Saturday, January 25, 2014

GOP Reforms Its 2016 Schedule: Less Exposure Is Better!


Plenty of room in the clown car. Hey Scott, jump in! Please!

Realizing that the long primary season in 2012, with its many debates, allowed the Republican candidates to be seen and heard possibly a little too much and very much to their detriment, the Brahmins at the Republican National Committee have decided to shorten the party's primary season by months and months. In a nutshell, the GOP has decided that letting the clowns drive the clown car around for very long is bad for business. Solution? Same clowns, same car, shorter track. Now the people will love us!

As part of the reform the GOP will also hold their national convention as much as two months earlier, not only to contract the primary season but also to allow their winning candidate to begin to spend their general-election campaign funds, which under federal law can't be tapped before the convention.

Unless I'm mistaken, these steps are being taken because the Republican base, more influential during primary season, is out of whack with the traditional, more moderate electorate. Reducing the time candidates' policy positions are at the mercy of the radical right will somehow make them more appealing, essentially giving them an earlier Etch-a-Sketch time horizon. Tack to the center for the win!

Good luck with that. The problem, though, for the GOP is that the clown car is going to fill up no matter how short the primary season, for 2016 at least. If Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, and heaven knows who else jump in, the party will have already jumped the policy shark whether so-called moderates like Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, or John Kasich have been in the car with them. Chris Christie isn't worth talking about, poor man. He's toast.

Talk of other, more acceptable GOP candidates is, frankly hilarious. Why? For the above reason. Even in a shortened primary campaign, how many candidates will break with the radical right on taxes, abortion, birth control, immigration, the deficit, entitlements, minimum wage, education, war mongering, Fed policy, job creation, the debt ceiling, Obamacare, and the concept that government isn't evil? How many moderates in the campaign are going to stand up and say that Rush Limbaugh is a big, fat, stupid idiot?

In fact, some of them will actually do that. I can see Jeb Bush doing it. I can also see him doing it and losing Iowa -- winning New Hampshire -- then losing South Carolina and Nevada before squeaking by in Florida. No moderate frontrunner by mid-March and the clown car bumps along. What has the GOP accomplished?

Maybe a campaign facelift can help in 2020 when a real candidate with real chances can emerge in a post-tea-party world. But 2016 will have the usual suspects kicked around by the still-vigorous, knee-jerk, hotheaded radical right. It won't be pretty.

Of course, maybe the Republicans will get lucky and end up with a Jeb Bush/Condoleezza Rice ticket. That won't remind anyone of the bad old days, would it?

The GOP Dream Team. Please, please, please.

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