There are so many serious things happening in the world today. You have an earthquake/tsunami of nuclear proportions in Japan. Wars and revolutions breaking out side by side in the Middle East. Budget fights threatening a possible government shutdown in Washington.
But few things could be more serious — if, that is, you’re a serious Republican — than the thus-far altogether hilarious 2012 Republican presidential campaign.
I give the floor to Sen. Rand “Aqua” Paul, who had this to say at a correspondents’ dinner in Washington the other night: “I was happy to see that Newt Gingrich has staked out a position on the war. A position, or two, or maybe three. I don’t know. He may have more war positions than he’s had wives.”
Yes, Rand Paul makes fun of Newt Gingrich. That’s Rand Paul, son of Ron Paul, who with our own Tom Tancredo, gave us Republican comic relief back in the 2008 campaign. (The Democrats bravely offered Mike Gravel as competition, and I’ve still got his TV ad — Rock — on my iPod.)
Tancredo went on, of course, to play a critical supporting role to Dan Maes in the 2010 Colorado gubernatorial follies — a role neither could ever top. Still, Ron Paul is back, now called by some the intellectual godfather of the Tea Party movement. He may run for president again. Rand Paul may run if he doesn’t. I’d love to see them both in a father- son smackdown, but maybe that’s too much to ask.
I just know that if you’re a serious Republican — and not what Dick Wadhams has called the “nuts” in the party — you have a long campaign ahead. The party that brought you Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell in 2008 seems intent on a repeat performance. Nate Silver, in his 538 blog at The New York Times, did a survey of which candidates were getting mention in the so-called serious press and in the blogosphere.
The serious guys went with Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Haley Barbour and Tim Pawlenty, even if Pawlenty is better known as T-Paw. (I keep wondering if the former Minnesota governor will turn up in the Twins’ starting rotation.) The blogosphere, where the action is, if you don’t count cable TV and the late-night comics, went with Palin, Donald Trump, Gingrich, Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann in that order.
You can see the problem. If you can’t, just tune in to Jon Stewart any night. I mean, I couldn’t figure out why Rand Paul made a Gingrich joke when there was so much Trump material available. Trump, the original reality-series guy, like Gingrich three- times married, a longtime star of the tabloids, the candidate most likely to rename the country United Trumps of America, has latched onto the birther issue to launch his campaign, presumably because the Flat Earth Society turned him down.
Trump went on Bill O’Reilly, trying to sell his neo-birtherism, to which O’Reilly, who suffers neither fools nor Democrats, countered, “His mother was a hippie; his father was a guy from Kenya who split . . . What is he — baby Jesus?”
Maybe The Donald is just too easy a target — and, besides, no one really thinks he’s running — and certainly Gingrich offers up his own wealth of material. He made news recently by blaming his past serial adultery on his love of, uh, country. I wonder what Martha Washington would make of that. And then Gingrich came up with this topper: He’s worried that his grandchildren will grow up in “a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists.” Think about it. Now think about it again. Atheistic . . . secular . . . Islamic . . . radicals. OK, maybe he does love his country too much.
In the pundit world, we’re very worried by the increasing possibility that Palin may not run. Fortunately, if Palin doesn’t, Bachmann almost certainly will. Bachmann has been described as a more articulate Palin, even though Bachmann did mark her first tour of New Hampshire by saying that the shots fired at Concord and Lexington were fired in New Hampshire. Unfortunately, that was Concord, Mass., not Concord, N.H. But, hey, all those New England states look alike.
Bachmann’s big issue these days is apparently light bulbs. She opposes direct government interference even in indirect lighting. Usually, she cites the founders, like Thomas Jefferson. Now, she’s bringing us Thomas Edison. And so she is the author of the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act, which would repeal a mandate that 100-watt light bulbs be 25 percent more energy-efficient by 2012.
If the lights go out by Election Day, Bachmann isn’t worried. She can still see her opponents by the whites of their eyes.
E-mail Mike Littwin at mlittwin@denverpost.com.
