The GOP candidates met for the jillionth time for a televised debate in Des Moines, Iowa Saturday night. Vile space-gangster Newton Leroy Gingrich emerged largely unscathed after verbal tussles with former Massachusetts protocol droid Willard “10 K” Romney, youtube laughingstock Rick Perry, and the gold-obsessed, keening mummy-wraith Ron Paul. Michele Bachmann and Ricky Santorum also pummeled the porcine disgraced former House Speaker with their tiny fists, but to no avail.
Some highlights:
Former Hee-Haw star Rick Perry criticizes Mitt Romney’s love of health care mandates back when Romney was senior protocol droid governor of Massachusetts. Romney blames that on a software glitch, and bets Perry TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS that the glitch is fixed and Perry is wrong. This is such an astonishing mix of ballsy and dumb that Twitter catches on fire. Perry, given this wonderful gift, just sort of stammers. Obama campaign advisors pee their pants and jump up and down. Disgraced former Speaker Gingrich shakes his jowls with mirth and eats a frog. The spirit inhabiting Ron Paul’s skeleton howls and makes a warding gesture to keep the stupid away. Inexplicably still-running candidate Jon Huntsman, who skipped the debate to go to Cracker Barrel or something, chortles with glee and sets up a Romney-mocking website. Everyone laughs so hard they forget completely about fiscal conservative Gingrich’s half million dollar line of credit at frugal jewelry bargain house Tiffany’s. Mitt’s new nickname is 10K. Presidential scholars not yet born will write books about how dumb he is.
Later the candidates are asked if they’ve ever experienced financial hardship, and whether they can relate to problems the poor and middle-class are experiencing. Perry, who actually grew up poor, again totally whiffs this softball. He responds with some gibberish about outhouses, and semioticians and scholars of southern folklore believe he was clumsily trying to explain the plot of “The Yearling.” Ricky Santorum makes a kind of squealing noise. Gingrich talks wistfully about being born in a log cabin on the swamp planet of Dagobah, and living as a child on Tattooine, where his Uncle Gomer ran a filling station, and his father struggled to operate a moisture farm under the yoke of the Empire’s high taxes. Romney says he saw some poor people from his penthouse balcony once. They looked like ants! Michelle Bachmann high-fives Jesus and says she used to be poor, and it sucked, but her husband Marcus prayed the poor away and now everything is better! Ron Paul howls and explains that in the small Egyptian village he grew up in three millennia ago, there frequently wasn’t enough millet to go around, and eventually the pharaohs came and took the temple gold, bringing down the wrath of the gods, and the Dark Ones of old will come again and eat all of America’s gold unless we audit the Fed.
Nixonian hottie and debate co-host Diane Sawyer asks them about marriage, which is a GOP debate code for “anybody want to call Gingrich a douchebag?” Romney says that he’s only got the one wife, regardless of whatever lies you might have heard about Mormons. Rick Perry allows as how if a man cheats on his wife, he might cheat at golf, too, and maybe you don’t want a cheater running your Ford dealership or something. Michelle Bachmann jabbers about Jesus-marriage and everyone looks at her big gay husband and laughs uncomfortably. Ron Paul says he’s been happily married to his wife Ankhesenamun for 2800 years, and warns again of the coming of the Dark Ones through the Portal of Doom if we don’t do something about Medicaid. Newt Gingrich shakes his jowls solemnly, and admits that when he was terrorizing the Outer Rim territories with his crime syndicate, he went through wives like “10K” Romney burns through ten thousand dollar bills at the craps tables at the Bellagio. But he vows, jowls wobbling with sincerity, that if he becomes Earth’s president, he will abide by Earth rules and only have one wife at a time. Diane Sawyer shrugs and lets him get away with that.
Wee co-host George Stephanopolous asks some boring questions about immigration, and they all jostle to see who can hate Mexicans more. Ron Paul says he has nothing against Mexicans, but he cannot abide Hittites. For no apparent reason, Gingrich says there’s no such thing as Palestinians. When pushed on this, Gingrich doubles down, because that’s the kind of space-slug he is. If you asked him what the best Star Wars movie is*, he would say “Phantom Menace.” If you said, “it has a good light-saber fight, but surely you don’t mean it’s the best movie?” a sane person would respond, “oh, yes, I meant best duel, not best movie.” Not disgraced former Speaker Gingrich. He would say, “Of course it’s the best movie. Frankly, it’s not just the best Star Wars movie, it’s the best movie of all time, and, to be candid, Jar Jar Binks is the best character in the history of the cinema. As a historian, I know this.”
Stephanopolous and Sawyer yawn and ask the clown collective to wrap it up by talking about their inspirations and to say something nice about each other. Everybody says Romney’s a dick but he’s not as much of a dick as you might think. Perry talks about “The Yearling” again, confuses it with “Old Yeller,” and then just stands there staring sadly into space. Bachmann embarrasses everyone by bringing up retired clown Herman Cain. Romney gets his foot stuck in a bucket full of ten-thousand-dollar bills and klomps around the stage. At the Cracker Barrel, Huntsman gets some pie to go and heads back to the Des Moines Motel Six to send off snarky tweets. Newt’s big inspiration is Newt. Blah blah Reagan blah blah, and down comes the curtain.
*Sadly, Stephanopolous and Sawyer did not ask the candidates for their views on Star Wars. Maybe next time.
