Do you remember the good ol' days when Republicans were like Frank Jordan, David Brooks, and H.W. Bush? neither do I, but I hear tell there was a time when they were mostly just wrong, not pathological, and they made up what we call a two party system where it was generally agreed that both sides had an interest in securing the blessings of liberty, promoting the general welfare, establishing justice, stuff like that.
Then W. put the United States on a suicidal path. Too strong a word? Observe:
- two meaningless bungled wars whose price measures in thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars borrowed from China, to pay for torturing, tapping and renditioning us right out of our shining city on a hill.
- rich people and corporations were given lots of money and then promptly fired workers by the hundreds of thousands and then fiddled while our schools and bridges retreated into third world entropy.
- and then nurtured a bankster culture that fleeced about one fifth of the net wealth of the United States.
Ta da!
Now the Right, while obstructing Obama's clean up, complains that he is not doing it fast enough, and they want to get even more corporate tax cutty deregulatey (read self destructive) than W. Any candidate who doesn't get right on this party line is clearly consorting with Kenyans and will be run out of town by the Fox/Tea Party (same thing) forth with.
We need better enemies. Someone who can tell Fox & Friends to go drown, and with enough money to keep saying it. We need Larry Ellison.
Now, I don't know Larry well. I know that he is piloting a ship at a time when President Obama is governing without a rudder. I've sat next to him at enough dinner parties to know that he neither a moron nor a nihilist which already puts him at the head of the field.
The problem, as Carly, our trusty editor, has so rightly pointed out, is that Larry is not a Republican. No worries mate! Ronald Reagan (debt raiser in chief) isn't a Republican by today's standards either.
Further, I have five reasons to believe Larry would make the kind of moderate Republican we need:
1. He has beard -- very Berkeley.
2. He lives here, which immediately makes him a Commie like the rest of us.
3. He has a Japanese themed house -- susceptible to foreign influence.
4. He sails -- very Kennedy.
5. His company, Oracle, has a name right out of The Matrix and they're all liberals except for Morpheus who believes things in spite of facts, which is very Republican (and also got him killed).
What I don't know is whether he has developed a platform that is counter to the race-bating, science hating, hillbilly-sitting-on-his-porch-in-boxer-shorts-with-shot-gun-who-is-actually-a-corporate-mind-slave platform that is the coin of the Republican realm these days.
So I, avowed lefty liberal that I am, have, for country, decided to cross party lines and be Larry's brain trust and provide this ten point Republican make over:
REPUBLICANS LOVE
1. Order and free markets: let's put 'em together and have fair markets. It would be like loving the sheriff in the western -- totally Republican.
2. Minding their own business. Legalize weed, and while we're at it, doing shrooms at burning man. Come on!
3. Family. Marriage is about two people entering into a contract and Republicans love contracts. Lets get all those LGBT couples married so they're not running around on the loose!
4. Republicans hate taxes more than they like war. Let's tax every war in real time. That would mean a trillion dollar tax hike for the last adventure. Watch that tax bill turn those neo cons into doves.
5. Putting the C in conservation: TR liked to preserve open spaces so he could shoot the wild life in them. Nixon was happy to trade clean water for covert bombing missions. It worked before, it will work again.
6. The magic of the markets. So let's do business with countries like Kenya and Ghana. The party of trade not aid. Even Orin Hatch would like it.
7. Ending big government -- let's cut the military in half, it's socialism!
8. National security -- it comes from being smarter than the other guy, so let's invest in schools.
9. Invading! Let's invade Detroit. Let's win mo-town's hearts and minds with factories that make solar panels that we sell to the Chinese.
10. Being on the winning team. So let's get the best players. let's get all those smart engineers from other countries and give them work visas.
There you are Larry. You're welcome!
Of course you won't win -- people will vote for a Mormon before trusting anyone in a mock turtle.
But here's my point -- someone needs to come along and call out the Republican Party for the fundamentally self destructive non sequitor that it has become, and it needs to happen from someone on the inside.
If our Constitution is really a road map for developing wealth and security for the masses (not corporations), then we need a Republican candidate who actually wants to achieve those aims, and is willing to run and lose just to say so.
A good foe helps define where the common ground for governing is.
So we can stop careening between feckless and totally insane. A good foe could help Obama find that rudder when he wins handily next time. Sounds like an America's cup to me.