Ichabod's Kin
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    With all the pointy-headed intellectuals in Washington and their supposedly prissy ways, thank god for a cowboy to freshen up the political dialogue.
    For that, of course, we need a real cowboy, and they typically have little interest in politics. The laconic speech of strong, silent types makes for poor rhetoric, as in: “Yep” and “yup,” “nope,” “much obliged, ma’am” and, “Don’t make me shoot yer sorry ass.”
    What we don’t need is what we get, cowboy  wannabes. People who didn’t know what a real cowboy was thought Lyndon Johnson sounded like one but he was just a hick, and there is a difference. His saving grace was that he knew it and it bothered him.
    Such self-reflection finds no home in the mind of Texas gov Rick Perry, who has ridden in on a horse and will indeed play well in all of Hicksville. He’s a legend in his own mind, but a cowboy he is not, just another pretender.
    Perry’s problem is that rubes and hicks are not numerous in the USA. Concentrated in a certain region and sparsely scattered in others, some of them vaguely remember that LBJ was once president but can’t tell you when: did he kneel with Washington at Valley Forge?…ride with Teddy Roosevelt up San Juan Hill?…or was he Reagan’s running mate? It don’t make much differnce to them.
    What they really like is someone who talks tough, and Perry does just that, laced with corn-pone that is heavy on the sauce–a defective form of English in some parts. Other numbkull candidates at least come from where speech is recognizable. What modern conservatives are really partial to are candidates who are sassy and impertinent, preferably to the point of rude and insulting: Palin, Bachmann, Gingrich, and so on.
    That’s Romney’s and Huntsman’s disadvantage: they take slaps at the President without sounding ignorant. That will cost them some voters but they’ll win others with their civility. So far they and Obama are the only adults in the room. I don’t know where Herman Cain belongs in all of this, but would like to try his pizza, as long as it’s not delivered cold. Rick Santorum tries hard to sound like a smart-ass but you can see him biting his tongue in the process. See ya later, Santorum. Ron Paul actually has some radically sensible ideas, and that precisely is his problem within the GOP.

Perry sure cut a fine figure riding his pony over the Texas border and into South Carolina, safe territory for someone who shoots from the hip. But he fared much less well in New Hampshire where he wasn’t as smart as a fifth-grader who asked him why he didn’t believe in science and how old he thought the earth was. Why, it’s very, very old, said the Rickster, but it ain’t really settled yet as to how far back it goes. Say, there, young’un: you want better answers, go ask yer teacher.
    Perry’s been salivating over the presidency for a long time, and you could tell by watching him. He has a king-size ego and is tired of governing Texas, or Texiz, as he calls it. And this is where the media come in.
    Now, we know that Fox News is the long, ugly arm of the GOP, of conservatives in general and of the Tea Party in particular. Candidates of such stripe are saved the scramble for lots of face-time with the public and to become well-known. Fox’s talent is to make a silk purses from a sows’ ears and is  generous to right-wing palookas, as long as they take verbal pokes at Obama. There always have been extreme media down through political history but Fox calls to mind the press that assailed Jefferson in his time.
    It is fun to watch Fox treat the Republican candidates as if they are serious alternatives, regardless of their banal notions, historical mis-quotes, and absence of just plain good sense–while ascribing to Obama all manner of evil, a preposterous birth plot, and condemn his spouse for sleeveless fashions and him for taking vacations.
    CNN, the sane news source that avoids slinging red-meat to its audience, gives cowboys and their ilk enough rope to hang themselves. They outdo Fox in getting fresh faces Out There till sensible folks can see them for what they are. That’s what they’re doing with Perry, who will not wear well over time. What will be a sad spectacle will be his coming Losers’ food-fight with Sarah and Michelle.
    Left standing, long after Huntsman has limped away, will be Romney and we’ll have a fairly civil campaign between him and Barack. Fox will have a hard time playing the politics of personal destruction with Mitt as their candidate. Just pray he doesn’t make a bad choice for Veep on the ticket, but I truly doubt Romney would do that either.
    Even were Mitt to win in 2012, look for the Tea Party to be sucking for air, nasty town hall meetings to be things of the past, and Speaker Boehner able to cut reasonable deals with the Chief Exec, as he wished to do earlier in the debt ceiling debate.
    Then everybody can go back to being mad about overpaid athletes or that the Prez is a black man.
    And Perry will have hanged himself with all the rope he wished for, after his Last Meal of cold corn-pone. Ugh.