I feel like Chicken Little but would perfect a little chicken—smoked with some John Boy and Billy barbeque sauce. It’s hard for a brother to publicly admit a love for yardbird but it is time to tell the truth. After watching a zillion campaign ads a month before the election, I wish those fellows would spend 5% of that money on some good old fashion barbeque chicken rallies so real folks can talk about the real mess we are facing. The folks on the Right are out hustling moderates with those events this years.
The Chicken Little thing comes from running around say that we should diversify our political portfolio by understanding moderation and some elements of conservatism. Well, the Blue Dogs became the closest thing to Democrat conservatives and that put big Election Day targets on them. Because political portfolios are like my nonexistent stock portfolios, we thought we should also hedge our bets my investing in some reasonable Republicans, those slightly over the political centerline. That stock would have dropped like BP stock because the GOP got rid most of the few moderates in their ranks as they drove farther Right…scary far Right.
Barrack Obama is Jimmy Carter and Sarah Palin is Ronald Reagan. Like my homie Carter, Obama is the smartest guy on the planet but not smart enough to realize that our party doesn’t deserve him. From Georgia Tech and the Naval Academy, Carter was a brainy president who campaigned telling the truth and wanted to govern the same way. If we listened to Carter and changed our energy consumption in the 70s, our involvement in the wild Middle East could be limited to wanting peace rather than needing their oil.
President Obama, like Carter, is too nice for the rough, sneaky world of politics. Obama planned to help regular people and watch them show their appreciation my supporting Democrats at the polls. Sugar, Honey, Iced Tea. People didn’t appreciate Carter or Clinton and November 2 will be Obama’s unfortunate wake up call.
You can’t help people who won’t help themselves. President Obama and the congressional Democrats have done a good job during a terrible period and history will realize that fact. Jimmy Carter has a vibe about him that seems to say, “If you would have listened to me.”
I can’t understand why the current GOP is loving on Ronald Reagan so much because everyone knows that the conservative movement has moved so far right that Reagan wouldn’t pass their purity test. Reagan would be a Blue Dog. But boy, ole boy, President Reagan had Hollywood style charisma; dude was a natural leader.
Which brings me to natural leader Sarah Palin. The GOP actual has quality presidential material sitting on the bench in Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan. But, No…that would be too much like right. They want Palin and she is like butter because you know she is on a roll.
Sarah Palin, who has as much business being president as I have, is using this mid-term election to take control of congress and give President Obama hell. But checking this out: she isn’t creating an army of regular Republicans—regular Republicans wouldn’t be too much different from Blue Dogs. Palin is taking over with the Tea Party Movement and if she were successful next month she would be the GOP candidate for the White House. If moderates don’t vote, we are greenlighting President Palin.
I think Reagan would reject the whole witch hunt technique of the far Right and the birthers. When big money and power are on the table, people will resort to anything. As President Obama often states, the TPM is primarily regular Americans concerned with the size and scope of government. But the brains behind the movement are nasty nerds who didn’t study political science in school; they studied marketing and got really good at it. The same ad men who design marketing plans for soap, burgers and cars also design political plans that whip people into a frenzy of hate and divide this nation.
Before his political career, Ronald Reagan was one of the few Americans who stood up to the witchhunting red scare of Senator Joseph McCartney. As Gil Scott Heron sang, “When other celluloid saviors were cringing in fear from McCartneyism, Ron stood tall.” Reagan went before the congressional committee and said that as a young actor he had various friends and some had usual political affiliations. If Reagan were alive today, what would he think about the attacks Obama took during the 2008 campaign?
Gil Scott Heron broke it down in his classic “B Movie.” The political song was about America’s desire to have a president who rode to the rescue like John Wayne in B Movies. “..but since John Wayne was no longer available, we settled for Ronald Reagan.”
The first line in “B Movie” (just before the righteous bass playing started) was “And the first thing I want to say is mandate my ass.” He went on to say, “we have been convinced that 26% of the registered voters—not 26% of American people- forms a mandate or a landslide.”
Almost thirty years later, Heron’s grasp of political numbers is still important. How big is the Tea Party Movement. What the hell difference does it make because the most salient statistic is this: 100% of them vote. Do we need chicken, fried fish, and one of those kid bouncy room things to entice regular folks to vote? If we do, we deserve the Tea Party as mean-spirited leaders of this nation. How is this for enticement—President Palin. Beck and Limbaugh will tell you in a minute that their jobs aren’t running the nation but generating ratings. If a cultural civic war happens as a result, ratings will be off the chart—more money.
We listened to Gil Scott Heron vinyl and tried to understand trickle-down economics. A rich guy needs to be richer so he can get a bigger pool and I get my money as his pool cleaner. They get the rest of the masses with church stuff; like Democrats are godless heathens.
Democrats help people who don’t vote or follow politics but don’t let a football game come on the box. I came up with a little test this morning:
Ask a southern guy to name as many SEC football head coaches as possible then ask him to name the same number Supreme Court justices. Ask him to name as many NFL starting quarterbacks then name one U.S. Senator from that player’s teams’ state.
My point is football is important but voting and good leadership directly affects your family and your wallet. Conservatives generally aren’t bad people but their plans for leadership center on allowing people to suffer and struggle to encourage them to prove their condition—tough love style. Vote for those you want to govern but by all means vote.
Brainiacs like Carter and Obama live in a theoretical world, and when their “superior” ideas are implemented they fail in the real world. Reagan and Palin understand human nature and craft ideas that may seem a little simple, but they work.