Comic Politics

    No Republican presidential candidate has yet been pictured in a propeller beanie, but Donald Trump probably has trouble with hats of any sort. In kindness we might call the Republican field colorful. In candor we would call most of it dreadful.
    Parts of it may fall out this way:
    Some hothouse flowers of state politics will not do well in the great outdoors. One of these will be former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who still doesn't seem to get it: Much of the country doesn't care how they do things down yonder in the Lone Star State. His indictment will matter less than his tin ear.
    Another will be Wisconsin's bully-boy governor, Scott Walker. Even when he's not bumbling, he will struggle to he heard over cries of outrage and dismay from his own state.
    Still another will be Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who may need more than one closet to hold all his skeletons. He struts his in-your-face act with such gusto that one writer calls him Gov. Powder Keg. He will discover that blunt talk is like virginity. People admire it more in the abstract.  Close and constant national scrutiny will show him to be a poseur -- or, as his home folks are beginning to say, a phony.
     Elsewhere in the pack are long shots getting makeovers for the national audience; scolds offering a dog's breakfast of pet peeves; and wannabes who may only wanna follow the Sarah Palin pattern of celebrity, in which flamboyantly failed candidates can make a good living as political hams.
     Experts see front runners in Florida's Sen. Marco Rubio and former Florida governor Jeb Bush.  Rubio gained his Senate seat by surviving a multi-candidate election in which more people voted against him than for him. He has traveled well on youth and ethnicity, but on matters of substance has sometimes been a dim star. Does he have genuine political ability? So far we don't really know.
     Some early support migrated to Bush simply for want of attractive options. And he has not yet found a stride. Meanwhile, examinations of his past show him standing close to some shady business deals and making a living by trading on his family name. In other words, there are shadows on his character and his competence.
     Nowhere in sight is a rescuer who will say the truth about the national GOP:   The emperor is naked. The party's best talents are mediocre. Their pretense to stewardship of conservatism is a shame, and a reminder that an idea is not responsible for everyone who claims it. In the history of Western democracy, the role of authentic conservative thought has been honorable and useful. In today's American politics, the role of the Republican Party has sometimes been neither.
     The GOP needs to free itself of people who treat politics as playacting and the party as a means of hustling a buck or grinding an axe.
 
   
     
   
   


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