Send In No More Clowns or Lucifer

With Chris Christie and Sarah Palin holding onto their hats, the three-ring circus featuring more than half a dozen clowns, commonly called the Republican party presidential nomination process, seems to be settling into a Mitt Romney-by-less-than-happy-acclimation affair, unless Rick Perry can learn how to debate better, talk without affronting people, and keep any more skeletons from his past from appearing. (Herman Cain might be rising in the polls, but I seriously doubt the Republican establishment will allow a total outsider to garner its most prestigious prize.)

Which brings up an interesting face-off, as described by Stephen Colbert Tuesday night—It’s “a match-up between a Republican that nobody’s excited about and a Democrat that everyone’s disappointed in.”

Hard to say who’d win such a contest. Most pundits would tell you, as Rick Davis, campaign manager for John McCain in 2008 said to Colbert, the choice would come down to the economy. Who would the voters trust more to right the economy and safeguard their financial interests?

There’s no doubt Barack Obama will shoulder lots of blame for the continued economic malaise affecting our country. There’s also no doubt, at least in my mind, Republicans have not acted in the best interests of the country by thwarting almost all of his efforts in their relentless pursuit of making Obama a one-term president. They are coy beyond contempt in their posturing Obama as the stumbling block to effective compromise. Just today House Speaker John Boehner said, “It takes two to tango,” apparently forgetting that after the last go-around with the president he said he had secured 98% of what the GOP wanted. Now that Obama seems to have rediscovered his backbone and does not appear ready to cave in more than, say, 50%, Boehner seems miffed at the prospect of having to give up more than a fingernail in negotiations.

What’s always perplexed me, and other Eastern Establishment liberals, is why so many heartland working class voters opt to support Republicans and not Democrats who favor progressive legislation to make their lives easier. The answer was revealed in an NPR interview today of Dante Chinni, co-author of “Our Patchwork Nation,” an examination of 12 different types of communities that make up America.

Among the communities profiled is a Christian fundamentalist one in southwest Missouri. The people there and in similar religious centers care more about social issues such as abortion than economics. If asked, “Why aren’t you voting your economic interests?”, said Chinni, they’d respond, “Why are you condemning yourself to hell?”.

It’s hard to pull the lever for Obama when you see him as Lucifer incarnate.