“Two party system. Yeah!” After all these years, I finally get what you’ve been going on and on about, Mr. Campion (GOP VACUUM – Issue: 10/5/11). The choices are always the same. The ideas are always the same. The people are basically the same. We are stuck on a political merry-go-round and in a very real way it is fixed! The two party system must be eradicated, especially now that there are more independent voters, and an increasing number of non-party affiliated ideas/voters out there with cross-interests and now with these Tea Party and Wall Street movements, so many that are mainly fed up with the status quo, and not the Obama/Democrat status quo, or even the Bush/Republican status quo that bore it, but these refurbished, repackaged clones of the ones before who made us run in the opposite direction with this false hope that anything would change, just to finally and sadly realize it was the same failed junk over and over and over again.
What is Mitt Romney going to give us that the first two Bushes didn’t? Let’s face it, he’s basically Barack Obama without the personality. And why oh why did we believe Obama would be any different than anyone who came before in a Democrat suit. It makes the entire concept of voting seem silly. And that may be the saddest comment of all.
So, I can feel every dripping, disgusted bit of your sarcasm from here.
And now I reluctantly agree with its sobering premise.
Two party system, NO!
—Kathy Mason
What a choice: A lackluster, hopeless and unchanged centrist incumbent, or a carpetbagger wannabe Republican, who is blander than a beige summer suit. Sigh. Prediction: Four more years of boredom and legislative cockblocking no matter who wins.
—j. young
These Republican candidates appear to be very, very bad. I was going to vote for anyone but Obama, but unless someone else comes along, I will either not vote at all, or gulp, go back to the demon we know.
—SS11 B-Done
At least Chris would fit in the “OVAL office”…. maybe… BUT I think those state dinners would be high risk for him and he’d probably end up in the ER.
—Alaphonse
If the GOP has any intention of winning, they need to get someone who is not already in the race and I am not talking about abrasive Chris Christie who is presiding over a state that has much internal turmoil some of which was foisted upon the state by the GOP going back to 1990s. The current candidates are placeholders; just someone to run. They all appear to have substantial flaws which will come back to haunt them, except perhaps Jon Huntsman.
That isn’t to say that Obama will have an enthusiastic posse of supporters. It is just that he is the BETTER CHOICE thus far. In my opinion the only person in the GOP race at this time who may, I say may, be able to garner independent support is Huntsman, but he won’t be supported by the GOP base.
—OneManRoaring
Hey, what a shock! The Republicans, who were decimated in 2008, and then became the outsider, pissed off types in 2009, and the bitches of the Tea Party goofballs in 2010, are now stuck with 40 candidates who are as schizophrenics a bunch as the party platform. What the hell is this platform; “Obama stinks, try us… again?” That was Kerry’s platform in 2004 – and as I remember you wrote then that you couldn’t merely be against something, you have to have some skin in the damn game. This may be the sole reason they keep digging up this Reagan Myth you write about. I think if Reagan actually ran now jokers like Herman Cain would bury him!
Herman Cain?
Bring back Trump!
—R. Ledford
McCain had the interest of independents for a while because he, at one time, was willing to go out on a limb for campaign finance reform and buck the system, so to speak, when he thought he was right. Mittens is not one to buck the system. He’d rather flip flop like a fish out of water than stand up to the money men. He’s a corporate guy, stay the course, keep the rich rich and the rest under the thumb of the rich. Even the right wing extremists know that, which is why he wont muster up any enthusiasm from them or get the nod from the good old boys south and west, nor will any independents cast their vote with him. It seems, thankfully, that by playing too many games, the GOP has outsmarted themselves, and I couldn’t be more delighted.
—Carol Caroli
Hey, in 2007, everyone said it would be a mistake to run any long shot against the Republican candidate, because the Republican brand was so damaged by George W. Bush that if a safe, boring Democrat ran a known name like say Hillary Clinton (even with her polarizing husband) they would win handily. They didn’t, but the long shot won! Now, the Republican “Money Guys” as you so blithely and sarcastically put it are doing just that. In terms of contradiction, I think we have one here. Is this the best way to merely get Obama out, to swing someone up there that wouldn’t be dumb like Perry or incendiary like Bachmann or wild like Cain? This may be the best strategy, if you think, as a preponderance of the American voter polled does, that the country is going in the wrong direction. However, recent history points in the opposite direction.
Not to say that Romney represents a “right” direction (and by right I mean correct and not the political ideological right), but it is another direction. It’s just that he lacks any charisma or message. Obama had one; change. Believe it or not, it was a message.
For instance, in 2004, I recall this column making the point that John Kerry, while not being anything formidable or even stomachable as a candidate for President of the United States, makes for change at the top that was needed; change for change sake. At the time, Iraq was going badly and the economy was beginning to show signs of slowing, there was this sense of negativism creeping in about all the civil rights the Bush administration had taken from the people under the guise of national security. The rest of the world, in which we were and are still tied to economically, was beginning to see us as this mishandled giant with a rather arrogant foreign policy with torture and mayhem taking the day. Kerry, you said, was no political superman, but he was not Bush, and maybe that was good enough.
It wasn’t good enough, was it?
I see Romney as being John Kerry. He is not Obama, and that is going to have to be good enough?
Democracy at it’s finest – good enough!
—Brian W.
James Campion is the Managing Editor of The Reality Check News & Information Desk and the author of Deep Tank Jersey, Fear No Art, Trailing Jesus and Midnight For Cinderella.
