Clownary may not be the best word, I’m open to suggestions for the phenomenon where a candidate makes utterly false statements dripping with self-confidence for the error and oozing contempt for the facts. But whatever the term, last night’s GOP debate was disappointing. There were plenty of losing statements, few zingers, and the biggest loser of all had to be CBS news, which could not manage a live stream feed and cut off every decent answer with a timer buzzing or need to go to a 5 minute commercial break. CBS even managed to accidentally send Michelle Bachmann’s campaign an internal email about how they would ‘limit her” in the debate. Epic Fail.
Michelle Bachmann pining for an America more like the People’s Republic of China, where she believes there is no social safety net or big government interference in the people’s bidness. The facts are China is one of the most repressive governments in the world, throttling everything from Twitter or Google, and they have a robust and growing patchwork system of universal healthcare for all. As far as leaving business alone, the last time a group of businesses screwed up hurt some people, the Chinese government tried the CEOs and strung ’em up publicly in less than a week. This all went down while moderators ignored the one expert on China standing at a podium, Jon Huntsman.
Rick Perry surprised the crowd simply by not fucking up royally as he has in the last several debates. He managed to get in a jab at foreign aid, which I’m all for examining. It’s just that Perry failed to mention foreign aid accounts for a tiny fraction of the US budget and the majority of it goes to Israel or to anti-terrorism related efforts anyway. Cutting the few paltry millions left over actually earmarked to keep kids in poor, war-torn regions from starving to death on camera wouldn’t even amount to a decent tax-cut for the Paris Hilton’s of America.
Herman Cain managed to keep his mouth mostly shut, while Romney and Gingrich battled one another in the contest of who would be the most anxious to send other people’s children and spouses to invade Iran.
In short the Republicans have no foreign policies successes to speak of, a massive cluster-fucks to distance themselves from, a big problem in a debate purportedly about foreign policy. And they built killing terrorists into such a massive part of their party’s ideology, that it was next to impossible to find and throw Obama hating red meat seeing as this President has knocked off Somali pirates, killed several terrorist kingpins, and personally gave the order to kill Osama bin Laden. Watching them try wasn’t even entertaining, it was just boring.
I really miss Clinton, he was articulate and put these foreign threats into proper perspective. Kim Jong-il and the Iranian Mullahs know that if they actually used a nuclear weapon, they would be toast. The Mullahs want the bomb for precisely the same reason as everyone else, for defense. This is very reasonable with the US and Israel rattling sabers at them. Ron Paul is the only one over there that realizes the military is what is bankrupting us.
While the issue of foreign aid is way overblown on the right, it is certainly worth examining. Not to save money, per se, but whether we are getting our money’s worth out of it.
Giving billions of dollars to a middle eastern country who is nominally an ally, but who continually behaves in ways detrimental to our national interest should be re-thought. Granted, we want to keep their nukes out of the hands of their crazies, so we have to keep some money flowing to have some kind of access to their levers of power.
Some of you probably think I’m talking about Pakistan. Well, I am, but also of Israel.
What scares me most about the right’s support of Israel is that it isn’t simply supporting a democratic state, but trying to achieve the “end times” as laid out in the Left Behind series (but not actually in the Bible). Their fervent wish to hasten the bloody end of the world will simply perpetuate hell on earth for that region and beyond.
For me it’s one of the main reasons to keep the fundies out of high office. Politicians who really think the “end times” are near will vote and govern from that point of view. They are not going to care if their decisions have detrimental effects 50 or 100 years from now, because they think Jesus is going to come fix it all for them.
It’s so sad, when we consider a “good debate performance” as synonymous with “did not set fire to their own teeth”.
Actually “clownery” is a perfectly good word. The spelling with “-ary” makes my brain hurt, however.
Clownery is spot-on for Bachmann considering her fondness of John Wayne Gacy.
I must object in the strongest possible terms to the use of the word “clownery” (in whatever spelling). Some of my best friends are clowns. Many of them are in point of fact particularly distinguished clowns. They have amongst them worked for the Big Apple Circus, chatted with Bill Irwin, studied with Marcel Marceau, performed regularly in the very heart of our great nation’s capital, and stopped my very respiratory abilities with laughter.
To sully the name of these fine performers by associating their honorable profession with the troglodytes running for the Republican nomination does them such a disservice that I shall be forced to demand satisfaction.
Yours sincerely,
Lord Cholomley Runningwithscissors [ret’d]