POLITICS AND NATURE

The Republican candidates sat around a table with a Fox News correspondent jousting friendly with each other. Not much new here except, for the first time, Romney looked like he had some clue about what was going on. Fred yawned and proclaimed himself a true conservative who will provide leadership. All of them will reduce taxes (despite Congress' control over taxing), each will fix Social Security, win the war on terror (though no one said what that means), eliminate "activist judges", and crush the liberals.

They don't mention what educational institutions will do without federal money. They didn't focus on small facts like, the areas attacked in 2001 voted overwhelmingly for John Kerry in 2004. Rare was the pointed jab evidently fixating the candidates the night before (I did not see that debate). Frank Luntz, who claims to be a neutral pollster but who has worked seriously to show Republicans how to get back in the game by focusing them on how to talk to people about things like the environment without actually supporting anything which might be liberal.

Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. Lower taxes are all the rage against the machine of the Democratic Party. There is no discussion of how things will be paid for or people's affinity for government services and how they will attack problems created by......yep......their party. Fred drawled about conservativism, conveniently forgetting the idea about marriage lasting forever which is a fairly central theme of conservative ideology. But, who ever said conservatives need to be conservative. I think Mitt and Huck may be the only ones left who haven't been divorced. The nice thing about Rudy is he doesn't claim to want to push his morals on the rest of us. Not Fred though. He knows what family values are. He's gotten it down with wife number two.

One of these clowns may be the next leader of the free world. Tomorrow will show where the story goes from here. It will make or break either Romney or McCain and nobody knows who will cross the finish line first. Romney, if he loses, may turn mad like Howard Dean. McCain would just slink back to Arizona where he will support Mitt if he garners the ultimate GOP prize, like he did with George W Bush after Bush accussed him of being a shitty human being and a fake patriot and all sorts of other vile crap which pushed W into the contest against Al Gore way back in 2000. McCain is a good soldier. If McCain wins, he and Huck will form a lasting friendship and Fred will shuck and jive his way back to Tennessee, or California really, to work more Law and Order gigs intertwined with some government work when he can get it. It's not a bad gig really. Hang out in Hollywood and attack the Hollywood elite and get government gigs on the side. All the while talking about values despite the fact you left your first wife for a much younger woman. Good old Fred. It is obvious he doesn't want to be president anyway. And who can blame him.

Huck doesn't care if he comes in last tomorrow. He's happy to be in the race. No wonder, really. He may be vying for a cushy federal job in a McCain administration. It is doubtful he looks forward to an administration of MItt. Mitt wants to succeed where his Dad, George, failed. Restore the family honor and run the government like a business, which it is not. There will be hangers on after tomorrow but the likelihood of winnowing the field is strong. Rudy laughed about the whole thing, waiting in the wings for the rest of the opponents bite each other's heels. Ron Paul wasn't even invited. Which shows who Fox wants to win, or doesn't. Even the Republican Party stood up for Paul and the injustice of it all.