It's been interesting (kind of) to watch
popularity polls for the Republican Presidential candidates. First Donald Trump the rude,
crude, unavowed materialist rose into the limelight. He lied about his wealth.
Then he took a bit of a dive as Ben Carson the spiritual guy rose up into the
light. He lied about his story. He's fallen away now. Or fallen asleep. Who
knows.
Then Marco Rubio had a few minutes in the
spotlight. He doesn’t know how to manage his personal finances. He’s not so high
on the charts any more. DT started climbing again.
Now Ted Cruz is rising in popularity. One
story that he tells is how he proposed to his loving wife Heidi that they
liquidate everything to fund his Senate campaign. He says she said yes in 60
seconds [because she believed in him so much—how romantic]. She says she said
let’s be sensible about this [perhaps she didn’t believe in him quite so much].
The picture he paints of her as the adoring, totally supportive wife who will
risk everything for him is a little off. Her suggestion won the day.
And he who says he’ll rid America of the
scourge of big banks actually got loans from big banks that allowed him to
liquidate without risk. One of the loans—low interest—came from Goldman Sachs
who Cruz publicly criticized for getting special treatment from the government.
I wonder what Goldman Sachs thinks of all this.
The penury picture Cruz
paints is a little off too; the couple had interest-bearing assets worth
millions that earned them around $400,000 that year. Ah well, what’s another
tall story from another GOP candidate.
While the spotlight shifts about on the
stage, lighting up one after another of these wannabes the Republican party scrabbles about for a real
candidate to support. Because Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson and Marco
Rubio (let’s face it, the others don’t have a shot in hell) aren’t real
Presidential material, they’re 3rd rate actors starring in 3rd rate soap opera
dramas they’ve written for themselves that they’re all convinced are documentaries.
The GOP doesn’t want the Trumpeter who is uncontrollable; or Ben Carson who’s
in a perpetual fall asleep state and knows nothing about politics and who the
hell wants another black guy in the White House; or Ted Cruz who hates
government; or Marco Rubio who can’t control his finances.
What about Jeb! Poor old Jeb! They wanted
him. They gave him money. But he just can’t get a foothold anywhere. And he
does rather drag around a ball and chain. He should have changed his name. Oh,
but then they wouldn’t have given him money.
Humor aside, the chickens have come home
to roost for the GOP. When Obama won in 2008 there were a few sane voices in
the Party saying that it needed to change because its voter base (very
conservative, wealthier older whites) was a dying breed and the Party needed
the support of minorities and women, and the middle class in general to survive.
To go more conservative was to go in the
same self-destructive direction, right? Wrong. The voice of reason did not have
its day then or even in 2012.
Instead the Republican party got the Tea
Party crazies with Ted Cruz at the helm. They didn’t muzzle him, they enabled
him. Remember John Boehner, the man with the orange face who never went near a
tanning studio no? He couldn’t stand up to the crazies. You’d see him on talk
shows saying how difficult his job was, and that the House was an unruly bunch.
But when they pushed to shut the government down he let them. When Obama drew
his line in the sand Boehner said “we fought the good fight”.
Personally I didn’t think he looked
particularly proud of himself as he said it. He looked cornered. Blackmailed.
Do what we say or we’ll get rid of you. Eventually they broke him anyway. And
took the Republican party so far right that it fell off the planet.
In that process though, the voters did
something strange. They knew they were dissatisfied with the Republican party. They
wanted something new.
They settled for GOP candidates who are so
much further to the right that they don’t even seem connected to the old
Republican Party. Why have voters who had the good sense to be unhappy with the
Republican Party been seduced by blusterers, liars, cheats and egomaniacs?
That’s pretty much the definition of snake oil salesmen, not potential
Presidents.
Everybody has their theory and this is
mine: Snake oil salesmen will always have some kind of audience, not because
people are generally stupid but because they’re generally vulnerable and it’s
hard to penetrate the con. It’s impossible to do it if you live off
misinformation and you’re prey to the kinds of fears that give rise to prejudices
that make you inflexible and shut down your capacity to reason—and if your
world is in disarray.
The Republican party turned its back on the
middle class and left the lives of the majority of Americans in disarray. That
created a fertile breeding ground for snake oil salesmen.
It’s an old dynamic. When people are in
need, swoop in and give them a message that relieves them of the burden of
thinking too much and of taking responsibility in their own lives. And give
them a hero to project onto. Christian missionaries use it, fundamentalists use
it. The needy are miraculously transformed into inflexible worshippers. It’s a
mistake to think that everybody understands the complexities of why our lives
end up in discomfort, as individuals, communities and society as a whole. A lot
of people just want a quick fix. And they want to be entertained by whoever’s
offering it.
In an era where “reality” shows
predominate, where special effects that pound the senses are off the charts,
where everything is big and distracting, where truth is a small word and barely
has a voice, and where people are truly suffering, it’s easy for snake oil
salesmen to get an audience.
Now the original Republican Party, which is
almost looking sane in comparison to this crop of candidates who are utterly
dissociated from reality, is lost. Where can it turn? Who can it support?
We tend to ignore
hairline cracks in a wall or small frustrations in a relationship. We very
rarely look at them and say “If I don’t fix the crack it will widen, if I don’t
address my frustrations they’ll get worse until we fall apart.” Years later our
house has fallen down and we’re locked in acrimonious or not but still very painful
divorce. And we look back and say “why didn’t I do something when I could?”
