Friday, March 4, 2016

Acute Distress

On Thursday, March 3, the day of the final (perhaps*) Republican debate before voters go to the polls on March 15, former Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, dropped trou and mooned every citizen who voted for and/or supports Donald Trump. Governor Romney's speech was designed to soften up Mr. Trump so that the Fox News moderators could administer the coup d'grace before it's too late.

Whether this unholy alliance achieved the desired result remains to be seen, but if they failed, there is always the possibility of establishment Republicans joining forces with establishment Democrats to deliver the White House to Hillary Clinton.

The people who have given Mr. Trump their votes don't know what they're doing, intoned Governor Romney, the same failed candidate who savaged Newt Gingrich in the 2012 Republican primaries but who refused to utter a negative comment against President Barack Obama during the presidential campaign.

That Governor Romney would attack the front runner of his own party and not be disavowed by the RNC doesn't make sense unless one looks at the political situation as if it were a less sanguine Game of Thrones. For twenty-eight years, control of the Iron Throne White House has passed back and forth between House Democrat and House Republican: Bush-Clinton-Bush-ClintonObama. Twenty sixteen was supposed to be a return to normal, another Bush - Clinton duel. But as Robert Burns so keenly observed, the best laid schemes of mice and men (and establishment politicians) gang aft a-gley. Donald Trump unexpectedly showed up just as had Barack Obama in 2008. Once again, the old order was in disarray. Barack Obama turned out not to upset the established order of things, but Donald Trump is a total outsider, so cannot be counted on to go along to get along.

By those lights, Governor Romney's whine (sic) wasn't made from the sour grapes of a failed candidate, but rather a failed candidate being sent out to destroy a candidate who threatens to upset the status quo that has been in place for nearly three decades, a status quo of borders open to third world immigrants who keep wages artificially low, a status quo of trade deals which advantage the emerging markets which return a higher rate of investment to the rentiers, a status quo of a country rapidly becoming bilingual, a status quo of perpetual war in the Middle East which benefits the military-industrial complex, a status quo of a declining middle class and expanding income inequality where students leave college with debt they cannot ever hope to repay, a status quo where mothers and fathers are terrified that an illness will bankrupt them, a status quo where people under 30 do not understand Socialism does not work but do understand that neither does Crony Capitalism.

The current strategy is to try to deny Mr. Trump the crucial number of delegates for an outright win so that the king makers can broker the Republican convention and bestow the nomination on a candidate who can be bought. They might well succeed, but what might actually be going on is a political party in acute distress, a political party that were it a patient in an ICU would be said to be in the throes of Cheyne-Stokes Respiration** and just about ready to take its final agonal breath.***

Like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Governor Romney and Fox News marched out on March 3rd to take down the Donald J. Trump windmill, but they just well might have taken down the Republican Party in the process.

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*In an effort to deprive Donald Trump of the nomination, the RNC is adding debates like people add salt to popcorn, so if Fox didn't accomplish what it set out to do, who knows whether another four or five debates won't be added?

** An abnormal breathing pattern which ranges from very shallow breaths to alternating periods of apnea and deep, rapid breathing.

***Agonal respiration is an abnormal pattern of breathing characterized by gasping, labored breaths accompanied by strange vocalizations and spasmodic muscular jerks. Jerks as used here should not to be confused with a term which best applies to Governor Romney in this instance.


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