zhisou (a blog)

They should put all of the crazy US states first in the primary season. Places where they believe the garbled bigoted ignorant hypocritical rhetoric of Iowa runner-up Rick Santorum. The kind of states that would take Sarah Palin seriously. Seriously, they should do that. Seriously.

Then, instead of steady and mediocre John-Major-like Romney, we’d get a proper nutjob candidate having to actually make sense for longer than a single breath, having to actually know stuff and have policies that don’t contradict each other too much. This won’t happen, because hot on the heels of Iowa is fairly sensible New Hampshire. If we went straight to South Carolina and maybe a couple of southern crackers like Mississippi and Alabama, then the momentum might stick to Santorum.

What a laugh that would be!

Currently most states never get to vote in a meaningful primary. The majority of candidates only limp to Florida at best, the really successful maybe as far as Super Tuesday (March 6th) if they’re lucky. Most read the signs following Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Rick Perry’s already “considering his candidacy” (which is something he should have done before launching it) and Bachmann’s dropped out. These three states have the combined population of less than 9 million (under 3% of the US total, roughly the same as New York City). but their results set the momentum behind each candidate and make them look inevitable or inevitably doomed. Now, once Romney tucks NH in his knapsack with Iowa, it’s pretty much game over.

The only scenario that might give us some greater fun is if the other conservatives drop out and back Santorum and he can take SC on Jan 21st. This is more likely if Hunstman can stay alive and split the sane vote.

Then it’s game on.

Romney is slick enough not to foul up and will probably promise Hunstman the Secretary of State job, so Huntsman will anyway back Romney after Florida, so Santorum is going to have to beat Romney on his own, and on turf that’s not made of crazy. Tough job.

For kicks, let’s just say he does. That would only be step one, he’d still have to beat Obama. Not impossible, but unlikely given his lack of appeal to the majority of Americans who are not completely insane.

Obama aside, Democrats usually choose rubbish candidates: John Kerry, Al Gore, Mike Dukakis, Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter, George McGovern. There’s only one President among them and Carter was fighting the unelected Gerald Ford only a couple of short years after Watergate and Nixon’s humiliating resignation. Even if you give the 2000 election to Gore (as the American people did) for a sitting Vice-President not to clearly and convincingly beat a chump like Bush is anyway a damning verdict on his candidacy. This means that since Johnson’s 1964 win, only Clinton has looked like a great campaigner and he won in large part because Ross Perot split the vote in both 92 and 96.

In any normal year we’d expect the Republican candidate to end up in the White House – Bob Dole (in 96) and John McCain (in 08) are the only Republican Presidential nominees not to be President since Goldwater lost in 64. Obama is clearly a fly in this ointment. The ointment being the argument I just made, and Obama being the fly and that’s not because he’s black but because he’s quite obviously clever, capable and a great campaigner: i.e. not a rubbish Democratic candidate. However, the fly in the Obama ointment is that he can’t sell us hope this time around, and his inspiring words fall flat when he’s been a disappointment to Democrats and a demon to Republicans – so even with someone as good as Obama, there’s a chance for whoever gets the GOP nomination, even if it’s someone as clearly as shite as Santorum.

Let’s hope so.

Obama might outfox the fly in his ointment by picking a more inspiring and exciting veep choice than Joe Biden – although it’s not obvious who and I don’t think he will. Santorum could anyway counter-outfox and try to persuade someone like Condi Rice, a widely respected person of impressive intellect and experience who would broaden his appeal, although she’s not a great politician or campaigner. Anyway, whatever, let’s say he does this (which he won’t, I know) and we have a Santorum/Rice ticket – then it really is game on.

Poor unemployment numbers, high debts, a Congress refusing to do anything, and Santorum wins by a whisker due to vote rigging in Florida on the promise of reducing the deficit and huge tax cuts. At last, a proper Tea Party candidate having to actually deliver rather than just shouting out absurd lists of disconnected ideas and quasi-religious nonsense.

Then we sit back and watch the American empire fall, consumed by its own sense of divine exceptionalism and rigid dogmatic silliness. And spend any spare time learning Chinese.

I don’t really want this to happen, I love America and would hate it to fall … but if having a Democrat means a timid and compromising Obama losing the arguments, then we might as well give the other side their heads and let them see what really happens when you put the conservative crackpots in charge of the asylum.