For GOP, Few Words Of Wisdom...Circus Shows From Coast To Coast...Word Up!...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

AUSTIN, Texas - The East Coast has been a mangrove swamp for Republican hopefuls Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. But does it really matter? Do these two political sideshows mean anything? Do we care that Bachmann confuses sites of the Battle of Lexington and the one in Concord? She flubbed that test in New Hampshire in the days ahead of last week's Republican Party debate.

And do we care when Palin, the quitting governor of Alaska, tells a reporter Paul Revere rode that fateful night to alert the British that the British were coming? Is she still relevant outside the soiled acreage owned by Far Rightwing extremists? Does the average American, not the Republican who has $1.5 million in revolving accounts with the country's top jewelry store, still care a whit about the cheap clown act that is Palin?

It's a strange time in Republican Party politics. Its men are an air-conditioned collection of bad scrummers and its women are, well, singlehandedly bringing back that 1980s word - Ditz.

Ms. Palin took the long way toward her education, attending five colleges before getting her degree. Ms. Bachmann trumped her with a law degree, but also attended Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma, where she did some work for a professor rather interested in the progress being made by White Supremacy groups in this country. That Bachman is a card. Her sister is a Lesbian and Bachmann insist that the lifestyle is an abomination to Humanity.

We ask: Is this what's next for America?

Republicans hold hard to their issues, taking unbending stands on immigration and employee unions and health care that, dang it, goes against their own interests. Bachmann will rail against federal entitlement programs, like funding Headstart, which educates and feeds kids, but accepts $250,000 in farm subsidies for her family. She and Palin are two puppies lost in the woods without the crumbs.

Republicans harp loudly about President Barack Obama's insistence that the nation's wealthy pay a fairer share of their taxes. That's government meddling with the people, they crow.

But statistics don't lie. The wealth trend has it that the richest 2 percent of Americans are getting 20 percent of the wealth. While the Middle Class citizen has struggled to maintain wages during the last 20 years, the wealthy have seen their riches increase dramatically. American productivity is said to be on the rise, yet wages flatline. The difference is glaring and alarming, yet Republicans fully believe that the nation can recover on the backs of the poor and the Middle Class. Don't tax us, say the rich. Tax the idiot, Joe Sixpack.

The thing is not all Republicans are wealthy. Some fall-in with the dogma out of some sense of fear that Democrats are after an all-out socialist nation. They are ignorant about health care, or they somehow believe that it is a welfare program. The aging of the so-called Baby Boomers is also at play. Many of these Republicans, and we include the ridiculously naive Tea Party folks, need these healthcare programs. Old is not owned by the Democratric Party. Sick is sick, and the cost of avoiding sickness is steep. And just as the nation takes care of security by way of its military, it too has the reponsibility to care for its own. You don't leave your citizens behind.

Problems abound for this country. And all of those problems, from the social to the economic, affect everybody. Why is healthcare socialism and farm subsides not? It's a wonderment.

Democrats ought to be criticized for not doing enough, for not taking the fight to Republicans more aggressively. Republicans have voted "No" on every action sought by the Obama Adminstration. That's been going on for almost three years now. It'll likely go on through the remaining years the president holds that office. That is not government; that is giving up, or it is being insular and self-serving.

So, we have Palin and Bachmann. Not much there. One should be running for mayor of her hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, where she Peter Principled, and the other should remember that Republican values throw her loving Lesbian stepsister under the bus. Only, that's not the GOP playbook.

No, the Republicans are okay with their leaders never having served in the military or educated themselves in the best universities of the land. They will cheer for a woman who quit her elected office to rake in the cash from public appearances. And they will grant the separatist Bachmann standing she does not deserve.

It is a joke, of course.

But after George W. Bush, every Republican moron likely got the idea that, well, if he did it, I can do it, too. Palin hasn't announced plans to run for the presidency. Bachmann is set to do it next Monday. So far, there are six men in the same contest, with a few others considering the plunge.

It's time this country had a female president. We'll say that openly.

But not Palin and not Bachmann.

The country does not need to lower its standard. A debate between the president and either of these two women would quickly be labeled abuse. You'd think the Republican braintrust would know it...

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