Ichabod's Kin
A place for politics, pop culture, and social issues

Help me to see what’s smart about this: faced with extreme challenges, avoid pulling together, just get rid of all leaders and take a chance on any worm-in-the-apple that runs for office.

Gosh, why didn’t we think of that before? Well, because it’s stupid, for one thing, a page from the old “throw-everything-up-in-the-air-and-let-God- sort-it-out” school of political theory. It’s also  why we all have to grow old and die, and let better heads prevail.

But there are certain people who think this is all a Party, and that there are no consequences for lame-brained thinking.

The “party” in mind is that leaderless bunch of knuckleheads who crawled out of the political backwater and decided what we all needed was their collective insanity. Yeah, that’ll steady the ship of state, alrighty. If they get their way, we’ll be in a pretty fix after election night in November.

Given that stopping to think is not in their bag of tricks, Tea Partiers have wet dreams of bringing about the unthinkable: in California, their idea of avoiding “politics as usual” was to nominate two corporate people, one–Carly Fiorina–who was fired from Hewlett Packard for sending too many jobs overseas, and the other that rich-as-Midas former eBay exec, Meg Whitman, who just spent nearly $80 mil of her own dough on her primary race. So Meg Whitman joins the crowd that likes to buy political offices with their own money. And, gosh, we thought Michael Huffington was bonkers for spending only a third of that trying to win there–and the choice of Whitman is supposed to represent “change”?

In South Carolina, what comedian Bill Maher calls the “Sexy State,” Nikki Haley’s primary proves that right wingers think sexual indiscretions are okay as long as the offender is conservative. But we already knew that from all their Republican pols who’ve gotten a pass after dipping their wicks in places other than home. Haley’s sack-time is deemed by her voters to be merely rumor, but what have the two-guys-and-counting have to gain by lying?

Nevada is the best example of Tea Party folly: to get rid of Harry Reid they went all-out for Sharron Angle, who thinks her state needs more nuclear waste and no EPA or Energy and Education departments as watchdogs. That would mean a more dangerous environment complete with lack of oversight, and citizens sitting in the dark, literally and mentally. Oh, my bad: I forgot she’d also abolish the UN and the IRS–the eternal targets of simpletons–and has evil thoughts about Social Security, Medicare and jobless insurance. This is Tea Party Nation at its hole-in-the-head worst.

If it’s their wish to transform the GOP to their likeness, maybe they’ll call themselves the Greatly Odd Party. No wonder they’ve lost friends by double digits from only two months ago, with half the country now dis-enamored of them, up from 39%. Even Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips is greatly exercised over their lack of political sophistication and for bringing more (gasp!) “politics as usual” and “looking out for themselves instead of the country”!

This is what happens when one’s news sources are Glenn Beck (the king of revisionist history); Sarah Palin, whose endorsement of an Iowa candidate shrank his double-digit lead to victory by a whisker; and Rush Limbaugh who, just married for the fourth time, had the nerve to lambaste Al and Tipper Gore for parting after forty years. Of course, when Rush speaks, we don’t know if its him or his OxyContin talking.

And let us not forget Anne Coulter, the stick-figure who thinks she’s a total babe in her mini-skirts, low necklines, heavy eyeliner and long, fake eyelashes, incessantly flipping back her long straight hair while gabbing about liberals as if she were a schoolgirl  dishing on classmates she doesn’t like. Oh, yes, and her bare arms: remember when the wing-nuts went after Michelle Obama for going sleeveless? But, hey, “fair and balanced” has never been their forte.

When such persons are your political mentors, you can only sink to new lows. And heaven forfend that such voters prevail in any election. We’d be the Planet of the Apes all over again, but this time halfway up, not halfway down, the tree.

Let Tea Partiers be very careful what they wish for. As Oscar Wilde noted, all such saviors have their disciples, but it’s always Judas who writes their biographies.