The GOP presidential candidates are doing that thing they do, again, only this time in another place.
They’re debating again. This time they’re in Barney Fife Hall in Mount Pilot, which is not as nice as the Shrimp-n-Grits Auditorium they performed in last time.
Sadly, they can’t go back to the SnG after the thing Gingrich did backstage on Saturday. The gas expelled from his float-sacs can be surprisingly volatile, and Huntsman should probably have told somebody about his shrimp allergy. Oh well. Was that only Saturday?
My God, it’s becoming increasingly hard to recap these things. They’re all so repetitive! How can you say anything new? This must be what it was like to write for “Bewitched” in the late-stage, Darren-Number-Two days. You can only have Uncle Arthur turn Darren into a pig right before Larry Tate shows up with the big client so many times before you feel like you’re just phoning it in.
Alright, let’s phone this thing in. First off, this is a proper debate, in the sense that they’re all on a stage together with podiums and what-not. It’s not Lincoln squaring off against Douglas, but it’s not the lame Merv Griffin song-and-dance schtick from last week where they came on separately and gabbed with Huckabee like they were on The Sammy Maudlin Show. The Huckafest just didn’t have the energy that’s there when they’re all on stage together. Huckabee’s forum was like those late Emerson Lake & Palmer albums, where Keith Emerson and Greg Lake couldn’t stand to be in the same room, and every body recorded their parts separately, and Palmer insisted on doing a whole album side that was just weird jazz or something. Anyway. Ask your Mom and Dad who Emerson Lake & Palmer were. In your dad’s album collection he’ll have a copy of Brain Salad Surgery. If you have one of those old machines that plays old-timey big, black CDs, have him play it for you.
Speaking of Brain Salad, why is Texas Governor Nathan Bedford Forrest Gump still here? If you doubled his poll numbers he’d be doing as well as people who have already dropped out in humiliation. His best poll numbers anywhere are in Texas, where he comes in…third. Here is a man with so sense of shame, or literacy, or numbers. When I was about nine or ten, one of the neighborhood kids had a brother who was about four. It was always a hassle whenever the little brother tagged along. He couldn’t keep up, he knew fuck-all about Star Trek, he couldn’t ride a bike, and he’d inevitably get bonked in the head with a ball and start crying. I imagine the other candidates think that way about Governor Gump. Dammit, does he have to keep tagging along? I can picture Romney getting impatient when Perry falls off his Big Wheel, or mistakes a possum for a kitty, or poops his pants. Jon Huntsman was a space-mutated super-geniuswho led the Fantastic Four to innumerable victories over earth’s enemies, and he had to drop out because no one who wasn’t also named Huntsman was voting for him. Rick Perry couldn’t SPELL Galactus, let alone actually fight him, and yet he’s still here. Maybe he’ll go join Huntsman on the bus to Loser Town after South Carolina’s primary next Saturday.
South Carolina is an important contest, and traditionally the candidate who persuades the most Carolina shrimp-herders and Confederate Flag salesmen and superstitious hill people goes on to win the GOP nomination. For candidates not fashioned in the basement labs of RomneyTech, this is really their last chance to put some dings in Willard Romney’s teflon exoskeleton. Feisty space-villain Newton Leroy Gingrich is ready for the challenge. He slides on to the stage ready for battle. The moist air and miasmic swamps of South Carolina have invigorated the disgraced former House Speaker. He flagellates the damp air through his breathing sacs with gusto! Waving his fore-appendages at the crowd, his jowls glistening with the grease of fried shrimp beyond number, redolent of hate and mayonnaise, he readies for combat!
Romney is feisty, too. Wearing a life-like mask of freshly processed Jon Huntsman skin, he uses complex Reagan motion-capture technology to enact a series of comforting, leader-like gestures. His handlers have loaded FrontRunner 3.0 software, and it seems to be performing at specs. Smile sub-routine enabled!
Dick Santorum fidgets in his new J.C. Penney’s suit. He was accosted by hill people as he campaigned near Spartanburg, and his trademark sweater-vests were stolen. They now adorn the yurt of a hill people chieftain. He does not look comfortable. Perhaps he accidentally googled himself.
Rick Perry fiddles around in his pocket looking for some peanuts, or maybe a yo-yo. He is calm, because he is stupid.
Bronze Age shaman and undying man-corpse Ron Paul mutters eldritch curses and looks around the stage for stray gold. There is none, and he becomes somewhat agitated.
The questions cover the gamut of important GOP issues. Who hates poor people the most? Why is Obama history’s greatest monster? Mitt Romney, why do you suck so much? Which of you is the biggest badass? Faux-liberal Fox host Juan Williams asks Gingrich if maybe it’s not a tad racist to keep calling Obama a food stamp president. Gingrich bristles at this–not literally, because his moist amphibious skin contains neither hair nor bristles. His spite glands inflate. The audience boos! It’s not racist if it’s true! Everyone knows Afro-Hawaiian Harvard Law Review editors are lazy! It’s just one of those things. Gingrich probably comes out a little ahead on the poor-hating. He enunciates some complex scheme that involves harvesting the organs of union janitors, and having poor children replace the janitors. Apparently 37 street-urchins can do the work of one janitor. Rick Perry looks concerned, perhaps because he cannot count to thirty-seven.
Romney takes some jabs for being a Richy Rich villain, and he’s really surprisingly stumbly and inarticulate at defending his economic record. Maybe it’s the new software. Santorum gave him something of a hard time. I imagine at some point they asked Santorum some questions of his own, but when he talks I just hear an annoying high-pitched whine. I’m sure as hell not going to use google to try and find out what Santorum said.
The candidates really bring the crazy, though, on the subject of foreign policy. They are enraged that Obama harshed their terror-hating war-boners by having Osama bin Laden killed. They eagerly look for new people to kill. Romney’s handlers boot up his IG-88 war chip, and he vows to build a battlestation that will be the ultimate power in the universe. Texas governor Nathan Bedford Forrest Gump has a novel idea and suggests maybe we should start fighting our allies. He jabbers about terror and war and calls Turkey–a NATO ally–a “nation run by Islamic terrorists.” Then–perhaps not informed by his advisors that our conflict with the Ottoman Empire ended in 1918– he lumps Turkey, Iran, and Syria together as he outlines a bold policy of beating the crap out of random countries. (The Turkish ambassador to the US would later respond by diplomatically calling Perry a goddamned idiot). Intermittently-reasonable haunted skeleton Ron Paul points out that maybe all these wars are a waste of precious, precious gold; gold that could be better spent as an offering to the gods or adorning Ayn Rand’s sarcophagus. Gingrich shakes his majestic wattles in rage at this appeasement. He opines that President Andrew Jackson didn’t get on the twenty dollar bill by being nice. He got on it by EATING THE BEATING HEARTS OF HIS ENEMIES! The President must be a badass! Though a skillful use of deferments kept Gingrich from being drafted, NOW he is really ready to fight. His battle-sacs engorge, and his reproductive organs retract behind a chitinous carapace. His soft tiny fists clench! He longs to feast on the entrails of his foes. Ron Paul, though a worshipper of the Old Ones whose dark magic imbues him with a life he both covets and curses, is reasonably familiar with Christian platitudes, and he asks Gingrich if maybe we shouldn’t do unto others, you know, as we would have them do to us. GINGRICH BLOATS WITH RAGE! His hate-sacs spew bile at Ron Paul, splattering some on Dick Santorum’s polyester suit, which is not as stain-resistant as the JC Penney’s suit salesman had implied. Paul is imperturbable. He talks some more about gold, sweet, sweet gold, and this calms Gingrich somewhat, because Newt is also very fond of gold. Ron Paul then talks about gold, and the Founding Fathers, and would have recounted the entire plot of National Treasure, but the moderators mercifully interrupt him and announce it’s time for closing remarks. The candidates all talk about how much they like killing, and Ronald Reagan, and South Carolina–all except Ron Paul, who talks about how he’s really looking forward to National Treasure II, but it’s not out on VHS yet for some reason. Down comes the curtain, and the hall fills with the sound of thunderous applause and Gingrich crunching on frogs.
Recaps of prior debates can be found here and here. Caution! May contain pictures of Newt Gingrich’s repulsive form.
Uncle Arthur image from here. Here’s a recipe for shrimp and grits if you need one.
