By Bob Gaydos

I got an unexpected Christmas present the other day. Out of the blue. Unwrapped. Unsolicited.

Well, semi-unsolicited. I ran into a longtime colleague of mine, a veteran journalist and a dyed-in-the-wool, God-bless-Ronald-Reagan Republican. A lifetime red-stater and regular campaign contributor stuck in a mostly blue state.

Not having talked politics in a while, I asked, in total innocence, “What do you think of the presidential candidates your party is offering?”

Well, what to my ears should appear, but a diatribe worthy of Rachel Maddow, my dear:  “It is absurd, insulting. None of them is qualified. It’s embarrassing. Obama is going to win in a landslide. I couldn’t vote for any of them.”

“Not even Romney?”

“No.”

“But how did this happen? How did this gang become the Republican Party’s best and brightest?”

“They’re not. And all those (tea party) Republicans who got elected last time are going to lose next time. It’s a disgrace. I got phone calls from all the Republican campaign fund-raising committees. I told them not to call me. I’m not giving any of them any money.”

Pleasantly dumbstruck, I ventured on. “But you’re a conservative,” I offered.

“No, I’m a moderate.”

Well, maybe. But only if by moderate you mean I’m not a falling-off-the-edge-of-the-universe conservative. Which should tell you all you need to know about the Republican Party today. A lifetime, patriotic party faithful, who keeps the letters from the White House expressing thanks for a generous contribution, a traditional conservative Republican, can’t stand to be linked with the people running the Republican Party today.

That is, if anyone is running it.

Off the weekly free-for-all they call a debate, one would have to wonder if any adults are in charge of trying to salvage the reputation of the party of Lincoln. If they were, how could they stand by silently while a bunch of candidates has demonstrated a collective unworthiness for the right to run for president, never mind be elected? Their flaws have been spotlighted each week — by the candidates themselves as they attack each other. Inexperience. Inflexibility. Lack of understanding of world affairs. Self-righteousness. Lack of understanding of domestic affairs. Poor communications skills. Hypocrisy. Immorality. Ignorance. Intolerance. Total lack of credibility.

As I digested my colleague’s visceral response to my question, I wondered how many other longtime Republicans felt this way and what they would do when it came election time and, more to the point, why they were letting this happen to their party, the party of Ronald Reagan.

Do they hate Obama that much? I find that hard to believe. Do they hate all immigrants? Do they hate all gays? Do they hate all Muslims? Do they hate all poor people? Some of their candidates speak as if they do.

The latest candidate to be elevated to front-runner status as the Iowa caucus approaches is Ron Paul, a libertarian in everything but party registration. Republicans can’t stand him, and he would be better off running on a third party line, yet there he is, next in line after the rest of the GOP field got through chopping away at Newt Gingrich’s resume. Unpredictable, undisciplined, immoral, untrustworthy, self-consumed and irrational were some of the bouquets they threw at Newt, who modestly asked his fellow candidates to engage in a no-name-calling campaign. Too late for that, Newt.

See, the problem the Republican candidates have is that they all can see their fellow candidates’ flaws all too clearly. They keep quiet about them until it suits them to do otherwise, like when someone starts to pull ahead of the field. Suddenly, honesty is acceptable in assessing Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum. And Newt Gingrich.

No one talks much about the two Mormon candidates, Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney. Again, I think there’s a bit of unconscious honesty at work here. I think they, and a lot of stalwart Republicans, like my colleague, know that Huntsman is the best and brightest of this lot and that he scares all the tea partiers because he believes in science and taxes and making efforts at bipartisan governing and he let Obama appoint him ambassador to China. Oooh, scary.

And Romney, the supposed favorite of traditional Republicans? This the tea party Republicans have got exactly right. You can’t trust a word the man says. He will change his views on a dime, or whatever the going rate is. Some Democrats and independents actually like him because of this — they think he’ll drop his ultra-conservative views once elected president and that makes him acceptable instead of Obama. Now there’s something we want in a leader, someone who says and does whatever is necessary to advance his own interest on that particular day. John McCain tried that. Didn’t work.

So, who would my colleague like to see run for president?

“Hillary Clinton. And don’t use my name.”

Spoken like a true Republican.

bob@zestoforange.com

Kepler-22b, future home of the GOP?

By Bob Gaydos

You say you don’t believe in fate, that there is no grand scheme, that life is not a complex mosaic that connects us all and somehow fits the pieces together when we’re not looking? OK. I get it. I used to be one of you. Life was just a bunch of random occurrences happening to random people at random intervals. When something somehow worked out just the way we would have liked it to, had we even thought of it, it was a happy coincidence.

One thing that always bothered me about that randomness explanation was, for want of a better phrase, our emotional human reactions to stuff that happens. If it’s all a crap shoot, who cares? Why get so worked up over things? Why not just count your coincidences and be happy?

But I don’t even care about that anymore. You live long enough, stuff happens, you stop trying to figure out why and sometimes you’re just grateful that it did.

So … a few days ago I wrote an angry piece in which I asked what I thought was a rhetorical question: “In what civilized universe is the field of presidential candidates put forth by the Republican Party considered anything but an insult to the intelligence?”

Well, lo and behold, a few days later, one of those things you call a “coincidence” and I call a sublime alignment of the stars happened. NASA announced it had discovered an “earth-sized” planet orbiting around a star much like our own sun, located in the sweet spot of its constellation where life as we define it could actually exist. NASA scientists hailed the discovery of the planet as a major a step in finding Earth’s “twin.”

A civilized universe, as it were, waiting to be claimed.

The message was clear. What a perfect answer, I thought, to the perplexing problem of what to do with all those Republican presidential candidates and the people who actually think any of them is capable of being president of the United States. We could build a fleet of space ships big enough to carry them all and blast off for Kepler-22b, as the planet has been named.

Money, always the major obstacle to space flight, would probably not be a big deal. I figure most Democrats, liberals, progressives and, in truth, any American with a modicum of common sense would be willing to scrap every project in the U.S. space program and direct all the resources to developing the spacecrafts as quickly as possible. They’d probably chip in. If more funding was needed, the Koch brothers and other major contributors to the Republican Party would probably be willing to kick in big bucks, especially if the major donors got to put their names on the space ships.

Tell me Donald Trump wouldn’t drop plans to host a Republican debate in Iowa in a heartbeat if he could put his name on the side of a spaceship bound for a new world. A new world, by the way, where he could settle his own country if he wanted and have first dibs on examining everybody’s birth certificate and passport. He could probably even fire the space crew if they didn’t live up to his standards and fly the ship himself.

But it’s not just Trump who would be happy on Earth’s “twin.” Everybody on those ships would be living in heaven, some probably taking the thought literally. Think of it. A planet with no immigration problem, a West Virginia with its own sun. No need for fences. No messy deportations. Minimum-wage jobs for anyone who wants one.

Not that anyone would, what with a population and government dedicated to the proposition that whoever works the hardest makes the most money and gets to keep it. No IRS. No fussy environmental rules to harass developers and investors looking to reap the benefits of the planet’s abundant supply of resources.

No gays. No abortions. No smarty-pants college professors (except for Newt). No socialists. No welfare. No Medicaid. No Medicare. No Social Security. Probably not a lot of old people. Definitely no poor people.

Lots of guns, though. And churches. As many as they want and plenty of praying in schools. Learning history would be optional (a concession to Michele Bachmann) and so would science (Jon Huntsman would not make the trip). And male politicians could have as many wives and mistresses as they want and lie about it with no fear of negative repercussions, an adaptation of the French model on this planet.

The Earth-twin government would consist mostly of a large army to discourage or repel threats from without and a police force trained to detect and suppress threats from within. The new constitution might have fewer amendments. Everyone would own shares of stock in a new inter-stellar exchange and no one would pay capital gains taxes. Mitt Romney could even decide to stay here if he felt more comfortable.

This, in sum, could be the Utopia for which Republicans have been praying, although they would probably want to change the planet’s name. Kepler-22b is dull even for Republicans. Selling the naming rights would probably bring in a tidy sum, though.

Of course, colonizing a new planet and getting it up to speed to interact with societies on other planets obviously can’t be done overnight. But a lot of the work — planning, campaigning, law-writing, voting, mating — could be done on the historic flight. NASA scientists say the new planet is 600 light years away, meaning it would take the only currently operating space vehicle — the space shuttle — about 23 million years to get there.

Sounds about right.

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