President Obama and family, celebrating victory.

By Bob Gaydos

After watching hours of election returns, skipping from channel to channel trying to get the latest results as quickly as possible, I have three lasting impressions:

• Fox News consistently beat everyone else in calling states for a candidate (usually Barack Obama) and signaling a bad night for Mitt Romney. They called Pennsylvania and Ohio for the president while the other, “more reliable,” networks played it safe.
• The “expert” talking heads spent an inordinate amount of time talking about the coming debate over the “soul” of the Republican Party. Again, Fox was out front.
• Obama delivered a victory speech that came close to being classified as a “barn-burner.”

I don’t expect to watch much of Fox again, so I’ll chalk its surprisingly professional performance up to an anomaly and move on to the other observations.

For starters, will someone please define what they mean by the “soul” of the Republican Party? A party whose presidential candidate told Hispanic aliens to “self-deport” and dismissed 47 percent of the country as not his concern? A party that would deny gays and lesbians the rights guaranteed to all Americans? A party committed in its platform to denying women the right to an abortion under any circumstances? A party dominated by aging white men whose favorite pastime seems to be figuring ways to keep other kinds of people from voting? A party focused on maintaining every tax break possible for wealthy Americans, but making it tougher for college students to get loans? A party that treats science as a theory and global warming as a myth? A party that requires its ultimate presidential candidate to lie his way through primary campaigns in order to capture the votes of the whack job far right that dominated those campaigns, then backtrack on all those positions once he enters the general campaign and has to attract normal voters and then re-backtrack to some of the early positions in order to hang on to the Tea Partiers, ultimately leading millions of Americans to conclude he’s a liar?

That party? If there’s a soul in there, it must be in pretty sorry shape. Besides, just who is going to have this debate over the GOP’s soul? No elected Republican or party official said anything during the campaign about the GOP’s glaring position outside the mainstream of American thought on virtually every social issue or the fact that ever-increasing numbers of Latinos, blacks, gays, women and young people identified with Obama and the Democratic Party and that those are constituencies who are voting in ever-increasing numbers while old, white men are just getting older.

Who in the GOP will dare to defy Karl Rove, whose genius has now been trumped twice by Obama? Or Rush Limbaugh and the cadre of media blowhards that riled so many Americans up against Obama with a litany of half-truths and outright lies? Is there a leader in the GOP that dares to say the Tea Party, which cost the GOP several Senate seats as well, has no clothes, or at least no influence with a majority of Americans? The talking heads kept saying this debate was coming, but no one offered a name.

My advice to the Republicans who are fed up with the last two elections is to form a new party starting with all the sensible Republicans who have left the party.

Which brings me to Obama’s rousing 2 a.m. call to action. After the obligatory thank you’s to campaign workers and a promise to meet with leaders of all parties to end the Washington gridlock, and thanking supporters for their votes, he harkened back to a message delivered by another Democratic president 50 years ago.

“But that doesn’t mean your work is done‘” he said. “The role of citizen in our democracy does not end with your vote. America’s never been about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating, but necessary work of self-government.”

John F. Kennedy’s, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” was more dramatic, but it had already been used. Obama’s message, however, was the same — you, the people need to be more involved. If you don’t like the way things are being done, change it. The election is not the end; it’s the beginning.

A reporter covering Obama said the president did plan to try to work with Republicans, but also intended to take his message directly to the people, to take his show on the road, so to speak.

The talking heads all said it would never work. But they were still convinced Republicans — who lost the election — were going to sit down and have a heart-to-heart over their party’s soul.

I suggest a search party.

bob@zestoforange.com

Mitt Romney, oft befuddled, for a reason

By Bob Gaydos

Everyone pretty much agrees Mitt Romney has had a rough couple of weeks. He got the whole Libya embassy thing wrong, then repeated it the next day to make sure everyone knew. Then he called half the country lazy victims looking for a government handout and said he didn’t have to worry about them. The only insight he’s given voters into his tax returns is to show the most recent one, in which he paid more than he was required to, apparently so that he could justify his claim he paid at a 12 percent rate. And he apparently wonders (in public) why they can’t open the windows on airplanes when they‘re flying.

Even the Fox News team has struggled to spin some of this into electoral gold.

But I think it’s time to give Mitt a break. It’s not all his fault. After all, he is a product of his environment, acting in ways he feels are best suited to, not only his survival, but his success. It’s a kind of political Darwinism in which a particular species adopts the least favorable traits of its least socially adaptable members and the best of the rest try to prevent the extinction of the entire species.

Of course, we are talking here of the Republican Party. More specifically, the 21st century version of the Republican Party, of which Mitt Romney, by virtue of his name and great wealth (his birth environment), is a leading member, at the moment.

The perfect example of the decline of the party as a viable organism was the field of candidates put forth in the presidential primaries this year. It was far from the best the party had to offer, but it did include the most outlandishly conservative, if not radical, members the party has to offer. Also, some of the dumbest.

Newt Gingrich was easily the smartest. Also the most dangerous. Michelle Bachmann lives on another planet, Rick Perry can’t count to three, Rick Santorum reminded the country why they hated him in Pennsylvania, Ron Paul isn’t really a Republican, and another guy sold pizza. This is who Republicans apparently wanted to hear. How could Romney lose?

He outspent and outlasted the rightwing brigade and changed his opinion every day. He had to to get the votes of enough Republicans to be their presidential nominee. He still changes his opinion regularly, even though he is the nominee. Habits are hard to break.

But look back four years. John McCain, a respected naval hero and well-known as a contrary Republican senator, who voted his conscience, not the party line, on things like immigration and regulation, decided he had to sell his soul and agree with all the ultra-conservative views of the people running his party if he hoped to be their presidential nominee. His tongue-tying, butt-kissing performance (especially in South Carolina) was an embarrassment. Then he picked Sarah Palin, the personification of his party’s embrace of devolution, to be his running mate. Like Mitt picking Paul Ryan, Mr. No Abortion Under Any Circumstances, McCain felt he had no choice. The troglodytes were in power. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

Of course, this decline of the Republican Party as a vital organism traces back to 2000 when it chose the affable but clueless George W. Bush to run for president and the Supreme Court stole the election for him. With Karl Rove pulling strings behind the curtain and Dick Cheney at his side, Bush and his Republican Congress created a massive deficit by slashing everyone’s taxes, starting two wars (off budget), creating a Medicare prescription program without paying for it, and bailing out failing banks.

Then the Republicans — all of them — blamed Barack Obama for everything and, since they have no shame, asked President Bush not to come to their convention this year, lest people remember what he did.

There used to be a breed of proud Republicans who were able to work through their differences with Democrats for the good of the country. New York offered Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits, Kenneth Keating, Ben Gilman, George Pataki. There were similar examples across the country. Today, they are virtually extinct. RINOs they’re called by the troglodytes. Republicans in name only, because they believe in science and think government is obligated to help its least fortunate, as well as its wealthiest.

Mitt’s dad, George, who once tried to be president, would fall into that category. He would have a problem with Republicans in the Senate voting unanimously to defeat a jobs bill, that was mostly a Republican creation, just so Obama, the Democrat, couldn’t get credit for creating jobs while he’s running for reelection.

Pick an issue. To avoid the harsh backlash of the ultra-right, a Republican politician today often must discard decency and common sense. You’ve witnessed the Romney campaign. Yes, he made his choice. He could have run as a man of principle. Instead, he chose to run as a man of blind ambition. People without medical insurance can use the emergency room.

There are undoubtedly a variety of ways that a species begins its descent to extinction. For the Republican Party, it appears to have started with the loss of its soul.

bob@zestoforange.com

Sen. Harry Reid: Show us the tax returns.

By Bob Gaydos

I don’t know if Harry Reid is a liar or a political genius. It’s possible he’s both, or neither. Or one or the other.

Whatever the truth, and that’s an elusive commodity in this election campaign, the Senate Majority Leader has managed to do what the Obama reelection team has heretofore not — delivered a verbal broadside to Mitt Romney’s election campaign which actually has the potential to increase in damage the longer it hangs around.

Reid has said publicly, repeatedly, and even on the floor of the U.S. Senate that Romney paid no income taxes for 10 years. Reid says a credible source who would know such things told him. Romney says the charge is false. Other Republicans have called Reid a liar. Reid, and other Democrats, have replied simply, “Show us the tax returns.”

Genius. If I’m lying, you can show the world right now. Harry Reid is a dirty, rotten liar. If I’ve sullied your reputation by implying you evaded taxes even though you’re worth hundreds of millions of dollars (at least), hell, sue me. I repeat: Mitt Romney paid no taxes for 10 years.

The whole tax thing becomes particularly difficult for Romney, of course, because his dad, George Romney, established the precedence for presidential candidates releasing tax returns for several years when he ran for president in 1968. In releasing 12 years of tax returns, the Michigan governor said it was the best way to let Americans know of any potential conflicts of interest their would-be presidents might have as well as providing some insight into their character. Guess he was right.

Thus far, Mitt Romney has released a tax return for one year — 2010 — and an estimate for 2011. He says that’s all he will release. Even that little bit of information has raised red flags about how he feels about paying taxes, investing in America and creating jobs. There’s stuff, for example, about a bank account in Switzerland. This account was apparently closed in 2010, but there’s no way to know if Romney paid taxes on the account in previous years and, if so, how much. And why mess around with Swiss francs anyway if you’re such a proud American?

Another item of curiosity in Romney’s tax return is a $100 million IRA. Now, Americans are by and large OK with people accumulating wealth legitimately, but it is hard to imagine contributing enough within even generous legal yearly limitations to build up a $100 million IRA. How did he do that?

These questions were raised by people with a far better understanding of the tax code than I. They were posed in a Time magazine article by Edward D. Kleinbard, a professor at Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California. and former chief of staff of Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, and. Peter C. Canellos, a lawyer and former chair of the New York State Bar Association Tax Section.

The two also wonder about the Romneys’ 2010 federal tax rate of 13.9 percent on adjusted gross income of $22 million. That’s lower than the rate for the average American taxpayer earning abut $50,000 a year. Romney apparently used a tax loophole that allowed him, as someone who manages other people’s money, to claim an absurdly low tax rate.

With this attitude towards taxes and no previous returns to help make judgments, how are Americans supposed to know how a President Romney will address the tax code and the general inequity in wealth in America? How are they supposed to take an accurate measure of the man if he won’t reveal how he made his wealth, where it’s invested and why so much of it is in accounts in other countries?

Back to Reid. Some fact-checking web sites have jumped on him for not corroborating his claim with, you know, evidence. Fair enough. I’m very much in favor of corroboration. But the fact-checking web sites have gone so far as to say or suggest that Reid is lying because he has offered no proof. That is a reach too far. No one knows whether Reid is lying, save for Reid and Romney. Reid may be playing dirty politics. Then again, he may not. In either case, Republicans, who have made provably untrue claims about President Obama in their TV ads, have no credibility when it comes to accusing Democrats of making false accusations. Pot, meet kettle.

So what do Republicans do? They can keep calling Reid a liar and he can keep saying, “Just show us the tax returns to prove it.”

Or they can ignore the charge and let the questions linger: Why won’t Romney release his tax returns? Does he have something to hide?

Neither is good for Romney.

I’m no fan of Harry Reid or the politics of rumor, but when Republicans and their mouthpieces at Fox News — acolytes all of Karl Rove — start calling Reid a “hit man” for Obama and the Democrats, I have to confess thinking, what took them so long?

 bob@zestoforange.com

A dunce cap for the whole country.

By Bob Gaydos

What a dumb-a** effin’ country we live in.

It’s a struggle each week just to keep track of all the stupid s**t that goes on. I even feel obliged to start this column with obscenities because I want to reach all those under-40 readers who, thanks to today’s culture, don’t think you’re angry unless you say you’re p***ed.

Well, I’m p***ed. And I will try vent that anger while trying to refrain from further colorful language in honor of, well, the English language. (And there’s a concept we have stupidly abandoned, but I digress.)

Exhibit Number One, this week and for the past several weeks: In what civilized universe is the field of presidential candidates put forth by the Republican Party considered anything but an insult to the intelligence?

How are such proven intellectual lightweights as Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry still considered to be possible presidential timber? Is balsa wood the new oak? Is Rick Santorum fit to play with other children?

Is Herman Cain — who once ran a pizza company not as many people had previously heard of as he would lead you to believe and who apparently doesn‘t know where Libya is — to be believed when he denies four allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior and one 13-year-long extra-marital affair? Are the evangelical, family-values voters who wag the GOP tail really OK with that?

And when Cain’s lawyer says, in response to the allegation of an affair: “This appears to be an accusation of private, alleged consensual conduct between adults — a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public,” do the morally superior right-wingers buy it, or do they remember that the same argument did Democratic President Bill Clinton little good when House Republicans impeached him?

And how dumb is this: The man who led the charge against Clinton then is now said to be the leading GOP candidate, largely because of Cain’s mounting personal problems. No one can call Newt Gingrich dumb — he won’t let you. But how preposterous is it that he rises on the ashes of Cain’s marital problems?

For those too young to remember: Gingrich has been married three times, but it’s not the numbers that count here. He dumped his first wife, who was his former math teacher, for his second wife while the first wife was in the hospital recovering from surgery for uterine cancer. The compassionate Gingrich served the divorce papers on her in her hospital bed. He then dumped his second wife, who was stricken with MS, for a much younger wife. He was having an affair with this woman at the same time he was leading the congressional campaign against Clinton for adultery.

Yet Gingrich gets the bounce from Cain’s fall over morality? Apparently so, because, unlike most of the rest of the field, Newt knows about Libya and all those other countries and the budget stuff, too. And, although he has good reason to do so, he hasn’t lied about his first name, like Mitt Romney did. The smiling, white bread whatever-you-say-I-agree-with candidate insisted in a debate that “Mitt” is his first name, when it is actually Willard. That is consistent with his lack of credibility on every issue, yet there he is, still the favorite candidate nobody in the GOP wants.

Tell me that’s not dumb. (We’re leaving the not-dumb Ron Paul out of this discussion because the Republicans always do.)

And what about the governor of Kansas? If you do Twitter, you probably heard that a high school senior in Prairie Village, Kansas, was summoned to the principal’s office and told to apologize to Gov. Sam Brownback for comments she made about him after attending a youth conference at which he spoke. The 18-year-old coed tweeted: “Just made mean comments at Gov. Brownback and told him he sucked, in person, #heblowsalot.”

See what I mean about language? Anyway, the girl never actually said that to Brownback, just sent it out to her small group of followers, but the governor’s top aide felt it necessary to monitor social media reaction to the governor and felt the comments were not “respectful.” Duh. She called the school and demanded an apology. Dumb and dumber. The girl, no dummy, said no. First Amendment. The governor backed down and apologized to her. Her Twitter following grew from 60 to 8,000 overnight.

You want another one from last week — the idiot who pepper-sprayed fellow shoppers on Black Friday to get first shot a new X Box. I thought we were stuck in a post-recession economic malaise, but apparently Americans, lacking jobs and losing their homes, felt patriotic and spent billions last week on gadgets and high tech appliances to pump up the economy.

Which bring us back to politics and all those liberals and independents who are giving President Obama so much grief for not being all they think he should be. Have you guys looked at the sorry field of opponents mentioned above? Have you forgotten that, without any help from Republicans in Congress, he passed health care reform, banking reform and tuition reform, repealed don’t ask/don’t tell, got rid of Osama bin Laden and Moammar Gadhafi, effectively ended the war in Iraq, and extended billions in aid to Americans who really were suffering from loss of jobs and/or homes?

Do you think any of those guys would have or could have done any of that? Do you think any of them would do anything but serve their rich benefactors — at the expense of the rest of us — if elected president? When he is under attack from the narrow-minded, mean-spirited, anti-intelligence forces controlling the GOP today, the president needs help from his friends, not more self-centered criticism. This is not Utopia. This is America 2011.

Dumb a**es.

bob@zestoforange.com

John Huntsman

By Bob Gaydos

While seven of the usual suspects were in Las Vegas engaged in an all-out food fight centering around Mitt Romney, the only Republican presidential candidate who doesn’t come off as a cartoon of him or her self was in New Hampshire appealing to the reasonableness of the voters of the Granite State.

Poor Jon Huntsman. His campaign is just about out of money. He is polling about 7 percent among potential Republican voters. And yet he insists on trying to run a campaign grounded in what most people would regard as reality. He doesn’t stand a chance, not in the Mad Hatter tea party that is today’s GOP.

Huntsman was really in trouble from day one of his campaign and the fact that he is a Mormon was the least of his intra-party challenges. A staunch right-to-life, pro-gun, fiscally conservative former governor of Utah, Huntsman has also been an outspoken opponent of the war in Afghanistan, favors civil unions for same-sex couples, almost enacted a mandated health care plan in Utah and believes scientists who say the earth is heating up and that it is a problem.

Recognizing that some of those positions differ from some of the louder elements of his party, Huntsman nevertheless threw his hat in the ring, saying, “It’s OK — you’ve got to be who you are and march forward. Some people will like it. And I believe that in the end people will look at the totality of what it is you stand for, the totality of what you’ve done, and then make an informed decision.”

Yeah, well, sorry about that, Jon. That reasonable-sounding approach to campaigning is probably Huntsman’s most serious disconnect from the reality of Republican politics today. If you do not adopt the orthodoxy of the outspoken, pro-religion, anti-government extreme right wing GOP minority these days, you do not get their primary support — be it votes or dollars. It has led front-runner Mitt Romney, another Mormon former governor, to come across as a hypocrite. Romney has reversed his position on every possible issue since becoming a candidate — and a wooden one at that.

It’s what happened to John McCain in 2008 when he captured the GOP nomination. Huntsman was one of McCain’s national campaign chairmen, so he saw how swallowing one’s principles is the key to success in the modern GOP. Yet there was Huntsman in New Hampshire Tuesday telling a Washington Post writer, “I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”

We’ll leave that for Rick Santorum, Jon.

Huntsman’s boycott of the Las Vegas debate — a statement about Nevada’s jumping in line ahead of the traditional first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary — was accompanied by another moderate-sounding broadside in the Wall Street Journal.

In an opinion page article, Huntsman said President Barack Obama’s Wall Street reforms did not solve the problem of “too-big-to-fail” banks. Noting that, three years after the financial crisis, “the six largest American financial institutions are significantly bigger than they were before the crisis,” he said imposing a tax on these large institutions would be one way to lower the risk of a future bailout by taxpayers.

Well of course it would, Jon. That’s why the rest of your Republican would-be presidents oppose it. But I bet you’d get a warmer reception for the idea with the Occupy Wall Street crowd.

That’s Huntsman’s problem. He can see when the emperor is naked and can’t stop himself from saying so. That, and the fact that he actually worked for Obama as ambassador to China.

This, too, is regarded as a negative in some Republican circles — the fact that he was deemed qualified to handle one of the key U.S. diplomatic postings of the 21st century, by a president of the opposing party. Yet a pizza huckster with no government or foreign policy experience ranks among the leaders in the GOP primary polls based largely on a campaign that sounds like a TV ad: 999. One large pie with two toppings. Pickup only.

Huntsman says he hopes to convince the traditionally independent voters of New Hampshire to accept his reasonable brand of conservatism — the way they did for McCain in 2000 — then carry that victory to triumph in South Carolina.

Here again, I think Huntsman has lost touch with reality. If I’m one of the other seven candidates — say Rick Perry — I’m digging out Huntsman’s answer to a question at a GOP debate at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California on Sept. 7:

“Q: You have said the party is in danger of becoming anti-science. Who on this stage is anti-science?

“A: Listen, when you make comments that fly in the face of what 98 out of 100 climate scientists have said, when you call into question the science of evolution, all I’m saying is that, in order for the Republican Party to win, we can’t run from science. We can’t run from mainstream conservative philosophy. We’ve got to win voters; to reach out and bring in independents.”

Yeah, that’ll play well with the Bob Jones University crowd.

bob@zestoforange.com

Mitt Romney, GOP's default favorite flavor

By Bob Gaydos

Don’t look now, but the flavor of the week for all those frustrated, angry, eager-for-change Republicans is … vanilla.

Not cherry vanilla or even vanilla bean. And no, sorry Mr. Cain, despite all the high-profile attention you’ve been getting from the media of late, not “black walnut with substance.” Plain old vanilla, aka Mitt Romney, is looking more and more like what he has acted like from the beginning of the tortuous Republican presidential primary process — the eventual GOP nominee.

That won’t be because he has captured the imagination of the party faithful (whoever they may be), but because none of the other colorful, imaginative GOP candidates has offered anything close to a resume that screams. “Pick me! I know how to do the job.”

The anyone-but-Romney crown within the GOP had a rough couple of weeks as two of their more prominent, colorful potential candidates both opted not to run. Chris Christie, the larger-than-life governor of New Jersey, who likes to beat up on teachers, has regularly insisted he was not a presidential candidate, but apparently felt obligated to consider the pleas to run one more time when all the vanilla-haters in the GOP begged him. Mr. Rocky Road said thanks, but no, once again.

And Sarah Palin, the hot fudge sundae who has been running away from political office ever since she was John McCain’s partner on the 2008 losing ticket, proved she is smarter than a lot of folks (me included) give her credit for, by saying she’s not running for president either. Clearly, it’s much easier to travel around the country on a spiffy bus, picking up hefty speaking fees than having to campaign for office, never mind actually governing that country.

On her way out, Palin tagged Cain (erroneously calling him “Herb,” not Herman) as the next flavor of the week because Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachmann, a make-up-your own-sundae candidate, had fallen out of favor when Texas Gov. Rick Perry jumped into the race. But Perry quickly went from being the favorite anti-Romney candidate to melted butter pecan after terrible debate performances. Apparently even Republicans have lost a taste for affable Texans who don’t know what they’re talking about.

That leaves Rick Santorum hanging around, even though almost nobody’s buying what he’s selling, along with Newt Gingrich, and no one’s going to buy any ice cream called Newt. And of course, Ron Paul, the Libertarian in Republican clothing, is still in the race. He’ll never drop out and could even get flavor of the week some time, but when he goes all soft-serve on the wars in Afghanistan and against drugs the GOP hardliners will go soft-serve on him. But mostly, it will be because they’re not sure what flavor he really is.

This, we are told, leaves Republicans with Cain and Romney. Republicans love colorful, tough-talking, no-nonsense businessmen who are convinced they know how to do what the “professional politicians” don’t. Ross Perot. Donald Trump. Steve Forbes. They made their fortunes in business (the latter two with the help of Daddy) and, by golly, they could do it in the White House, too. Or so they said.

But they couldn’t get the nomination because they couldn’t do what politicians have to do in order to succeed — understand the concerns of all the people and work with those who hold different views for the greater good. It is not just a matter of telling employees what to do in order to improve the bottom line. It is more a matter of improving all citizens’ bottom lines and, by the way, getting along with the rest of the world.

Perot ran as an independent, and a paranoid one at that. Trump was always just a TV act looking for ratings. Forbes proposed a flat tax on all Americans and said that would straighten out all our problems, not just the budget. He never got why that was unfair to those who were not born rich.

Cain has a version of this with his 9-9-9- plan. He also doesn’t understand why a 9 percent national sales tax on everyone disproportionately hurts those without a lot of money. Plus, it’s a tax, isn’t it? How is that Republican? He’s a black man who likes the up-by-your-own-bootstraps argument, which endears him to a lot of Republicans. Of course, he had parents who worked very hard to get him and his brother into college, where they could get the education to help them succeed. And for those who joke that President Obama (who never saw his father after age 10) never even delivered a pizza, Cain didn’t start at the bottom at Godfather’s Pizza; he came in as the boss and made it a success before selling it.

But Romney is also an incredibly successful businessman, who was also governor of Massachusetts and the guiding force behind the 2002 Winter Olympics in St. Lake City. He has had to deal with differing opinions and learn about compromising and raising revenues to keep things running. He even got a health plan passed for the good of all Massachusetts citizens. Unfortunately for him, these are seen as negatives by people who belong to one of the many vocal factions driving Republican politics these days, including the tea party folks. They dominate public debate and straw polls.

So Romney, who might really be more Neopolitan ice cream (vanilla, chocolate and strawberry), has stuck to plain vanilla until now so as not to seriously offend any of those factions and lose the nomination. (See: John McCain in 2008.) In return, they have accused him of being a member of a cult, because he is a Mormon, and two-faced, because he won’t absolutely, positively toe the line on not taxing the rich. At the Republican candidates debate Tuesday, Romney said, “I’m not worried about rich people. They are doing just fine.”

Geez, Mitt, that sounds almost vanilla bean. Or Democratic.

bob@zestoforange.com

George Pataki

By Bob Gaydos

So George Pataki is thinking about running for president. So what’s new?

The former New York governor has flirted with making a presidential run a couple of times in the past, only to bow to the inevitable arguments against him: much of the country doesn’t know who he is, other candidates have raised a lot more money than he could hope to raise and, oh yeah, he is a traditional Republican from the Northeast, with traditional Republican values, in a party that not only doesn’t share those values anymore, it has become downright hostile to anyone who holds them and claims to be a Republican.

They even came up with an acronym for such Republicans: RINOs. That stands for Republicans in Name Only. Pataki ranked 6th among RINOs in a recent listing, not encouraging in an era when RINOs are a threatened species outside of the North. Today, the Republican Party is dominated by dinosaurs, which as any schoolchild knows, were put on this planet by God to provide food for Adam and Eve. Just ask Rick Perry.

Perry is the current governor of Texas, which gives him more current name recognition than Pataki. Texas’ ranking dead last among states in adults with a high school diploma gives Perry further cache with the people calling the shots today in the GOP — the ladies who come to tea.

That would be Michele Bachmann, congresswoman from Minnesota and Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska, former Republican vice presidential candidate, current barnstorming media star and, still, potential presidential candidate. The two women have captured the heart and mind of the Republican Party, such as they are. In the process they have made regard for the facts and respect for science and history irrelevant within party ranks by playing shamelessly to the fears and resentments of many of their constituents.

They have frightened grownups out of the party — or at least out of decision-making roles — and, bolstered by shameless media exploitation by Fox News and other outlets, made the Republican Party home to nay-sayers, whiners, quasi-patriots, demagogues and hundreds of elected officials who have sacrificed their principles — their souls — to appease the loud rabble so they won’t come after them. This is today’s version of the late Lee Atwater’s GOP Big Tent: It’s a lot smaller and you need to pass a loyalty test to get in.

In sum, it is not Pataki’s party’s finest hour. Which prompts me to offer a modest proposal: If he really wants to run for president, why not run as a Democrat?

Yes, he spouts the traditional Republican line about no taxes and less government, but he was governor for 12 years and he knows the truth. Executives find ways to raise revenue, whatever they may call it, and they recognize that compromise at some point becomes necessary to, well, govern.

Neither principle is accepted philosophy in today’s GOP. It’s not because the longtime office holders in Congress and elsewhere don’t recognize their validity, but rather because they have been scared off by the tea partiers, some of whom seem to think they are living in Egypt or Libya and need to overthrow a government that has brutalized them.

Pataki, who has been touring the country under the auspices of a non-profit group he formed — No American Debt — says he hasn’t heard any of the many Republican candidates “offer specific solutions” to getting rid of the national debt and the deficit. Quite true. Nay-sayers can only say nay. They do not offer solutions. (A lot of Americans have apparently caught on to this tendency of the tea partiers and blame them and Republicans they hang out with in Congress more for the recent debt fiasco than they do Democrats.)

But Pataki’s problems with Republicans is social, not financial. He is a pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-union, pro-government involvement, pro gay rights, pro-environment kind of guy. In other words, a Democrat, insofar as conservative Republicans — which is redundant, if you ask me — are concerned.

If he’s really serious and not just lonely for attention like Rudy Giuliani seemed to be in the last GOP presidential primary chase, Pataki should consider challenging President Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination and hope to gain the support of more conservative Democratic Party members and the thousands of independents looking for someone with moderate political views and a healthy does of leadership capability.

That may or may not be Pataki, who certainly can‘t match Obama in the charisma or oratorical competitions. But Perry and Bachmann rely a great deal on personal charm for their success as well. Yes, they are vulnerable on the “That’s Just Flat Out Not True” scale, but the only Republican who tried to go there against Bachmann — former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty — dropped out of the race after doing poorly in a hoked-up straw poll in Iowa. He and Pataki are about equal on the charisma scale.

In short, there is no evidence as yet that Republicans are ready and willing to listen to — and support — candidates who do not live in an alternative universe, one where government never taxes anyone but the middle class and RINOs are fair game for anyone with a gun, which, by law, of course, is everyone.

bob@zestoforange.com