Good morning, y’all. The weather changes are going to be coming fast and hard the next few weeks. We’ve gone from gorgeous seventy degree days to a heavy downpour. Looking at the forecast for the next week, I see ice is predicted. Oh, joy! Mother nature seems to be as fickle as an Iowa Republican.
We didn’t do a potluck supper for the Iowa caucuses, although it would have been a bipartisan thing to do. I figured it would be easier, on me, to just let folks drift in and out as they had a mind to. It’s not like there was anything else on TV, and the networks seemed to be presenting the races as fairly and evenly as possible. Before discussing the actual races, though, I’d like to point out the sheer lunacy of the importance given to the Iowa caucuses. Less than 200,000 people vote in an exercise that is supposed to be a model for the over three hundred million of us that are waiting our turn. In what looks like a version of Red Rover, Red Rover, Send Hillary Over, Iowans scramble around a room to determine the political fates of really good candidates like Michael O’Malley.
To me, it’s an abomination. It is sheer lunacy to place the importance on the Iowa caucuses that we witnessed tonight. The statistics bear me out. Iowans have been wrong more than right in terms of picking the respective candidates for each party. Turns out, Iowa Democrats are more liberal than the norm, and Iowa Republicans are further right. Iowans almost went for Bernie, and he’s got a snowball’s chance in Hell of getting the nomination. While there did seem to be a slant in the coverage towards making Bernie look better than Hillary, it was no more slanted than the coverage of The Donald. All of the positive press for Trump led him to believe he could blow off the last debate and not pay a penalty. Boom, Trump got thumped!
Contrary to The Donald’s self evaluation, there are some people who wouldn’t vote for The Donald if he shot somebody on Fifth avenue. That’s very consoling to me. A little less consoling is who the Iowans picked instead of Trump. Everything evil rolled into one package, Ted Cruz. I really do think if Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons” had a grandson, it would be Ted Cruz. I can’t think of a political candidate in my lifetime that was more smarmy, self righteous and less interested in serving the public than Ted Cruz. I’m old, I can remember Richard Nixon at his worst, down on his knees praying with Henry Kissinger, and I’d take Nixon over Cruz. Nixon at least had a passing interest in serving the public, in addition to his bankroll. Not so, Ted Cruz.
Cruz did deliver the best one liner so far in the campaign, capitalizing on The Donald’s complete unfamiliarity with the Bible. The Donald was showing his Evangelical chops at Liberty College and started to read a passage that had been picked out for him from Second Corinthians. Trump starts his reading with “Two Corinthians”. You just can’t buy that kind of gaff. Cruz used Trump’s flub incessantly in his speeches around the state. Cruz would wax in front of a group of Evangelicals, “I heard a joke the other day, ‘Two Corinthians walk into a bar,'”. As much as I dislike Cruz, and fear what he would do if elected, he is at least smart enough to mine gold when finding a nugget.
Cruz’s upside is that he is such a totally despicable human being that he should be easy to defeat in a general election. I feel the kids who are so strongly supporting Bernie would come out to vote against Cruz, even if Hillary was the candidate. Lest you think I’m just a yellow dog liberal and I’m judging Cruz too harshly, let me point out the support Cruz has gotten from his contemporaries in Congress. Zero, none, nada. Even the other right wing nut jobs don’t like him. Cruz is an obstructionist. He wants to dismantle government and leave anarchy in his wake. Anarchy except for those who can afford their own police and fire departments.
So, I guess I’m not as worried about Cruz being the nominee as I would be with The Donald. Let’s see if The Donald learns anything from Iowa as we move through the next round of primaries. Primaries that more accurately reflect America than Iowa.