Written by Zepp Jamieson   

The South Carolina primary
Nuts don't fall far from the palmetto tree

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
January 22nd 2012

I'm grinning in delighted disbelief at the returns from the South Carolina primary. Newt 40.5%, Romney 27%, Santorum 17.4%, and Ron Paul 13.4%. The remaining 1.5% presumably looked at the choices on their ballots and cut their own throats instead.
This happened at a time where rumors are flying around the web that Joe Paterno was dead. Some are saying he was, and some are saying he warn't. Or maybe that's Mitt Romney they're talking about. It's getting harder to tell them apart. And now we have a final on the Paterno race: he -is- dead, and so is now mildly unlikely to be the GOP nominee for president in 2012.
South Carolina voted for Newt instead, which may have been a mistake. At least Paterno had a winning record.
Not that the voters of SC were given much in the way of appealing alternatives: a vapid plutocrat, a crabby old Randroid, and a religious nutcase. The only one who wouldn't have delighted Democrats, moderates and liberals, none of whom want a Republican president next year, would have been Mittens, and that only because Mittens would have the most Citizens United money behind him.
Some of the right wingers on Usenet erupted in cheers when the results were announced, four minutes after the polls closed. One wrote, “If there is one thing Obama probably does not want is a Republican nominee who fights to win. That is what Gingrich would do.” Then they realized the web liberals were ALSO cheering, and it was fun watching their joy fade away to a pained silence.
South Carolina just voted for a man whose negatives run about 58%, by far the highest of any of the candidates for president in the past year. If SC followed the national trend, then that would mean that he got the vote of every person in the state who didn't actively hate him.
Except this is South Carolina, a very weird state, and Newt's negatives there probably only run 40%. They have a lot of people in SC who will overlook massive personal and political deficiencies in favor of some red-meat demagoguery against the media, who SC blames for losing the war between the states.
This also means that never again can any Republican make moralistic clucking noises over Monica or support for gay marriage or any of that other family values crap they've been using to rope in church-goers with IQs below 90. Here's a man who cheated on his first two wives repeatedly, dumped them both when they got sick, and in all likelihood is probably already banging Mrs. Newt #4. He boffed one of his high school teachers, and one of his daughters' teachers had to hurriedly turn the two young girls away when she realized that while he was waiting in his car to pick them up, he was getting a blow job from some one.
So, guys – nominate this turd, and see how far the family values platform gets you this year.
James Carville feels the same way. “I cannot personally tell you how pleased I am,” Carville said, “to see old Newt rise to the top after listening to all of your nauseating, sickening lectures on the evils of government and the importance of family values.”
Republican governor Chris Christie was appalled by the results. “[Newt] was run out of the speakership by his own party. He was fined $300,000 for ethics violations. This is a guy who’s had a very difficult political career at times and has been an embarrassment to the party.”
In a way, this makes life a bit easier for everyone outside of the GOP, who find it more and more difficult to tell the sane Republicans from the insane ones, and indeed wonder if there are any sane ones left at all. If they're appalled by Newt, they're probably still sane. If they think Newt's victory is wonderful and he can take the fight to Obama, they are certifiable loons.
It's quickly turning into a two man race. Rumors are already swirling that Rick Santorum will drop out and endorse Newt before the Florida primary. And Ron Paul will stay in the race, but is already backsliding into his accustomed role of fringe crackpot. His views on the wars, and taxes, get him some popularity, but then people look at his views on corporate versus individual rights, and realize that like most libertarians, he runs the emotional gamut somewhere between miserly and sociopathic, and back away from him. It doesn't help that reports are implicating Ron Paul in a crazed 1981 neo-nazi plot to seize a small West Indian island called Dominica “to create an Aryan paradise in Dominica and make money through casinos, cocaine and brothels.” That particular story can be found here:
http://newsone.com/nation/casey-gane-mccalla/ron-paul-was-implicated-in-attempted-white-supremacist-island-invasion/

So Newt versus Mittens, and the winner through no virtue of his own is Obama. Obama's got it knocked. He could sign a bill tomorrow stripping Catholics of the right to vote, and come out the next day and say he likes kittens, and the whole country would go “awwww” and love him again. Even the Catholics, because a Democrat stripping them of the right to vote is still better than anything the Republicans are likely to do.
Whether the GOP rank and file are bright enough to realize that Mittens can attract the Citizens United money, thereby making the opinions of American voters moot, is open for conjecture. South Carolina proved there are a lot of stupid people voting Republican these days.
In a normal, sane election, people would look at some of the things Newt has said, and run like hell. He plans to ignore Supreme Court rulings he doesn't agree with. Those are his exact words.
He plans to ignore Supreme Court rulings he doesn't agree with.
Right there, there's no difference at all between him and Adolf Hitler, who ALSO ran on a promise to not let the courts decide what he could do and what he couldn't. In a sane election, Newt wouldn't even be considered for anyone's campaign staff, let alone to be the candidate.
Getting praise from Sarah Palin didn't help much. She said, “"I call them dumbarses. [yes, she said 'dumbarses' of the media] They, thinking that by trotting out this old Gingrich divorce interview [which was less than ten hours old at the time] that's old news -- and it does feature a disgruntled ex, claiming that it would destroy his campaign -- all this does, Sean, is incentivize conservatives and independents who are so sick of the politics of personal destruction, because it's played so selectively by the media, that their target, in this case Newt, he's now going to soar even more. Because we know the game now, and we just won't put up with it. Good call, media." Call it Newt's soar spot. He should have a doctor look at that.
What's next? Will Paris Hilton encourage Newt to make a tape of him having bedroom follies with Callista? Remember, Newt is the family values candidate. He's gonna make us all forget about that terrible Monica Lewinsky. Why, the Republicans have already forgotten they ever made a fuss about her!
But it isn't just the right wing madness sweeping the country that has Newt positioned as the GOP front runner. There's Mittens.
Romney is a French Revolution waiting to happen. Imperious, arrogant, out of touch, he openly sneers that $375,000 annual income is “hardly worth mentioning” and doesn't see any problem with the 15% taxes he paid on $40 million income, or the $32 million he has stashed tax-free in the Cayman Islands. (Newt, characteristically, released a cherry picked tax record—last year's only. Ironically, he is blasting Romney for paying taxes at the same rate that Newt wants to lower his own taxes to). Nobody's questioning the legality of these actions, but then, Americans are getting very, very tired of the privileges and licenses the rich have to do flabbergastingly immoral things quite legally. Something to do with nearly destroying the economy without actually breaking any laws, and cheating Americans out of trillions in the process. Mittens makes John Kerry look as animated as Jim Carey and as egalitarian as Cesar Chavez.
Of course, the poor little rich boy is a victim of his class. Some frat-boy outfit for plutocrats named Kappa Beta Phi staged skits the other day mocking Occupy, despite the increasingly dangerous tone entering the public discourse over the greed and insularity of the one percent. Mittens, a part of that breed, is as tone-deaf and offensive as the Kappa Beta Phi clowns. How else can you explain that it never seemed to occur to him that refusing to release his tax records might become an issue in the campaign?
Newt reminds me of nobody so much as he does of Syndrome, the strutting little villain with the vile personality in “The Incredibles.” It's hard to imagine why anyone would want to support someone like him.
But Mittens reminds me of Hollingsworth Hound, the antagonist in Ruben Bolling's “Lucky Ducky” comic strip. He's put-upon that he must hob-nob with the unwashed masses to take what is rightfully his.
It's no mistake that they remind me of ridiculous cartoon characters, because that's that they are, in a campaign that by any standard, is an utter joke.
So who won South Carolina? Obama, of course. But that's only a slight improvement.