Close your eyes and imagine it’s January 2013 and Sarah Palin is being inaugurated as President of the United States…
Or Newt Gingrich…
Does that prospect fill you with dread?
But it could never happen, right? Who in their right mind would vote for those two – one a nitwit, the other a scumbag?
The American people, that’s who!
In a country of 330 million people who spend their time playing video games and text messaging celebrity gossip to each other, anything can happen – however preposterous.
Palin is inexplicably rock-star popular. She commands obscene speaking fees and is greeted by cheering crowds wherever she goes. Keith Olbermann calls her “an idiot” and informed viewers like you might agree with him. But a lot of people love that airhead. When it comes to name recognition, she may be the best known politician in the country – next to President Obama, and he’s getting known for all the wrong reasons.
In his public and private life, Gingrich has shown himself to be the kind of cad you wouldn’t have in your home. But he has somehow restored his credibility – at least with the media.
And he is seriously considering the possibility of a presidential run in 2012.
Gingrich, who was one of the architects of the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, has a plan to bring Republicans back to power in November. His new book, “To Save America,” spells it out. The book assails Obama’s “secular-socialist machine” and warns that the president’s agenda is destroying the country.
You and I know that it is ludicrous to call President Obama a socialist. But the mass of the American people have no idea what a socialist is. All they know is that whatever it is, it’s bad. And they keep hearing how bad the president is so he must be a socialist.
The failure of the powers that be to deal with the Gulf catastrophe has sent Obama’s approval ratings into a nosedive. If they stop to think about it, most people are aware that Republican policies created the disaster but they’re mad at Obama anyway. After all, why hasn’t he stopped the gusher?
As he himself has said, the buck stops at the Oval Office. And so much is going wrong, so little is going right. Nobody seems to know what they’re doing.
In a New York Times op-ed piece, columnist Frank Rich says:
What’s also being tarred daily by the gushing oil is the very notion that government can accomplish anything. The current crisis in that faith predates this disaster. In the short history of the Obama White House, two of its most urgent projects, reducing unemployment and pacifying Afghanistan, have yet to yield persuasive results. The dividends on the third, health care reform, won’t be in the mail for years.
So who would vote for a president who thinks the government can solve the country’s problems? A lot of people would rather elect nitwits and scumbags who would essentially leave them to deal with their own disasters.
At least that’s the way it looks in the polls.
In a recent NPR survey, Democrat Stan Greenberg and Republican Glen Bolger looked at 70 House districts thought to be in play this fall. And they found the Republicans could win control of the House of Representatives in November.
Not just the Senate, the House!
There are 255 Democrats and 177 Republicans in the House, with three vacancies. Republicans need to have a net gain of 39 seats in November to make John Boehner speaker.
And the polls indicate that could happen.
Imagine that – John Boehner as speaker!
That’s about as preposterous as Palin or Gingrich as president.
