Cheer Up, Republicans

Look up, Charlie
You'll see a star
Just follow it and keep your dreams in view
Pretty soon the sky is going to clear up
Charlie,
Cheer up Charlie,do
Cheer up Charlie  -Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory

To say 2012 was a disappointing year for those of us on the Republican side of the river is an understatement.  It was a kick in the political nads that wanted to make some of us throw our hands in the air and give up even trying to participate in the national conversation. Participating in the national conversation has become so toxic and so mean it is just easier to ignore all of the tweeting/posting provocateurs and go down to our basements and play with our collective train sets.

I’ve created a little game called: I Should Have Known Romney Was In Trouble.  You sit around a table and yell out incidents from the 2012 campaign when we should have known Romney was going to lose. The most obscure wins! (My favorite: the kerfuffle over an incident in 1965 which supposedly had Romney cutting the hair of a fellow prep school student who may/may not have been gay. The student, who died 28 years ago, never mentioned the incident to his family. Nevertheless, Romney apologized for something he didn’t remember and may never have actually happened)

It wasn’t that it was such a bad candidate or campaign. It is just none of their big ideas worked. For example: Clint Eastwood. In February, he does a car commercial that is probably the best ad in the Super Bowl telecast. Team Romney gets him for the Republican National Convention and puts him in a prime time spot to endorse Mitt Romney. And Eastwood goes on Prime Time TV, looking all Dirty Grandpa Harry, ad- libbing to a chair.

There are several others, with the only consolation being that if you are a Calvinist, it all makes sense. Otherwise, a country mired in very weak recovery if not already in recession re-electing a President whose big idea is to raise taxes on the evil rich ( by his own definition, millionaire and billionaires are those families that make over $250K a year), does not compute.

As the young people would say, it is what it is. We are now faced with an embolden President and his enablers in the Press who think he is the best thing since butter. He has all of the major cool celebrities on his side. We have John Boehner (pronounced “Bayner”) who looks like the Meat department manager at Kroger.

                      Be sure to try our veal- John Boehner

On just about every major issue, The GOP is stuck with the Fuddy-Duddy group. The ones that don’t want “marriage equality” or “immigration reform” or a million other things which make us seem like a cultural stick in the mud when our critics are being charitable. When they are not being charitable, which is most of the time, we're called Nazis and bigots. It doesn't help that there is a portion of us bound and determined to prove our critics right by insisting on seeing Obama's birth certificate/college transcripts/driver's license.

But, cheer up guys. It has been worse. In 1964, that magnetic personality, Lyndon Baines Johnson, won in a landslide against Barry Goldwater. Goldwater's slogan was: "I will blow up the earth. Come on, it will be fun". Johnson took the overwhelming victory to mean that the country  was ready to be mired in an unwinnable land war in Southeast Asia.  We won in 1968. Okay, it was with Nixon, but it was a win.

The GOP has some great governors. Each has some problems, like Chris Christie who weighs 400 pounds and may actually be a Democrat. But, the Republicans have some young talent that may be able to win a Presidential election. One of these days.