In some Best Western on the campaign trail in Red State America, the Republican Standard Bearer awakens.
“Psst,” he says, nudging his wife. “Psst. Cindy? Are you awake?”
“John, it’s 4:30 in the morning. Unless you took that pill and hour ago, there’s no way we can have sex and still be ready for the campaign bus. Remember the last time we tried this and you knocked the donuts off the table? It gave Candy Crowley the wrong idea.”
“No, no, not that,” John says in a huff.
“What is it?”
“Jesus, Cindy, pinch me. Can you believe this?”
“Believe what?”
“I have no right being in this thing. Those right-wing jihadists and their chucklehead cheerleader in the White House screwed things up so badly, I figured I’d be going down to a bigger defeat than Alf Landon against FDR in the middle of the Depression.”
“Why? Were you a staffer on Alf’s campaign?”
“Don’t be a smartass. But how in the hell am I in this thing? We’re losing safe seats in special elections suggesting an ax-handling of epic proportions, yet I am even in the polls with either that latte-drinking dilettante or Madam Defarge and the lounge lizard she married. How can this be when the country hates Republicans?”
“You hate them too, honey.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m a maverick, I get it. But I am still in the party of George Bush, and the only guy happy with him right now is Jimmy Carter because he is finally going to be off the hook. When a president steps on his own dick or her own boob, people will no longer mutter ‘this is the worst president since Jimmy Carter.’ They’ll mutter, ‘this is the worst President since George W. Bush.’ That pompous old coot Carter managed to live long enough to see someone actually raise the bar on presidential incompetence.”
“Aren’t you getting a little confused, like that Sunni, Shia thing Lieberman bailed you out of? Don’t you mean lower the bar?”
“You know what I mean. Man, oh man, thank god for the Clintons. They have managed to do more damage to Barack Obama than I’d ever dream of doing. Can you imagine if I had said that I had the hard working white vote? We always knew they were in it for themselves, but man, I never thought they’d seek to destroy the Democratic party in the process. Think of this as boxing for a minute, will you?”
“Why?”
“Just work with me! Barack Obama was like the Muhammed Ali of politics.”
“Oh, John, can’t you come up with a white boxer?”
“Look, I thought I was going to be going up against the young Ali, or Cassius Clay. Graceful, lightning-quick on his feet, and essentially untouchable. Ted comes out and knights him with Excalibur as the one to carry the torch of JFK’s Camelot. Hell, after that event, I was ready to vote for him. But then Hillary starts swinging and swinging and swinging. Reverend Wright throws him under the bus and then proceeds to back up and drive over him a couple more times for good measure. That was like Clay resisting the war and changing his name to Muhammed Ali. And he opens his mouth and utters stuff about fear and belt tightening, and he starts looking like the old man lighting the torch at the Atlanta Olympics. The guy’s lost his A game as Hillary and her Shoulder Pad Feminists stop at nothing. I don’t have to do anything but sit back and watch. Hillary has morphed into the blue collar populist…”
“With 100 million in the bank, how does she pull that off?”
“Yeah, I know. It is amazing what you can pull off if you are shameless. Everyone is out to get her, but she’s tormenting the hell out of Howard Dean. Have you seen him lately? Talk about your deer in the damn headlights.”
“Yeeeee-aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!”
“Florida and Michigan are the best thing that happened to me. All the vicious crap about counting every vote that they flung at us in 2000, they’ve started throwing at themselves. It is comical. They can’t organize a nominating process and yet they want to nationalize healthcare? I wouldn’t trust those dolts to give my cat a rabies shot, let alone run our healthcare system.” He pauses and looks concerned.
“What is it honey?”
“George.”
“I know.”
“He can still screw this up for me. I gave that prick a pass on the Air National Guard in New Hampshire and he repays me by calling you a drug dealer, me a traitor, and now they are talking about ‘Bush/McCain.’ Are they serious? I need that idiot to go back to his ranch and fall off another Segway.”
“You can keep your distance.”
“I know, but he’s like a stray dog. Feed him faint praise, like I have to in order to keep those die hard Bible-thumpers on the reservation, and that mutt will think it’s a green light to hang around the campaign and stump for me. I wonder if there’s anyway I can piss him off so much he’d endorse Obama.”
“You’ve got a better chance of getting through a campaign speech without saying ‘my friends,’ dear.”
“What a race. The worst thing I have going for me is my own party’s incumbent president, and the best thing I have going for me is the brain trust driving the clown car that is the Democratic party nominating process over a cliff, and the pit bulls who simply won’t let go of Obama’s ankle. Now all I have to do is keep Mike Huckabee from saying some fundamentalist folderol, like if the nation had had more faith, God would have parted Lake Pontchatrain to keep New Orleans dry.”
“Don’t be so sure he won’t.’
“I know. A couple more blunders like the Obama gunshot comment at the NRA, and that guy can go back to bagging groceries at a Piggly Wiggly in Arkansas. Thank God those Mormon pedophiles hit the headlines so I won’t be forced into considering that twit Mitt Romney. Well enough of this. I need to pee. And after that … how much time do we have?”
“Spare me, G.I. Joe. I already took one for the team a couple weeks ago during a Meet The Press commercial.”
And with that, Republican Standard Bearer girded for another day on the campaign trail, like Alice in Wonderland getting ready for the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.