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I was complaining to Uncle Nunzio the other day about the price of growing older. “I have a doctor for every body part,” I griped. “And they’re all specialists,” Uncle replied while peeling the skin off an orange. “Yeah,” I agreed, “one for my left buttock and one for my right. Talk about the age of specialization.”
“And now we have this Crazy March season?” Uncle asked. “It’s called March Madness. You know, the basketball tournament.” Uncle won last year’s pool by closing his eyes and picking the winners. The year before, Uncle’s friend Vito won, and he’s never seen a basketball game.
I got to thinking. “Madness” is a good word to describe the 2016 Republican Presidential Primaries. Donald Trump may wind up as the Republican nominee for president. Back in the day, like before last summer, the thought of la Donald running for president would’ve been cause for checking for lead in the water supply. But even lead in the water supply is fast becoming the norm.
Uncle’s theory is the lead in our water supply IS responsible for Donald Trump’s popularity. Lead does affect the human brain, so maybe he’s on to something. “What about Trump’s high unfavorability ratings?” I asked him. “Bottled water. The rest of us drink bottled spring water so we don’t get the effects of lead in our brains.” Apparently, the Republican establishment has been wasting time trying all kinds of political tricks to derail Trump’s candidacy. All it had to do was hand out cases of Poland Spring to Trump supporters and warn them off their water supply. Maybe that’s why Sen. Marco Rubio is always reaching for a bottle of water when he speaks. Rubio has the worst case of dry mouth in political history (although President William Henry Harrison also suffered from the same problem, but he died a month into office) and so a promising life with dry mouth abruptly came to an end.
I’m not sure I buy Uncle’s lead poisoning reasoning for Trump’s success. Why would the affect be felt only by Republicans? I may be biased (and I freely admit I am), but the Democratic debates seem much more reasoned and based on the issues than do the Republican versions. While Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders debate whether we can afford a single-payer health care system, Trump calls Sen. Ted Cruz the P-word, Cruz opines that Trump is nuts, Rubio claims Cruz is a liar, Ohio Governor John Kasich wonders how a nice guy like him wandered into the Republican Party of today, and Ben Carson just yawns and fiddles with the sleep number on his mattress. I know Hillary doesn’t know if she’s being fitted for an orange jumpsuit any day, but that’s the norm for a Clinton. And Bernie, a self-declared Democratic Socialist, would ordinarily be considered the crazy one, but suddenly Sweden doesn’t sound so bad when he’s addressing a crowd of supporters. So here’s my theory–
Dumb voters. I know it’s heresy to think of a bunch of American voters as being idiots. After all, if America is an exceptional country, it would seem to follow that exceptional people inhabit it. Well, many of us are exceptional. We’re exceptionally dumb. You might ask, are you excluding yourself from the dumbest among us? Yes, because I’m not the one yelling USA! at Trump rallies. Let me make myself perfectly clear, as one of our former presidents used to say (I might add it took dumb voters to re-elect Richard M. Nixon after we already knew about Watergate). There are clear examples that stupidity has become the hallmark of the ’16 Republican race.
Trump supporters say they like la Donald because he’s not afraid to say what’s on his mind. It’s on record that Trump has changed his positions on almost every major issue over the years. The inescapable conclusion about Donald Trump is that he changes his mind whenever it benefits him. He has one core belief and that is Donald Trump. Everything else is open to a deal. Nothing he says, no matter how contradictory to what he said yesterday, matters to the zombies who are supporting him in the primaries. It shouldn’t be necessary for the Republican establishment to take him down. Republican primary voters should be accomplishing that mission at the polls. Here’s where stupidity intervenes.
Cruz acts as if he never heard of separation of church and state. He’s dependent on Bible-thumping voters to get him to the White House. In my lifetime, he is the most disliked candidate among his peers. Cruz has a better chance of becoming the next Jerry Falwell than he does of becoming President of the United States. After all, stupidity does have its limits.
The Republican establishment candidate is Rubio, he of the problematic salivary glands. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had Rubio’s number–Marco is a robotic right wing ideologue–a young man with old and demonstrably flawed opinions. If the Republicans couldn’t win with credentialed establishment candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain, the idea that Rubio is their hope in ’16 is sufficient evidence of stupidity.
Uncle says Republican primary voters are just pazzo this year. I say too many of them are uninformed, blinded by their anger. Just plain stupid. ■
