Romney to choose "an incredibly boring" what?

Several media have buzzed a report from inside the Romney campaign that he will choose an "incredibly boring white guy"  as his veep candidate.

If so, that would make two of them at the top of the ticket.  Oh, where are  Herman Cain or Sarah Palin to enliven the ticket?

Pumpkins: the GOP treat-or-treaters

A PHOTO IN Sunday's papers told us more abut the divinely-inspired GOP presidential candidates who are fervently attempting to lead America into the grasp of evangelical

Christians. Seated at a round table were Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich (and doubtless others not shown.) Unfortunately, by the reported tone of the discussion, it hardly measured up to the level of the lively Algonquin Round Table of the 1920s, the daily luncheon group at the Algonquin Hotel that included such nimble minds as Alexander Woollcott and Dorothy Parker.

By all accounts the presidential wannabes that met for a "values" discussion in Iowa each swore allegiance to taking down the liberal miscreants of the modern world to fill in the ranks with people as spiritually pure as they are. It never stops.

Even the table props sent a message of the wholesome family affair. In full view was a pumpkin. How appropriate for the trick-or-treaters seated for the photo-op. Pumpkins? Were the panelists sitting in judgment of the pulpy seasonals as to whether a pumpkin is a blowfish or a vegetable? This isn't as silly as it sounds. There is a precedent on Capitol Hill. Many on the GOP side have already dared us to consider pizza a vegetable to placate their lobbying frozen -pizza friends.

But let's get even more serious: Reports from the values auditions for the Iowa caucuses in January said several of the candidates tearfully(!) described their own trials in life (Example: Michele Bachmann told of becoming a true Christian after the awful divorce of her parents). What is it about sobbing in this party? I thought Boehner had claimed that value for himself.)

I should also report that Rick Perry signed a pledge by Bob Van Der Plaats, the head of the Family Leader, which sponsored the event. Perry vowed never to support same-six marriage.

But when the pledge bullies ask the candidates to put it in writing, do you get the feeling there is a limit to their trust in the pols' informal promises?

Now can we get back to the nation's economy and the haloed candidates' promises to create jobs? Halloween is over.

Footnote: As long as we're on the subject, Republican icon Thomas jefferson, whose name still adorns the menus of the party's dinners, once said this:

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.

The GOP road show gets funnier by the minute

THE NEXT TIME those alleged Republican presidential candidates meet to debate, I would have one question for Rick Perry. Are you a real person or a knockoff of Jon Stewart?

So far we've seen him twisting and fluttering like the last autumn leaf on the tree, or appearing as a sputtering grade schooler caught chewing gum in class. You may have seen the Texas governor laboring to remember the third Federal agency that he had hitherto promised to eliminate. It could be a first in political self-entrapment.

I know this is 2011 when people's minds are distracted by a thousand things at once. But couldn't Perry have at least brought a crib to get him through the Double Jeopardy trick question? Or taken a hint from Sarah Palin's way of writing the answers on the palm of her hand?

After 30 or 40 debates, communication remains a severe problem. And it has some of us desperately searching for the meaning of newly minted terms. Look, folks, Michele Bachmann now wants us to believe that Mitt is a "prudent socialist". I can save you some research time by reporting that the term isn't in my dictionary. Mitt, meantime, came up with "corporations are people". But he has yet to tell us that people are corporations. Not in my house! There are only two of us living in it and I can't remember the third title we would need to incorporate.

Herman Cain referred to Anita Hill as a "princess", which has certain male chauvinist connotations, if you know what I mean., particularly for a guy now being accused of sexual harassment.

It must be something in the air. The former South Carolina Republican Party executive director, Todd Kincannon, has been exposed for tweets referring to Pelosi as a "crooked whore" and "botox bitch." I will only take you so far to repeat his third raunchy insult, that she was a crabby "c--t". (Clue: Cat has only three letters; this one has four.)

If you're among those who insist that you have better things to do than watch this stuff, I would accuse you of lacking a sense of humor. Better yet, the next time you take a Republican pol to lunch, ask him or her to explain it. I'd like to know.

Cain's man not alone in blowing smoke

IN MY MANY years of political reporting, I never thought that it would be nice if Harold Stassen returned to a presidential campaign in spirit long after his death. After all, the ex-governor of Minnesota had run effortlessly for the Oval Office a dozen times without a hint of success.

Still, it would be nice to have him back this year as a civilized counter-balance to the hysterical sideshow the Republicans are offering day after day. Where to begin?

Well, Herman "The Hermanator" Cain has already achieved his immediate goal with his profitable "non-political" book-signing tour. He has slickly made the New York Times' best-seller list which, of course, only reflects sales and not literary excellence. There is even some thought being advanced that his skirmish over sexual harassment charges will benefit him among some male types who grope their secretaries' shoulders. He also operates sin-free thanks to the gang at Fox News that immediately circled the wagons around him for his nightly appearances.

And how about that odd Cain commercial in which his puffing chief of staff, Mark Block, blows cigaret smoke into the screen? That reaffirmed it for me: Block, parroting his boss, is not the only one blowing smoke these days.

Meantime, among the other none-of-the-aboves, there was Rick Perry in a strange melt-down before a conservative audience, mugging with silly grins and wild arm gestures to make a point or two. It was the strangest performance I've ever seen from a presidential candidate. Some of his friends thought he might be reacting to pain-killing medication from back surgery. I don't think so. The man is nuts.

Need a laugh? Try Cain and Cantor

AS SOME OF you may have noticed, I often regress into delirium and take a serious look at a serious issue. But in surveying the comments by the Republican pols, it is getting harder to keep a straight face. They dodge all questions by saying it is critical to focus on creating jobs. And then they come at you with notions about same-sex marriage, class warfare, Mormonism, abortion and voter fraud.

Are they kidding, or what? For me, it is now like watching one silly squirrel chasing another squirrel up and down the tree in our back yard. For humans, their antics are fun to watch.

We now have Person of Interest #3 or #4 Herman Cain insisting that black Americans have been "brainwashed" to vote for Democrats. An African American himself, he has cast himself as the valid authority on mass brainwashing of minorities. By whom were they brain-washed? He blames Democrats, which is hardly newsworthy since the Republican candidates spend most of their time these days blaming Democrats when they aren't blaming each other for something.

I would tell them that as I recall, the Democrats were responsible for Medicare, Social Secrurity, voting rights and a number of other programs that benefitted the alleged brainwashed blacks in America. But if I did, I suspect Cain would accuse me of ordering the wrong brand of pizza.

I doubt that Mitt Romney would want to take the brainwashing tack inasmuch as it would open old family wounds. When Dad George, himself a presidential candidate, returned from a visit to Viet Nam in 1967, he was repentant in explaining to a radio interviewer why he was no longer a hawk. He said he had been the victim (by the military) of the "greatest brainwashing that anybody can get." Time magazine expressed its astonishment over Romney's explanation, describing it as "inept." Small wonder that Mitt has stuck to less inconsiderate comments like "corporations are people" even though I think that it, too, is a bit inept.

Then we come - again! - to jolly Eric Cantor, who should be pitied rather than censured for trying to be so profoundly above the battle . The Virginia Republican, who is forever in the midst of the battle, says the Wall Street demonstrations are increasingly troubling to him. . He told the the folks at the 2011 Voter Values Summit the past week that the protests by the "mobs" were an example of "class warfare" that is increasingly troubling to him because they are "pitting Americans against Americans."

I would consider him an expert on class "pitting" since the GOP-controlled House of Representatives, of which Cantor is the majority leader, has devoted a lot of its time doing just. But here I go again, getting serious when I thought we were in this for the laughs.

Seen any upbeat movies lately? Otherwise, we'll just have to squeeze s few more laughs out of the squirrelly Republican political class before they start falling out of the trees.

Herman Cain's race card against Jon Stewart

ASIDE TO HERMAN CAIN:

I see that you have accused comedian Jon Sewart of attacking you because you are, eh...black. If I may interrupt your transparent presidential campaign to sell your pizza and underwrite other projects by sucking up to the energy industry, consider this: It doesn't matter whether you are black, yellow, red as pizza sauce, designer tan or decorator off-white - nor does it matter to Stewart, a liberal comedy host who may have a bigger audience than you ever will once you leave the smog of Fox News. You have no chance to win the presidency, no matter what Stewart says. No chance. None at all. So I am forced to drag out my Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) award for your clumsy reach for the race card. Meantime, Herm, go easy on the pepperoni, please .

Satire in 1947, reality today

THE CURRENT ABSURD political culture led me over the week end to revisit the 1947 film The Senator Was Indiscreet, courtesy of the Akron-Summit County Public Library. In the irreverent hands of director George S. Kaufman, Sen. Mel Ashton (William Powell) is a boob who presents himself on a campaign-style whistle stop as a non-presidential candidate. (Sound familiar these days?) He is against inflation as well as deflation, but supports "flation". The fanciful plot satirically turns on a diary that he has kept for many years as an insider's story that is so politically delicious that it lures others to steal it. The diary is published and the senator heads to a South Seas Island to serve as its top banana. Naturally, it is all for laughs.

There is much here to remind us of today's laughable antics of a certain presidential field in our midst. Even a master humorist like Kaufman couldn't come up with some of the current lunacy:

As the candidates' words arrived on my computer and TV, here's what they wanted you to know:

Herman Cain insists on loyalty oaths by American Muslims.

Newt Gingrich's entire campaign staff resigns, or as Bill Maher described it: "His staff fired him." (And to anyone who suggested that I was off the reservation in my past references to Gingrich as Crazy Guggenheim , I can only ask, "Would you repeat that, please?

Rick Santorum, the GOP herd's theocrat-in-chief, says on Meet the Press that there are no circumstances in which abortions would be OK, even if the mother's (not the father's, of course) life were endangered.

Does anybody know where these boobs keep their diaries?

Herman Cain: The pizza guy with tasteless sauce

I FIRST ENCOUNTERED Herman Cain as a resonant radio voice while surfing the dial as I drove home from Lima, Oh., last summer. Although I was struck by his articulate nonsense, it would never have occurred to me that he was setting himself up as a presidential candidate. Here, after all, was just another nutty talk show host no different than all of the other right-wing turkeys who either want to save my soul, or my country, or both, whichever comes first.

I should have figured that Cain was up to no good when he and his callers thought it was sooo clever to reference President Obama's middle name, Hussein. Later I learned that Herman (whose last name escaped me at the time) was the founder of Godfather Pizza.

I love pizza, but that's of no importance today because Cain is sounding more llke a don than a pizza salesman as he sets out on his impossible dream to be the president himself.

Cain has cast himself as the leading Republican candidate against Muslims. He wants them to take loyalty tests to prove their validity as Americans.

As an African -American, Cain must surely know about the abuses that blacks have suffered at the hands of pure white Americans. How inconvenient for him. But history, as Sarah Palin again demonstrated, is of little value in the scrap heap of mindless political ambition. So be prepared for a lot of popularized attacks from the nativists on Muslims as well as Hispanics (also fodder on the political stump) on the path to the presidential election, all in the name of the flag.

Meantime, be a good American and keep that in mind the next time your order a pizza.

Des Moines: The fringe's giant leap for mankind

IN MY CONTINUING effort to monitor giant leaps for mankind, I think you should know about the latest gathering of GOP presidential hopefuls in Des Moines. That's the capital of Iowa and serves nicely in the heart of the state as a Sharia-free zone for another round of the show up-and-tell fringe politics of Michele, Newt, Haley, Herman et al. With the state's potential game-changing caucuses on the line next year, only Sarah Palin would get away with ignoring the ultra-conservative forum over the week end hosted by Iowa's thought-free congressman Steve King.

Some of the tone recalled the days when you could get a very nice bedside lamp with Top Value stamps; in the current version of Republican politics, the first test of any candidate is whether he or she subscribes to King's reliance on Judeo-Christian Family Values to pull a country of majority Christians out of its economic depths. Steve King says it better to his audience than I can:

"If we get the culture right, the economy will be right eventually.

Meantime, Newt Gingrich, who has been spreading like crabgrass these days , rose to the podium with more assaults on lefties and the president. Armed with his own mathematical proofs, Newt bellowed: "There is a huge difference between Obama and the left and 80 pct. of the American people." Of course, you never know what American people Newt is hanging out with. Some observers had hoped that he he would satsifactorily explain the huge difference between supporting a no-fly zone in Libya one day and rejecting it the next.

Haley Barbour joined others in promising that tax cuts would produce jobs (unfortunately not for the armies of workers laid off because of shrinking budgets). That audience-friendly proposal is much like the first line of a classic poem without a follow-up line.

But back to values. Michele Bachmann, whose head has become a revolving turret that nails every moving object in Lib-land, told her cheering crowd: "It is the character and the values of our people - that's why I am so confident in our people in 2012".

That is a summary of what we can expect for nearly two years. I confess that I'm never sure what values these people are talking about. But I promise to let you know after I turn on the Top Value bedside lamp and open a book. The lamp is now in the realm of heirlooms. Can't say that the giant leap for mankind in Des Moines produced anything of that lasting value

PS. Oops. Did I forget to mention prexy hopeful Herman Cain's economic dialectic? Or John Bolton's hawkish remedies for Iran? You didn't miss a thing.