Watching the vaudeville act that is the Republican presidential race this year it's clear what it takes to be a successful candidate in this primary: Orwell's doublethink with a high tolerance for cognitive dissonance.
I should say that this year's GOP race is more than anything hilarious, I mean if you for one second had any doubt that this entire primary had jumped the shark that doubt must be gone now with the announcement that Donald Trump is going to moderate the next Republican debate.
It's no wonder Newt is doing so well he is by far the best reality tv contestant. Yesterday the National Review online pleaded that 'serious candidates should treat this serious process with the seriousness this serious process deserves" or something like that.
The operative word was that the primary for the President is a serious business and should be treated seriously. And that is what this race isn't. You can say many things about the 2012 Republican presidential primary-vaudeville, absurd, tacky, pointless, comic relief most of all-but what you can't describe it as in any, way, shape, or form, serious. There is just nothing serious about it.
It's not a presidential primary but a reality tv show where the contestants pretend to be presidential primary candidates. I mean who is the biggest joke? Perry and his debate flubs-he may be the one to sit out of the Trump event as his campaign is afraid to let him loose again. Or Cain-at least til he left-it sure is good to hear he's going to endorse someone soon, Gingrich actually seems to want the three people who might care about his endorsement-with his debate flubs along with his serial revelations of infidelity and sexual harassment? Or is it Newt who treated the "serious" process with such unseriousness that his own campaign quit during the summer?
And that is one of the funniest-most unserious-parts of this whole campaign. Newt, a guy who hasn't treated this primary seriously at all, who is more interested in using it to sell his books and videos than anything else-in other words is a grade A flake-is leading the campaign over the only truly half serious candidate-Mitt Romney, who you can bet your bottom dollar the Republican establishment is wholly behind. They would do anything to get his candidacy sewn up. You see this by the fact that when anyone from the establishment says anything it's a shot at one of the 'anyonne but Mitt' candidates. I have no idea whether or not the RNC or Karl Rove, et. al, had anything to do with all the women who came forward to derail Cain-whether or not they did of course this wouldn't mean that what the women said was untrue,my reasonable presumption is that most of it likely was true-but you can take it to the bank that they were not upset by the chronic revelations.
Gingrich the biggest flake in this most flakiest of campaigns is leading the establishment candidate. He may win as unlike the last "anyone but Romney" candidates-Cain and Perry-he is actually polling well in New Hampshire and currently blowing out Mitt in Florida.
The trouble is that the Republican voters just aren't buying into Romney. On some level it has become understood that he is Not a Real Conservative. Whether this is right or wrong this is what the conservative voters think. This feeling is not unreasonable when you consider that the Republican litmus test for this election-one of the characteristics of all Republican presidential primaries is that there is always an (unrealistic) litmus test-is opposition to "ObamaCare."
Yet it could not be plainer that ObamaCare=RomneyCare. So the voters logically surmise that if ObamaCare is the enemy of all who love liberty then Romney is a fraud and that RomneyCare is the enemy of all who love liberty.
There must be a great deal of dissonance for Romney in running against his own bill. What is not so widely remembered is that while ObamaCare is RomneyCare, RomneyCare is GingrichCare, indeed the nub of ObamaCare-the individual mandate-was initially Gingrich's answer to HillaryCare back in 1994. So this is the level of dissonance for this year's election. The presidential race amounts to Gingrich of 2011 running against Gingrich of 1994.
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