Not Ready For Prime Time

So in the past week, Rick Perry could not remember the name of a government Cabinet department he'd eliminate, at least not for 20 minutes, and Herman Cain could not come up with an answer to whether or not he agreed with President Obama's Libya policy and sat there with an interviewer looking simply stupified trying to figure out what to say. When interrogated later about the gaffe and whether it would harm his campaign, he simply answered, "9,9,9." Seriously? That's all he could come up with as an answer? Is the GOP serious about running these two? They've come across looking like absolute idiots in recent days and it's looking more and more like the inevitable GOP nominee is going to turn out to be Mitt Romney, only because his opponents seem to be in the process of self destruction. The trouble is that Christian conservatives in the South can't stomach Romney because he's a Mormon, and like it or not, even though the Constitution expressly forbids it, there is a de facto religious test in this country for holding public office. You must, absolutely must, be a Christian. And it's only been in my lifetime that Presidents are required, absolutely required, to end every speech with "God bless you and God Bless the United States of America." Um, last time I checked, that sort of thing wasn't written into our Constitution but if you ask conservatives, it's required by Presidents to invoke God at every turn. Needless to say, it's going to be interesting to see who's going to win the GOP nomination.

At the moment, the GOP flavor-of-the-week is Newt Gingrich, who is a serious nutter who is calling for the imprisonment of Senators Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. However, it was just revealed that Newt Gingrich took a chunk of change from Freddie Mac, which may derail his candidacy. So next week, the GOP will have yet another front-runner-of-the-week. That kind of indecision and disunity among the Republicans sounds to me like they are going to have a mighty hard time deciding on a nominee, but they may have to settle for old Mitt simply because he's stayed above the fray of either scandal or looking foolish on television. It won't make Christian conservatives terribly happy but this is who they may just end up with since everyone else is in the process of self destruction. I don't know what chances Romney has of beating Obama, but if the economy continues to go south, I'm afraid that Romney may just be able to beat Obama. However, it all depends on how united Republicans can get behind their eventual nominee, whoever the ticket ends up being and whatever lingering influence the TEA Party has on the race. The good thing is that Issue 2 united labor in Ohio, so there's a strong and united progressive movement in Ohio, and our state is crucial to whoever ends up in the White House. Obama's going to have a tough go of it here, but we're ready, and the advantage that Obama has is that his campaign organization didn't go away once he gained the White House. Organizing for America is still here and has been all along. That's a good thing. I just hope that we can generate the same kind of enthusiasm that we did a few years ago. Time will tell.