Tina Dupuy

There’s a myth in the right-wing-o-sphere that President Obama was never fully vetted. “We don’t know ANYTHING about this guy!” they’ll say, and in the same breath make fun of the fact he wrote two autobiographies. My answer to this is always: “He ran against a Clinton.” Any skeletons, dirt, deal killers or weaknesses were dug up, dragged out and made public during their exhaustive primary. In spite of all of this Obama still won the nomination of his party. He won against a Clinton; a distinction not too many people have.

You’ll still hear Obama detractors say they don’t know him. “The president still doesn’t have an agenda for a second term,” said Mitt Romney last week. The president has laid out his plan for a second term during his convention speech, stump speeches, interviews — there’s even a brochure. But the Right claims it’s Obama who’s being cryptic. Secretive. There’s a scandal-obsessed media — an entire industry ready to pounce on the slightest misstep of any notable but somehow they’ve all conspired to protect Obama from scrutiny.

Sure.

But as far as Romney goes, I really don’t know who this dude is: I’ve watched dozens of speeches, read hundreds of articles and sat through 23 national debates and I can’t tell you where Romney stands on any issue. And it’s not for lack of trying or just general contempt (which I suspect is the reason some on the right feign ignorance of Obama’s positions), it’s from too many answers to every question. I had assumed Romney was just going to sell himself as the opposite of Obama. I based this on his odd claim that he will repeal ObamaCare, the health care law modeled after the reforms Romney implemented while governor of Massachusetts. That seems arbitrary rather than reasoned policy, so I expected that would be the theme: Romney the not-Obama.

“The president has communicated weakness,” says Romney on Obama’s foreign policy. But then during the foreign policy debate-in-name-only Romney happily agreed with Obama on everything from the withdrawal date in Afghanistan to drone strikes. On Egypt: “I believe, as the president indicated, and said at the time that I supported his — his action there,” relayed Romney.

Romney has mainly been running against himself on YouTube. For every position he’s held, he’s also fervently held the opposite — effortlessly switching sans explanation. He’s a candidate who was for the Lilly Ledbetter Act, then against it, then neutral. He’s been both for and against minimum wage increases; for and against the auto bail out; for and against gun control; for and against the Bush Tax Cuts; for and against a woman’s right to choose; for and against more tax cuts; for and against Reagan.

I was asked to speak at a high school a few weeks ago and the civics students earnestly wanted to know where Romney stood on the issues and I really wanted to help them. One of the teachers asked if it’s more instructive to look at what Romney says when he thinks there’s no camera or when he knows there is one. I told him it might be the former. But I’m not sure. Mainly I just threw my hands up and said, “Look, I’m not a spokesperson for his campaign.”

You can’t go by what Romney has said because he’s said a lot of things … most of which contradict each other. You can’t go by his record because it’s even further from what he’s said (he never raised taxes while governor just tons of “fees”). What’s left is a debate over what you think he might mean versus what he really might mean. If you value evidence at all — this is “sketchy” territory. It’s all speculation and reading between the lies.

Yet everyone seems to have their theory as to who the real Romney is: He’s a moderate — he’s a hard-line right-winger — he’s a vulture capitalist — peacenik, etc. But who is he really? What would he actually do as president? He’s untethered from all his former statements (including ones made minutes ago) so it’s anyone’s guess.

Because Romney has been on all sides of every issue, he’s lined up perfectly with his opponent at one time or another. The only way Romney has been clear is by diluting his positions beyond recognition. Just by continuing to say inconsistent things (and plenty of them) the only thing we can all be certain of is he’s not Obama.

It’s an intellectual impossibility to vote for Romney because there’s no telling what he’s actually for. He really is just a not-Obama.

Politicians hone the art of the non-answer. The stock—often flippant—thing they say when asked a direct question; their go-to platitudes. For example: “What would you do about the war in Afghanistan?” Answer: “Listen to the commanders on the ground.” Translation: I wouldn’t DO anything. Another fave is saying, “I’d leave it up to the states.” It’s a way to not give your opinion and display a basic knowledge of civics. Slavery, segregation and later miscegenation were all state laws—but the “up to the states” verbal tic still sounds reasonable when said by a name on a yard sign.

But perhaps the worst, due to its lack of challenge in the stenographic media, is the answer on any abortion question: “I’m against it except for instances of rape, incest or the life of the mother.”

This (at least sometimes) is Mitt Romney’s stance on abortion. It wasn’t his running mate, Paul Ryan’s, until he joined the ticket. But Romney, after being staunchly pro-choice disclosing his family friend, Ann Keenan, died of an illegal abortion in 1963, now says he’d like to see it illegal once again. Except, he says, for women who are victims.

Romney and victims: It’s becoming a theme. If you worked at one of the companies Romney took over at Bain, Texas Governor Rick Perry called you a victim of “vulture capitalism.” Romney assesses a whopping “47 percent of Americans see themselves as victims” and the only way to get a medical procedure legally in Romney’s America is, yes, to be a victim.

What sounds like a not-so-extreme position on abortion rights is actually much worse than an outright ban.

If there are exceptions for ending a pregnancy requiring the recipient prove she was raped two things happen: 1) Just as with total criminalization—abortion goes back underground. 2) Rape is trivialized.

The accusation of rape has always been plagued by the counter-accusation of an ulterior motive. “She’s trying to destroy a good man.” “It’s just the remorse talking!” “This is blackmail.”

Or as Paul Ryan-endorsed Wisconsin State Rep. Roger Rivard put it last week, “Some girls rape so easily.”

To put this into perspective, think of what Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky’s victims had to endure to get justice: Sports fans rioted on campus after they came forward.

In order to terminate a pregnancy women who are raped will have to defend themselves against yet another charge: She just wants to get an abortion.

An exception for rape means not only ending legal abortions, it means profoundly changing rape.

As with anything, if abortion moves out of the light, it will find its place in the shadows, and then we’re back to where Mitt Romney’s family friend, Ann Keenan, found herself in 1963: bleeding to death from a botched back alley abortion.

Abortion rates don’t change with legality. A 2007 study by the World Health Organization found the same number of women who want abortions get abortions regardless of whether or not they’re legal. What changes is the numbers of women who die of unsafe procedures. In fact, the study noted, in Ethiopia abortion was completely illegal and also the second leading cause of death among women in that country. If you want to save lives—you want legal abortions, sex education and widely available birth control.

This rape clause is horrible public policy. This is not anything remotely resembling how a free country functions. This is not valuing life. It’s valuing easy answers to viscerally complicated issues.

You can morally disagree with abortion and then I suggest you don’t get one. But to nationalize women, to make their bodies legally akin to public incubators, is not the kind of country we want to live in.

It’s a country we should keep in our rearview. Abortion needs to stay legal and most importantly—private.

Photo by Ethan Hickerson

Republicans say the polls are skewed until they show their guy in the lead. Then the polls are clearly right and we should all take note! Democrats panic when the polls fluctuate in the least bit and start using words like “outlier” and “anomaly” (liberal words for skewed). We’ve never had more polls or more ways to compile polls and the controversy over their accuracy has never been higher.

Yes, it’s election season and along with the primetime presidential debates — everyone wants to debate poll numbers.

But there’s another poll warranting even greater scrutiny: A Pew Research Foundation report just released claims they found 20 percent of Americans do not identify themselves as religious. This, according to the foundation, is up from 2007 when the number was just over 15 percent. In the 30 years of age and under category it’s 33 percent — a third of younger Americans will tell pollsters they’re not religious at all. With 90 percent saying they’re not interested in seeking religion whatsoever.

Just to put this into perspective, 19 percent of Americans are white evangelicals and 22 percent identify as Catholic. Their numbers are now on par with the “unaffiliated” and yes (gasp) atheists.

But here’s the problem when pollsters ask Americans about our religion: We lie. When someone with a clipboard asks us about our belief in god and our church attendance we give the answer we think we should instead of the truth. According to the Pew study in 2012, 73 percent of Americans were religious and 68 percent said that religion plays an important role in their lives. According to Pew: “[American religious importance] is far higher than in Britain (17 percent), France (13 percent), Germany (21 percent) or Spain (22 percent).”

How do we know Americans are embellishing their churchiness en masse? If 37 percent of Americans went to church weekly or more and 33 percent went monthly/yearly — you know what you’d see at churches? Lines of people. A hundred million people every single Sunday. Instead churches (even iconic mega-churches) are going bankrupt and the pews are collecting dust instead of donations.

No, when it comes to self-reporting religious devotion Americans cannot be trusted.

We under-estimate our calories, over-state our height, under-report our weight and when it comes to piety – we lie like a prayer rug.

A different study at the University of Michigan looked at the rate of self-reported church attendance by Americans in contrast with actual attendance. “America maintains a gap of 10 to 18 percentage points between what people say they do on survey questions, and what time diary data says they actually do,” said the report.

Which means Americans attend church as frequently as (gasp) Europeans. Only unlike those heathen Europeans, we feel the need to say we’re in church when we’re actually watching the NFL. In short: Americans attend “church.” Wink. Wink. Air quotes.

On the other hand, there’s no evidence people are telling pollsters they’re atheists and then secretly go to church. The deceit is one-sided

So if we have been consistently over-reporting our religiosity by 10 to 18 percentage points, it’s reasonable to suggest this current estimate of non-religious Americans to be at 20 percent, could actually be closer to 38 percent. Which is on par with the largest religious group in the U.S., Protestant at 42 percent.

What does this mean? It means the non-believers, agnostic, non-theists, secularists, spiritual but not religious, and moral without mythology folks could be the actual silent majority.

It’s possible we’re completely surrounded. Shh.

@tinadupuy

I don’t really make predictions. But my prediction is in 10 years, we will all snidely refer to anything inept, broken, petty and lazy as like the 112^th Congress.

Coaches will yell it at their athletes when they’re falling behind, “Do you want people to call you the 112^th?! Do you? Then get up and get back in the game!” A nasty burn in a breakup: “You’re too 112^th to live with, Darrel.”  This Congress should not have its jersey retired—but quarantined—nothing we ever like, respect or care about should ever be called 112^th.

Out of 112 Congresses this batch of Brooks Brothers barnacles has managed to break the institution. Their public approval rating is hovering around the margin of error—and that’s only because some of the people pollsters called think the president is Martin Sheen.

Because of the abuse of the filibuster, the Senate can no longer function. The filibuster is a storied device to pause a vote with a Senator’s yammering. Now it’s used as a veto threat. It’s as if the “hold” button was rigged to just hang up the call (and then block the number). Anything less than one party having 60 lock-step voting members means a stalemate. Without a super majority “nothing” is now the only thing possible in this deliberative body. The same amount of votes it takes the Senate to amend the Constitution is now what it takes to rename a post office.

Speaking of which, that’s basically all the 112^th House has done for two years: re-name post offices. Naming things that already have a name. That’s what they’ve been doing on our dime. Out of the paltry (and pathetic) 124 laws that have originated in the House, 27 of them have named post offices. Two have issued commemorative coins. That means of the two years this House has met they’ve only originated 95 bills that have become laws.

How do they compare? Well the average number of laws originating in the House in a normal (not mind-numbingly obstinate) Congress is around 300. The 111^th House, under Democratic majority, made 254. The 109^th House, with a Republican majority made 316 laws. Going back to the 1970s, the 93^rd Congress had 337 laws originate in their chamber.

What has the House been doing? “Nothing” would be something to aspire to. They’ve been introducing symbolic, go-nowhere bills that will never be brought up in the dysfunctional Senate and therefore never make it to the President’s desk. Their bills have mainly been to outlaw abortion and overturn the Affordable Care Act. That’s right: Not only have they been ineffective at MAKING their own laws—they’ve been ineffective at unmaking other laws.

They’ve voted 33 times to overturn ObamaCare. As if the president was going to sign that piece of legislation. Ever.

Jobs, jobs, jobs? More like: Blah, blah, blah.

I asked a congressional staffer the other day if working in the lowest rated Congress in the history of counting was like being on the set of “Gigli.”

His answer? “Pretty much.”

Part of this is our fault. To paraphrase PJ O’Rourke, we voted in a bunch of people who think government is ineffective so they have to prove themselves right once on government dole.

But really, I’ll just quote congressional candidate Wayne Powell running against House Majority Leader Eric Cantor: In a debate last week the retired Army Colonel  said, “You don’t like government. You should just resign and then I’ll take over.”

Indeed. But instead on October 5, 2012, Congress will take (yet another) break. They will not resume their idle busy work until November 13. They’re taking five weeks off so they can campaign to keep their jobs they don’t really do.

Like I said: morally bankrupt.

In the summer of 1959 then-Vice President Richard Nixon flew to Moscow to speak at the opening of the American National Exhibition. The exhibit was intended to showcase the advantages of American capitalism to the Soviets. Nixon and Soviet Premier ­Nikita Khrushchev, accompanied by an army of reporters, toured the life-sized model of the “typical American home.” It was a ranch style three-bedroom house made by All-State Properties of suburban Long Island. “I want to show you this kitchen,” said Nixon to his boisterous host. “It is like those of our houses in California.”

Thus started the exchange known as The Kitchen Debate.

This was during the height of the Cold War and just two years after the Soviets launched the satellite Sputnik, beating the U.S. into space. And there was a young Nixon, according to his memoirs with a head full of Tolstoy and other Russian writers, in an impromptu debate partially captured on Ampex color videotape with modern GE appliances as set dressings. A perfect 1950s political and technological snapshot.

The Soviet press had dubbed the dwelling Taj Mahal. “Don’t you have a machine that puts food into the mouth and pushes it down?” Quipped Khrushchev through an interpreter. “Many things you’ve shown us are interesting but they are not needed in life. They have no useful purpose. They are merely gadgets.”

The builder of the modest American home, All-State Properties proclaimed their homes were a “secret weapon” in the Cold War. “It gave ordinary Americans a high standard of living and inoculated them against the contagion of radical ideas,” writes historian Clifton Hood.

Nixon touting mortgages from the Veterans Administration or the Federal Housing Authority relayed, “Any steel worker could buy this house. They earn $3 an hour. This house costs about $100 a month to buy on a contract running 25 to 30 years.”

Nixon was having a back and forth with an actual communist—not an imagined one. And the answer to actual communism was quality of life: People could afford a home filled with gadgets by working. The actual communist dismissed these staples as unnecessary—things people could do without so the state could build more rockets.

This October, Americans will be subjected to three televised presidential debates. It’s clear the parameters of the Cold War are gone. Now it’s between Nixon Republicanism, offered by Obama (derided as socialism, conflated with communism) and the corporate divinity offered by Mitt Romney.

“You should be able to make it if you work hard,” says Obama on the stump. “You should be able to get ahead if you act responsibly. It’s that idea that built the strongest middle class on earth, and made us an economic superpower.”

Contrast that with Romney: “There are 47 percent who are with [Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.” To Romney, these are things we can do without so the state can give rich people more tax breaks (and build a bigger military).

In 50 years, the Republicans have gone from building the middle class with the aid of government to admonishing the middle class for utilizing government. At the RNC the speakers who mentioned their family’s economic rise actually showcased the government programs they now oppose: Chris Christie’s father took advantage of the GI bill; Paul Ryan went to college using his father’s Social Security; Romney’s family (according to his mother) was on welfare when they came back from Mexico.  It goes to the core of the GOP message this year: We’re not going to cut your benefits—just the other guy’s. With the fine print: Also we’re going to have to cut your benefits.

Our socio-economic debate has definitely moved out of the proverbial kitchen … and through the looking glass.

Last year when I was covering the Occupy movement, I crashed a “teach-in” at the Cal campus (a public—meaning—government university) where an activist announced they didn’t need government. “We can govern ourselves!” She declared. Now the problem with a group of people governing is they essentially become (wait for it) a government.

It’s a bit like saying, “We don’t need food—we can just eat pizza!”

This is a confusion the right wing revels in. It’s why during the health care debate there were protest signs demanding the government stay out of Medicare. “We’re here, we’re misinformed—get used to it!”

“Sometimes, even presidents need reminding, that our rights come from nature and God, not from government,” says GOP VP nominee Paul Ryan on the stump.

It’s a hefty statement that has yet to get a follow up question. Which rights do we get from god, exactly? The right to choose another religion? Isn’t Free Speech an affront to a couple Commandments? Has anyone ever checked out a theocracy like Saudi Arabia and thought, “Look at all those civil rights!”?

Ryan is bastardizing the battle cry to establish self-governance against the divine right of kings. Prior to the French and American Revolutions, in the Dark Ages, kings were assumed to be kings because it was thought god wanted them to be kings—therefore everything they did was god-like. So thinkers—and this country was founded by thinkers—came up with a way to separate the powers of god and rulers—self-governance: Three branches of self-government; a bill of rights; checks and balances. Specifically a secular government made up of regular citizens and not kings. This government framework being a design to secure individual rights (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness etc. etc.)

Is the right wing denouncing self-governance? Well, yeah, pretty much. If rights, according to Mr. Ryan, come from whichever purely subjective interpretation of god is en vogue this week and not from the body of democratically elected leaders adhering to a constitutional guide, it’s a position the Tories or the crown loyalists would have supported.

And the alternative to self-governance? The alleged free market? Privatized tyranny is still tyranny to its subjects.

Personally, Time Warner is not my idea of freedom.

Which leads me to the question: Since corporations are people according the Romney/Ryan ticket, does god give them rights? We’re talking about the divine right of Exxon-Mobile here: this is important.

“There are 47 percent who are with him [Obama],” said Romney on a recently verified tape made last May. “Who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims.”

There’s something very telling about a dude sneering at those dependent on the government while being under Secret Service protection.

What of this remaining 53 percent Romney is trying to woo: Who’s independent of the government? Walmart depends on the government to feed their workforce via food stamps. Nearly all other businesses depend on the government for law and order so they can conduct business. Wealthy people have property. Government protects property rights. Banks got bailed out—by the government. Roads are maintained by the government. Air travel, regulated by the government. Also our elderly, disabled and yes our poor, assisted by the government.

If you’re voting for a president, you’re voting for a government worker. Your vote means you have some confidence in government as to its legitimacy and efficiency. If you’re donating to a presidential candidate (or some sympathetic superPAC) you’re putting your faith in Government.

Which means, in short, you are depending on government.

We are all the 47 percent.

@tinadupuy

The RNC was a post-Apocalyptic dystopia of what the world could be if Republicans were completely in charge: Scared (mostly) white people in a militarized labyrinth of blockades in strategic dead ends … all for your protection. Attendees endured security checks inside secured perimeters within partitioned areas. “Small government” police brigades were in roving gangs toting small arms. There was no way to just walk around downtown Tampa that week, it could’ve been re-named “Tamped Down.” All in the name of freedom.

It was a chilling reality in 98-degree heat.

The RNC should have been the funnest place on Earth to be a Republican this past August 27-30. Well, maybe it was the funnest place on Earth if you’re a Republican. Maybe they’re no longer fun. They didn’t appear to be having a good time. By most accounts they were cranky.

The fracturing of their party started the moment John McCain picked Sarah Palin. In case that doesn’t seem fair, let me explain: When Palin “went rogue” suddenly the disciplined Grand Old Party, became awash in tea; a pack of rogue elephants indulging in any nuts available. The party of Lincoln quickly became the party of Akin, a politician whose sin was saying what he and his party believe (which is basically thinking you can sell any myth no matter how ridiculous by saying a doctor told you it was true).

Like most things, the GOP tries to blame on Obama, the fissures in the GOP started while Bush was still in office.

The RNC’s week started off with yet another hurricane cancelling the first day of the convention. This is the second time in a row. Republicans have not only become climate deniers—they’re weather deniers now too. August? Florida? Sure! The end of the week was marked by a primetime speech by an octogenarian offended by a potty-mouthed imaginary President Obama sitting on stage. “I’m not going to shut up. It’s my turn,” said the Hollywood legend turned metaphor for the GOP during the Obama administration, Clint Eastwood.

Eastwood is fed up with a President Obama who only exists when two or more Republicans are gathered together.

The DNC was packed full of the folks Republicans are trying to take their country back from: gay couples, inter-racial couples, non-Cuban Latinos, workers, non-billionaires, “sluts,” immigrants, African-Americans, liberals, civil servants, Reagan Democrats and women who aren’t just a Republican’s mom. Basically what America (love it or leave it) now looks like.

The DNC looked like America in 2012. The RNC looked like America in 1912.

The DNC was also impacted by weather. Bank of America stadium was sold out, according to the campaign, with a waiting list of reportedly 19,000 wanting to see the President of the United States speak. The final night event was cancelled because the open-air stadium wasn’t able to accommodate electronic equipment in the rain. Typical Obama: yes, he disappoints people, but often for something far “above his pay grade.” The chairman of the RNC, Reince Priebus, after voting in his party’s vindictive platform calling for more Americans to have fewer rights—was on auto-tweet the whole week of the DNC, “Is this going to be the last of the vitriol from the Dem party during their convention? Why aren’t they talking about the issues?” he wrote.

The idea both parties are just opposite equals, that they’re really the lesser of two evils—six of one, half a dozen of the other—is a narrative the Republicans like to sell. They’ll tell you Democrats do the same thing Republicans are accused of doing. Republicans will tell you that Democrats want to kill Medicare, increase the debt and increase government spending. As President Clinton said in his speech at this year’s DNC put it, “It takes a lot of brass to go after a guy for doing what you did.”

The Republicans are angry victims of diversity and want their country back. And the Democrats? This year it seems they’re optimistic … which, for them, is real change.

A few years ago, I had a friend who didn’t want anyone to know she was going to therapy. Instead she would announce at her place of business she was leaving to attend her Amway meeting. At one point I had to inform her, “You know that doesn’t make you look any less crazy, right?”

The classic multi-level marketing or pyramid scheme is where one guy at the top convinces people at the bottom to give the top money. The hope is the guys in the middle will recruit enough people under them to move from the middle to the top—hence the pyramid shape. The model is, clearly, and provably unsustainable. Only a couple of people (those at the top) do well. Everyone else gets ripped off.

In fairness, Amway, has massaged its methods enough to not qualify as the illegal type of pyramid scheme. It’s now the more legal type of pyramid scheme.

But the model—the idea of those at the bottom sacrificing their retirement benefits (pensions, social security, Medicare etc.) so that the top tier can pay even less in taxes is what Romney/Ryan are peddling. Mitt Romney wants to cut taxes for the wealthy. Paul Ryan’s budget would shrink benefits to give the savings in the form of a tax cut to the highest brackets. What didn’t work in the Bush years to strengthen the middle-class (evident by their Lost Decade), they tell us will work this time! Or as veep-pick also-ran, Senator (R-FL) Marco Rubio put it, “We have never been a nation of haves and have-nots. We are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves.”

No, actually, we are a nation of haves and have-nots. We have the worst wealth inequality of all industrialized nations. Our poverty rate is the highest in more than 50 years at 15.7 percent. Contrast that with the top 1 percent of Americans who own nearly half—42 percent of the nations wealth. Also that same top 1 percent only has 5 percent of the nation’s debt. So 99 percent of Americans own 58 percent of the pie and have 95 percent of the debt. We’re fatter, sicker, further in debt and using the most illegal drugs in the world—all signs Americans have become overspent from bad economic policies.

But the haves—these demigods of capitalism—won’t trickle their wealth down to us because of “uncertainty in the market” according to Republicans. Therefore we bribe them with an even lower tax rate!

Instead of calling it “trickle down” which has been largely panned for decades—the new term is “not punishing success.”

“If your priority in this country is to punish success vote for President Obama,” said the offshore account holder, Mitt Romeny.

If the rich get richer—we’re not getting thinner, healthier, solvent and off the crack needle. If the rich get richer, the middle-class doesn’t get more stable. If the rich get richer, the working poor don’t get pulled out of poverty. If the rich get richer—they just get richer and park their money in Luxembourg (where at least their money will be near universal health care).

We’re actually not a nation of haves at all. Not if you go by a simple majority—or even a super majority—we’re a nation of have-nots. Have-nots being sold on a fantasy of wealth trickling down if we’re nice enough to the haves.

Trickle down economics is a pyramid scheme: It’s the rich telling us if we just recruit others to believe in the con then we will become the rich too.

It’s a lie.

Last Friday I went to the Broadway revival of the 1960 Tony Award-nominated play written by the late Gore Vidal, “The Best Man.” John Larroquette plays Secretary William Russell, the womanizing candidate in a sham marriage who’s the more scrupulous of the two politicians vying for the presidential nomination in this imagined 1960 convention in Philadelphia. The other, Senator Joseph Cantwell, played by the other 1980s sitcom star, John Stamos, is a young conservative, ruthless and willing to do whatever it takes to win.

In what now seems quaint, the play takes place over a harried two days of delegate voting. That’s right. Not two years of campaigning. Not 20 debates. Two days. Like I said, quaint. Peppered with Gore Vidal witty one-liners like, “That man has all the qualities of a dog except loyalty,” and “In those days we poured god over everything like ketchup,” the play is a thoughtful commentary on politics of the era. The hinge of the saga is these two candidates have an arms race (how very 1960s) with their respective mudslinging. In the third act Larroquette’s Secretary Russell asks for a moratorium when he gets the power to take out his opponent. They’re on a crash course of mutual destruction that could blow up even their party.

In the end the ambitious-at-any-cost and the ambitious-yet-moral cancel each other out, and without a nod from the sitting president—who dies with contempt for both men for different reasons—a dull third candidate wins the necessary delegates. He’s described as neither the angel of light nor the angel of darkness. He’s dubbed the Angel of Grayness. The ending scene’s summation is that the “best man” indeed won.

The take away? The delegate voting process whitewashed, bowdlerized and watered down men of potential greatness.

Cut to:

The next night I went to see “The Campaign” starring Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis. Ferrell plays Congressman Cam Brady, a sleazy (again) womanizing incumbent who’s happily running unopposed for his 4th term. After he becomes vulnerable, the billionaire Motch brothers (played by John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd) find a puppet candidate—the local yokel tour guide, Marty Huggins (played by Galifianakis)—to run against Brady, thus starts the title-promised “Campaign.”

The Motch brothers (a thinly veiled spoof on the right-wing bankrolling Koch brothers), of course, are in the process of selling the district to China and need to get rid of some regulations so they can build proper sweatshops in North Carolina. As amoral billionaires they invest in Republican politicians who gladly spew platitudes about freedom and god while genuflecting solely to the pursuit of profit. Its “art” imitating life … assuming your life has a Will Ferrell movie-amount of dick, poop and fart jokes in it.

Because this is a Hollywood movie, the puppet candidate ends up “doing the right thing” and dishes about money in politics which in this medium is so admirable it wins him a seat in Congress. After the credits roll there’s a brief scene of a Congressional hearing called by the now-Congressman Huggins, to investigate the Motch brothers’ financing candidates. The remark is made that because of Citizens United, they haven’t done anything illegal. But then to add to the sense of “feel good” and “everything worked-ness” the brothers are then tied to harboring a known fugitive (Huggins former campaign manager). Quick tacked-on justice. Roll the rest of the credits.

The take away? I’ll quote former candidate for the GOP nomination, former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer (who did dish about money in politics as a Republican and it got him disinvited to every single debate in the primary): “Washington isn’t broken, its bought.”

But in these two tales are a foreshadowing of the current GOP ticket: Mitt Romney, the Angel of Grayness; the candidate who in the primary stayed neutral and Etch-a-sketchy while the others self-combusted on each other’s volatility. He’s Gore Vidal’s “best man.” And then there’s the veep nod, Paul Ryan, a Koch brother candidate whose signature budget plans were drafted and scored by the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation and whose policies would greatly benefit billionaires.

Mitt Romney, a 1960’s lament. Paul Ryan, 2012’s crux.

The charm of Sarah Palin as a veep pick is, she set the bar incredibly low for her successors. As long as a nominee can name a newspaper and their foreign policy experience isn’t living next to a foreign country, the press can dub them better than Sarah Palin. More qualified. More gravitas. More ready to lead than Palin was…

A Palin standard for being fit for public office is like a Donald Trump standard for public humility. Basically no standard at all.

It’s really not fair to compare Paul Ryan to Sarah Palin. Sure it makes Ryan as a VP nominee seem less cynical––less Hail Mary––less desperate than if Palin had never word-souped the nation four years ago. If John McCain would have picked Tim Pawlenty in ‘08, the Ryan pick would look pretty irresponsible. But now the GOP has the Palin Standard.

A better comparison for Paul Ryan is former Republican presidential candidate Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. Both are from mid-western cheese-heavy states. Both are high-profile tea party Republicans in the lowest-rated Congress in the history of percentages. Even when Bachmann is causing international incidents with her xenophobic race baiting about the Muslim Brotherhood’s alleged infiltration of the U.S. government––she sounds as pleasant as someone selling orange juice on television. If the 1980’s Michael J. Fox sit-com character––the beloved Reagan-idolizing Alex P. Keaton––were a self-hating public employee who cherry-picked all the worst parts of Ayn Rand, the Bible and the Heritage Foundation’s reading room, he’d be Paul Ryan! Quirky, young and clearly trying to fill a larger man’s suit––the rightest of Republicans love Paul Ryan.

Well they kind of love him. Both Paul Ryan and Michele Bachmann are guilty pleasures for Republicans. They like listening to them beat up on President Obama and spout their cheery condemnations of liberalism but they don’t want to admit it too loudly lest they get stuck defending ALL their ideas. Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll but now she’s not even invited to introduce anyone let alone speak at the upcoming Republican National Convention.

Obama was trying to campaign against the Ryan Budget plan this spring since the House GOP voted for it. That was declared out-of-bounds. Now? It’s in play and Republican politicians are not thrilled about explaining their vote to give future senior citizens coupons for chemotherapy.

But also Bachmann and Ryan share the distinction of being ineffective lawmakers–in the way of actually making laws. According to ThatsMyCongress.com, in her nearly six years in office “Bachmann has passed three rhetorical bills with no force of law, and one amendment that asks an Inspector General to conduct inspections.” Paul Ryan has been an incumbent for twice that time and has only introduced two bills that have become law: One renaming a post office in his home town, the other changing how arrows are taxed (how very 21st century).

Bachmann at least gets to distance herself from the Republican Congressional blank check given to the big-spending Bush administration. Under Ryan’s allegedly hawkish eye his party started two unpaid-for wars, cut taxes during said wars, grew the government, exploded the national debt and then bailed out unregulated banks with taxpayer money. Paul Ryan voted yes for all of it and doesn’t ask for a correction when he’s called a small government conservative.

Both Bachmann and Ryan are also at the extreme end of the spectrum when it comes to gay rights and reproductive freedoms. They both have consistently voted for any anti-abortion/anti-contraception bills that came before them. Ditto with expanding marital rights to same sex couples. Ryan, with all his libertarian billing, has voted to take away liberties from his fellow citizens. He is the government he’s warned us about: Freedom is for corporations, and regulations are for our private lives.

If Ryan is now the Republican mainstream, Bachmann is now the Republican mainstream. If Ryan is getting the full embrace of his party––Bachmann should be getting that same welcome into the fray.

Or in the case of Republicans in 2012: fringe.

The Republican primary has been over for months now but it’s hard to tell. The presumptive nominee (I’ll get to stop writing that phrase in a couple of weeks … hopefully), Mitt Romney, is still campaigning like he’s trying to convince his own party he’s Mr. Right, Mr. Right-Enough—or in his case Mr. Right…Now.

“What America is not is a collective where we all work in a kibbutz,” Romney said at a fundraiser in Chicago this week. “Instead it’s individuals pursuing their dreams and building successful enterprises which employ others and they become inspired as they see what has happened in the place they work and go off and start their own enterprises.”

America, not a collective: Not a place where people work together, according to Romney. Just a place where bosses are untethered by the shackles of pensions, environmental concerns or worker safety regulations so they can create magical towers of tax-free enterprise which “employs others.”

Willard M. Romney, the Everyman.

Romney is not trying to be popular; he’s running for president on the Republican ticket. He’s still trying to get Republicans to like him and Republicans now make up less than 35 percent of Americans. Reaching outside of their “big tent,” Romney spoke at an NAACP event, and after being booed by the crowd he explained it was because the attendees at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People want free stuff. He loves free stuff (like tax-free!) but finds it distasteful in people not clever enough to borrow money from their parents for college. Romney’s international tour was of a whopping three countries. Notably at least one didn’t boo him. In the immortal words of George W. Bush, “Don’t forget Poland!”

Romney doesn’t appear to be trying to win the support of the majority of Americans (or the world for that matter). He appears to be playing for the affections of a few key shareholders. Romney is a niche candidate of a tiny percent of Americans who think working for a living describes what your money does for you.

Let’s take stock of the groups Republicans are no longer attempting to appeal to: Wage earners. Women in their child-bearing years. People with pre-existing conditions. Unions. Public workers. The unemployed. Monogamous gay couples. The under-employed. Moderate Republicans. Muslims. Latinos. Oh and independent voters. We’re not going to see a “Romney Democrats” group pop up before November, save maybe a political wonk’s Halloween party.

Romney is nominee no one really likes. Fewer people will vote for Mitt. The only chance for a mediocre candidate to win the majority of votes is for fewer votes to be counted. Voter ID laws have become vogue in states like Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, South Carolina and Indiana. All of a sudden the Grand Old Party is concerned about voter fraud, which even the Republican National Lawyer Association in a stretch of their data claims only 311 cases in the last decade. Other estimates put the number in the tens. Way more Americans have won gold medals than have voted fraudulently. So Republicans must “fix” this non-problem (in places which just so happen to swing states/counties/districts) by making it as difficult as possible to cast a ballot. On ABC’s This Week, Washington Post columnist George Will called early voting “deplorable” because it interferes with campaigning. The horror! You know what interferes with voting? Having a j-o-b. Early voting is the easiest way for blue-collar workers to be able to have their vote counted. Less early voting, fewer people who earn a paycheck at the polls. And that’s deplorable if you’re a Republican in the 2012 election cycle.

Republicans are working very hard to get fewer votes. Instead of stacking the deck they’re just trying to disenfranchise all the cards who disagree with them (you know, the majority of the country). It’s a reasonable strategy as their presumptive nominee (gah!) brands himself as the small government/voting bloc candidate who likes being able to fire people.