Garrison Keillor: GOP runs against itself!

[Stevepol]

A pretty incisive and funny commentary on the GOP and the present presidential race.

Here are some choice bits:

FREE OF HISTORY, GOP RUNS AGAINST ITSELF
By Garrison Keillor

So the Republicans have decided to run against themselves. The bums have tiptoed out the back door and circled around to the front and started yelling, "Throw the bums out!" They’ve been running Washington like a well-oiled machine to the point of inviting lobbyists into the back rooms to write the legislation, and now they are anti-establishment reformers dedicated to delivering us from themselves. And Mayor Giuliani is an advocate for small-town America. Bravo.

They are coming out for Small Efficient Government the very week that the feds are taking over Fannie and Freddie, those old cash cows, and in the course of a weekend twenty or fifty or (pick a number) billion go floating out the Treasury door. Hello? Do you see us out here? We are not fruit flies, we are voters, we can read and write, we didn’t just fall off the coal truck.

snip . . .

Mr. McCain has decided to run as a former POW and a maverick, a maverick’s maverick, rather than Mr. Bush’s best friend, and that’s understandable, but how can he not address the $3 trillion that got burned up in Iraq so far? It’s real money, it could’ve paid for a lot of windmills, a high-speed rail line in Ohio, some serious R&D. The Chinese, who have avoided foreign wars for fifty years, are taking enormous leaps forward, investing in their economy, and we are falling behind. We’re wasting our chances. The Republican culture of corruption in Washington hasn’t helped.

And a former mayor of a town of 7,000 who hired a lobbyist to get $26 million in federal earmarks is now running against the old-boy network in Washington who gave her that money to build the teen rec center and other good things so she could keep taxes low in Wasilla. Stunning. And if you question her qualifications to be the leader of the free world, you are an elitist. This is a beautiful maneuver. I wish I had thought of it back in school when I was forced to subject myself to a final exam in higher algebra. I could have told Miss Mortenson, "I am a Christian and when you gave me a D, you only showed your contempt for the Lord and for the godly hard-working people from whom I have sprung, you elitist battleaxe you."

In school, you couldn’t get away with that garbage because the taxpayers know that if we don’t uphold scholastic standards, we will wind up driving on badly designed bridges and go in for a tonsillectomy and come out missing our left lung, so we flunk the losers lest they gain power and hurt us, but in politics we bring forth phonies and love them to death.

snip . . .

The whole article at the link:

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/28260039.html

[frogmarch]

1. Thanks for this. I do love

Garrison Keillor. :thumbsup:

[monmouth]

2. I listen to his shows on the computer, great stuff...n/t