that place is out of the way.

In the United States, more women attend college than men, and women are more likely to finish. College graduates earn more, and go farther than non-college graduates. They also tend to be more politically and socially progressive. Women are holding an increasing amount of power at the Federal, State and local level.

But, if you increase the risk that a woman becomes pregnant in her early 20’s you increase the likely hood she will not go to college, be shut out of the lucrative areas of the job market, not vote a progressive philosophy - or obtain any political power.

Even though blinded by many of the social norms of their day, the framers of the Constitution believed a person’s rights came from a creator. Their God was the enlightenment’s “clockmaker” who wound up the Universe and stood back to watch it run. You didn’t have to believe in a specific God (or any God for that matter), to exercise your rights as a citizen.

The Republican Party’s God - Rick Santorum’s God - is a judgmental interventionist, deciding winners and losers in every day life. Santorum and his fellow Republicans are happy to communicate those decisions from the Almighty to the rest of us. They will use those decisions mandate what freedoms you can exercise, what type of jobs women can have, and what medical procedure are legal for a Doctor to perform.

Since 1996 the national Republican party has focussed on “values” voters. The term has come to describe an ever narrower and more repressive philosophy. We let the Republicans hijack our American values once before when we allowed them define our legal values of due process. This led to the torture prisoners, spying on average American’s and holding suspects for years without trial.

Now they want to use religion to define the American values of equality. We know from what the Republicans say about women what those values are. If they win, they will impose those values on us all.

But, what values do the rest of us support? What do we believe the American values of equality and opportunity are? How does the Government protect those values? The broad assault the Republicans launched on basic American freedoms and values will force all of us to choose. There is a dwindling middle ground. We have to take sides.

In 2012 all voters will become “values voters.”

Reality TV

“Please pack your knives and go.”

- Judge’s line used to throw contestants off “Top Chef” Bravo’s reality cooking contest show.

My wife is both a political junkie and an astute observer of contemporary culture. She often says a presidential campaign is the best reality show on TV. Like a reality TV show, a Presidential campaign takes alot of raw material and manipulates it to create a new narrative that often has little relationship to the truth.

Throughout the show someone gets voted off. Herman Cain was voted off the island, Gov. Rick Perry found out the hard way that “One day you’re in, the next day you’re out,” and Michelle Bachmann was told “You have been eliminated from the Amazing Race.”

The difference between a politician and a reality TV producer is the producer knows the audience understands it is watching a contrived narrative, where politicians think their audience believes the story they are showing is real.

The “Reality TV” mode of politics is as much a legacy of former President George W. Bush as is the war in Iraq, the squandered surplus, and the economic collapse of the 2007-2008. In 2004 a close aid to President Bush (believed to be Karl Rove) bragged that they [the Bush Administration] created their own reality for those of us in a fact based world to respond to. (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html)

Today’s Republican presidential candidates have fully embraced that strategy.

President Ronald Reagan is their hero. Yet he raised taxes at least 11 times in seven years, presided over a huge increase in the Federal Government, and granted amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. (http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/02/05/142288/reagan-centennial/?mobile=nc). If Reagan ran on Reagan’s platform and accomplishments, he wouldn’t get the 2012 Republican nomination.

You expect revisionism in history, but you don’t expect revisionism in current events. The amount of Republican revisionism makes it appear that their candidates are as out of touch with the real world as “Survivor” contestants stranded on an island.

Like love on the “Bachelor” their story warms the hearts of their viewers, until it falls apart in the real world.

The Republicans claim President Obama’s economic policy is a failure, despite the fact the Dow and the NADQ closed at their highest levels since the recession. Unemployment is headed down as the economy has grown over the last 22 months, and manufacturing is one of the fastest growing segments of the economy.

They deride Obama’s foreign policy as weak and apologetic. But, Obama hunted down Osama Bin Laden and most of the leadership in Al Queda. We are out of the wars in Iraq and wrapping up Afghanistan. The President handled Libya and the Arab spring with the same deftness that the first President Bush handled the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet empire.

Every reality show needs a network and loyal followers. Shows also support a cottage industry of reality shows about reality shows on other networks.

Fox News is the network of choice to broadcast the Republican Reality show. Democrats watch MSNBC, to catch up on all the fake situations, fights and alliances that occurred on this week’s episode of the “Real Housewives” series that the Republican Presidential primary season has become.

The Nevada Republican caucus is even more loosely run than the Iowa Republican caucus, where the Chairman of the Iowa Republican Party first “certified” Romney and then Santorum as the winner before resigning after admitting that 8 counties hadn’t turned in any results and it was impossible to tell who actually won.

But none of this stopped the networks from giving the Nevada Republican caucus wall to wall coverage. You have to wonder how networks will keep this intensity up for the Maine Republican caucus, which started on 2/4/12 and runs for a full week to award all of 24 delegates.

As a result of this type of coverage, whether it is on Fox News or MSNBC or any variety of talk radio shows, voters begin to look at politics as one more entertainment option, where politicians are seen more as actors than leaders.

Consequently anyone who makes a serious attempt to govern finds it is more important to make a policy proposal more entertaining than substantive. After all, flash will always get better press than a slow and steady discussion of the long term effects of a new policy.

This is one reason why Obama’s discussion of the good his health care reform would do was drowned out by Palin and Bachmann’s clamoring about Death Panels. Watching the Tea Party’s paranoid screams at their congressional delegations made for better entertainment and ratings than the sober policy panels discussions on C-SPAN.

In the current election, candidates are treated more as contestants on a dating show than as people with serious ideas. By turning the election into a “Rose Ceremony” where every Tuesday night we tune in to see who the “Bachelor” voters keep after this week’s fantasy date in paradise, the country is denied the opportunity for a serious discussion of the huge problems we face.

From Telephone to Tweet

15% - Mitt Romney’s Lead in Florida in a Public Policy Poll taken 1/14-1/16/12

5% - Newt Gingrich’s Lead in Florida in a Public Policy Poll taken 1/22-1/24/12

8% - Mitt Romney’s Lead in Florida in a Public Policy Poll taken on 1/28/12.

(http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/fl/florida_republican_presidential_primary-1597.html)

A week before the South Carolina primary Mitt Romney (R-Mas), lead Newt Gingrich (R-Ga) by an average of 10%, only to have Gingrich beat him by 12% - a 22% swing in the polls in a week.

On 1/16/12 Public Policy Polling released a poll showing Romney heavily favored to win The Florida Republican primary. Eight days later, on 1/24/12, after Romney lost South Carolina, Public Policy Polling released a poll with Gingrich up by five points in Florida. The race in Florida has tightened over the past two days. Romney now has an average of an 8 point lead over Gingrich.

The fact that the Republican nomination race is so volatile, and the rise of a weak candidate like Gingrich underscores how much the dynamics of elections are changing.

One change is the sheer number of debates, which allowed hothouse flowers like Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Min), Herman Cain (R) and Gov. Rick Perry (R-Tex), to survive long past their shelf life. 19 nationally televised debates thus far, allowed these little known candidates to introduce themselves to the nation and stay in the spot light.

In the long run the number of debates hurt Bachmann and Perry, when their continued turn in the limelight only heightened their weaknesses. But, the debates were perfect for Gingrich. With little money and organization, a campaign that once looked more like a book tour transformed itself into a real force through all the free media the debates provided.

Even that wouldn’t have been possible without the Citizens United decision, which opened the door for individuals to give unlimited amounts of money to “independent Super Pacs.”

Gingrich proved all a candidate has to do to stay in the running is convince one rich person of the rightness of his or her cause. Over the past month, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson gave $10 million to the Gingrich Super Pac, Winning Our Future. Without that money it is more likely Gingrich would be in the position of Bachmann than a potential nominee.

Citizens United returned the political finance system to pre-Watergate days, with one significant difference. In 1972 a supporter could give huge amounts of money directly to the candidate and it took a lot of hard and time consuming research for someone else to trace who it came from.

Now a simple search on the internet shows Adelson not only gave $10 Million to a Presidential candidate, but he did it while his casino company is under investigation by both the SEC and the US Justice Department. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-sunlight-foundation/sheldon-adelson-newt_b_1234805.html).

The internet makes it harder to hid money and easier to raise it.

In 2004 Gov. Howard Dean (D-N.H) was the first Presidential candidate to show how the internet could quickly raise money and volunteers. In 2008 President Obama took what Dean learned about the internet to build a massive, efficient fundraising and volunteer machine. He raised so much money on the internet that he was able to opt out of the Federal campaign finance system and spend an unlimited amount of money in the general election. Obama used those volunteers to out organize Hillary Clinton in a string of caucuses, which won him enough delegates to leave Clinton playing catch-up through the entire primary season.

It might be Ron Paul’s legacy to demonstrate how a candidate can run an effective national campaign without party support or infrastructure.

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex) is using the free media provided by the debates and the Obama internet fundraising model, to stay in the race. Like Obama he understands the power of many small dollar donations and the volunteer pool that comes with them.

The debates keep him on the national stage, while he uses the internet to organize his volunteers to win delegates in the Republican caucus schedule. As Gingrich and Romney fight it out in expensive bloody primary battles, Paul can take his “Money Bombs” and drop them on one inexpensive caucus after another and acquire a substantial block of delegates with little competition or expense. It is possible that he will arrive at the convention with enough delegates to hold the balance of power.

In 2016 we will be examining how each candidate used Twitter in 2012. In the next cycle a candidate will build on how a candidate successfully used Twitter to gain an edge over a rival.

Now both Republicans and Democrats use Twitter to create spin and push stories. After a debate, a candidate’s spin room surrogate is more likely to push a narrative picked up from tweets sent during the debate rather than spinning a story of their own. Romney’s $10,000 bet with Rick Perry was picked up by twitter and pushed to press before the debates were even over.

Candidates are also using Twitter in their get-out the-vote efforts. In Iowa on caucus day, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pen) used tweets to remind his supporters to go and participate. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/us/politics/twitter-is-a-critical-tool-in-republican-campaigns.html?scp=4&sq=Twitter&st=cse)

Modern campaign fundraising began 1904 when President Theodore Roosevelt set a staff member up in an office in New York City with a telephone. He told him to call every industrialist he could reach and ask for $50,000 each. This was the first time that anyone used the telephone in an organized way to raise money for a Presidential campaign. The Democrats were outraged and out fundraised - and they lost.

No one yet knows what the long term impact of the combination of Citizens United, Super Pacs, Twitter and the internet will be. But, like we did with the telephone, we are learning.

Clown Car Politics

The 999 plan isn't a jobs plan, it is a tax plan. ...when you take the 9-9-9 plan and turn it upside down, I think the devil's in the details."

- Michele Bachmann’s response to Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan in an Oct 11, 2011 Republican Debate

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/65704.html#ixzz1ivdGLdQF

Many people took Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-Minn) comment about Herman Cain’s tax plan as a joke. However, if you review quotes Bachmann made throughout her career you begin to think she was serious.

But, then again how seriously can you take a tax plan proposed by business mogul Herman Cain, that is the default tax policy in the popular “Sims” computer game?

The big saviour from Republican silliness and craziness was supposed to be Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. The moment he got in the race he was anointed the man who could take out Mitt Romney (R-Mass). That is until the big “OOPS” which lead to the Herman Cain surge.

After Cain “suspended” his campaign, front-runner status briefly fell on former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s (R-Ga) ample shoulders. Gingrich, running more of a book tour than a campaign, seemed surprised that anyone was taking him seriously, and immediately frittered away his standing with intemperate comments and general blow-hardedness.

Politics and the election became too absurd and as a result, I decided to take a little time off from writing. The only comment one could really make was “How many more clowns can possibly pop out of that little car?” But, now that Iowa and New Hampshire are over, it is time to return.

Going into South Carolina, Mitt Romney, is the one left standing holding the tattered rags of the nomination with Rick Santorum (R-Pen), Ron Paul (R-Tex) and Newt Gingrich all jumping up and snapping at his hands. Romney does have the nomination unless something really surprising happens in South Carolina.

But at what price.

The only qualified candidates, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn) and Gov. Jon Huntsman (R-UT), were shoved aside, to be replaced by the ridiculous campaigns of Bachmann, Cain, Perry, Paul and Gingrich. In a normal year they would not have been taken seriously. Like Mike Gravel (D-Alsk) in 2008, they may have gotten a courtesy invite to a debate or two and then been quietly dropped. However, in the Presidential year of 2012 they became the face of an extreme Republican party that can’t be taken seriously.

This will damage the Republican brand like the Democrats were damaged in 1972. Now, when you think Republicans you don’t think Eisenhower, Lodge or Reagan. You think Bachmann, Gingrich or Cain.

But the damage the Republicans are doing to themselves started in 2010.

Since taking over the House, and their steadfast refusal to participate in any meaningful actions in the Senate, people began to see the the Republicans as a party of hard heartedness, with no real solutions, bent on keeping the system rigged to protect the “haves” against the “have-nots.”

Congressional approval for the Republican run congress is down to 12%. For the first time since 2010 the Democrats lead the Republicans in generic congressional polls. Obama consistently out polls any potential Republican opponent even though he has an approval rating of less than 50% - which still makes him the most popular politician on the national stage.

Gov. Jon Huntsman said in a recent debate the most dangerous deficit the country faces is a trust deficit between the people and the government. They do not believe they are in control of their own government or that either party represents their interest.

He is right.

The strongholds of both parties are deserting them. Voters are changing their registrations to Independent in record numbers. Each party is loosing more registrations in their base regions than their rival. Democrats are loosing registrations to Independents at higher a rate than Republicans in the Northeast and the rust belt. Republicans are loosing registrations to Independents at a higher rate than Democrats in the South and Southwest.

When they are not “voting with their feet” by dropping their party membership, voters have been voting with their feet through the Occupy and Tea Party movements.

Both groups like to believe they are not at all related. But, they both spring from the same anger and frustration. Whether it is the Tea Party’s fear of a government they perceive as overzealous and overbearing or the Occupy movement’s rage against a system they feel is corrupt, both groups share an anger and lack of trust for the Government and structures that they feel stack system against them.

The one topic that has not been debated is how to quell that anger and win that trust back. Without that trust all the 999 tax plans and budget cuts won’t solve anything. Unless American voters believe the government is dealing fairly and honestly with them, they will not follow their leaders.

Until then everyone in power will look like so many clowns in big red shoes.