Mitt, Adieu

This year’s campaign has had its share of funny moments, but the funniest so far HAS to be the footage of Mitt Romney’s dropping out of the race yesterday. If you watched it with the sound off, you’d swear someone had just surprised him with a birthday cake. Instead, he used all his used -car salesman charm to admit to a bunch of charged-up campaigners that he was tired of spending his own money and getting trounced by Mike Huckabee. If he stayed in the race, of course, the Republican party would be rent asunder, and a Democrat would be elected. Ex post facto, the terrorists not only will have won, but will print T-shirts and hats and be telling Terry Bradshaw on camera in November about that wonderful feeling, after 1300 years, to finally win one for Allah. So he’s backing out for the good of the country. Oh, if we can only survive all the people who act “for the good of the country.”

Yesterday I flicked on CNN to see if they were broadcasting the space shuttle launch. Instead, I got to see Bay Buchanan, senior adviser to Romney and Imperial Dominatrix of the Ice Planet of Doom, tell the anchor that she was “very excited” about the bailing out, b/c it shows that American conservatives have found their new leader in Romney. Oh, if only her inane prattle were true. If Romney really is the leader of true American conservatives, then his sickly showing in the primaries can give us all hope, indicating that that little barrel of monkeys can keep clawing and tearing at each other while the rest of us get on with the business of living in the 21st century.

“True believers”, as conservatives often call themselves, does describe them quite well, I think. They do believe in their cause, even though the cause can only be advanced by human beings, flawed, weak, susceptible to the temptations of the world and the flesh. No amount of failure will dissuade them from the notion that the only valid government is the one that works actively for its own demise. For the past eight years, Dubya was their champion, but now, with the stench of death, torture, economic failure, corruption, and national decline finally wafting from the kitchen, they say he wasn’t a “true” conservative. There must be a new champion, because their cause is just and true. It’s just that the people they’ve been electing have been too busy steering business to their buddies and tapping shoes in men’s bathrooms to get the job done.

I’ve been trying to figure out a proper analogy for this kind of behavior, but I’m having trouble. The closest I can come is a guy who catches syphilis from sleeping around, then gets it in his head that there is a “magic vagina” somewhere that will cure the disease if only he can dip his wick in it. So every new lay brings with it hope and elation that happy days are here again, and ends with the guy bitter, the woman infected, and the idea stronger than before.

You’ve heard of that guy, right? Or is my imagination just getting a little sicker every day?

Since yesterday’s announcement, the news has been chockablock with interviews of conservative voters gnashing their teeth and beating their brows, faced with the prospect of campaigning for John McCain. His sins are well known. He had the temerity, the absolute gall, to do such things as sponsor bipartisan legislation, vote against the Bush tax cuts, ignore their calls for an amendment to ban gay marriage, and endorse an immigration policy that didn’t involve raids, shackles, and branding. Give it up, you bunch of drama queens! Vote or stay home! If you want to bring Reagan back so badly, you should stop opposing scientific research! Regeneration of the dead doesn’t just HAPPEN, you know!