Just what we need, the usual Republican suspects

Sometimes as the election process moves on I am left with the feeling of being all alone. Is my feeling true, am I really the only one who thinks that the Republican Party is failing us again by not coming up with a solid candidate and instead is running through the usual suspects?

I mean, by my book, none of these fellas are the best and brightest, and the only one with an original thought might be Ron Paul. You have to think that Mitt Romney’s two wins, one by the hair on his tongue and the other where it’s almost a bad sign that he didn’t win by more votes, doesn’t exactly ring a clear bell for the next Republican Savior.

Ron Paul finishing second, by a far margin, in my mind is much more interesting than Romney’s success. I don’t think I would vote for Paul, but given the other choices in the coming election it might be that or abstain.

I don’t like the idea of abstaining; a non-vote, I know from experience, is a vote for the other guy. And if the other guy is someone I don’t want even more, maybe electing one of these retreads will be the only way to go. But like retread tires, there’s just so much you can do with them before they become dangerous. You know, no high speed driving and God forbid they get in the fast lane on the Interstate.  

So, thanks for giving us such a good selection. I’ve had better days shopping at Goodwill.

What’s the big breakdown?  Well, it looks like we’ll have to deal with the Romney thing for a while. How things break in South Carolina will add a little insight into that.  Paul is coming on strong, and has had two good outings.

The rest?

Well, while it’s still pretty early, I think some of those people would save themselves a lot of hassle, and a lot of donated cash, if they would quit right now.  According to Edward Morrissey, a senior editor for HotAir.com, a conservative commentary website, Jon Huntsman was the biggest loser of the night. By finishing third, Morrissey says, ‘Huntsman has no realistic path to any wins, let alone challenge for the nomination.’

When you consider that Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum both finished behind Huntsman, it’s hard to figure how either of them have any shot at getting a win in the primaries, too.  In fact, toss in that Gingrich couldn’t even get on the ballot in his home state, and it’s hard to figure how either of them will do anything more than provide support for Ron Paul by bleeding votes away from Romney.

While Morrisey says Huntsman is the biggest loser, it looks more to me like the American public is more the biggest loser. While we would all like a nice shiny candidate riding a white horse to the White House, we are all too aware that Donald Trump isn’t a viable candidate now either.

So what’s a conservative to do?

How can we expect this bunch of yahoos to do any better than the last bunch we had in the big office?

If elected they will likely go back to the well of supporters, and trot out the same old support teams we have had in the past. If that happens, we can expect to see a lot of familiar Washington insider names in the cabinet and other appointed positions throughout the governmental framework.

Remember, these are basically the same people who have been involved with the Washington scene since I can remember, which may not be as far back as you can remember, but my memories of those days are still pretty sharp, and I don’t think I liked the way things went back then.

In some ways, the political scene suffers from the same malaise that the American movie industry suffers from. With nothing new and exciting to offer, no sense of creativity, no willingness to explore new ideas, we are left trying to resurrect the past. We make movies from ancient comic book heroes, and remakes of movies from the distant past (can you say 1960s), and try to make the public believe this is quality. The new movies, by and large, can present a different perspective, and occasionally they pull it off, like the True Grit update two years ago, but more often they fall flat on their collective faces. They use all the modern gizmos and film making hocus pocus, and produce something like The Wild, Wild West.

The search needs to uncover a new view. We need someone who actually has some new ideas and not just a collection of old worn out ideas with new tread.  A used tire is a used tire, whether or not it’s got new clothes. It’s like the closing lines to TS Eliot’s The Hollow Men, “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.”