Yes, Virginia, there are no Newt and Rick

HAS THE WINNOWING process begun for two of the Republican Supernovas seeking the presidency? The word from Virginia would lead you to think so. Both Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry have failed to file enough signatures to qualify them for the state's March 6 primary ballot.

That will deny each of them a chance to compete in an important delegate state (where Professor Gingrich was ahead in the polls before he flubbed the qualifying petitions.) We now await his version that election laws, like child labor laws, are stupid.

Is it possible that Mitt Romney, a man for all reasons, will win the GOP nomination by default? (I can't believe I just wrote that!) But with these dismal choices, in the party of the blind, the one-eyed man could be King.

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.

Incidental news from the Republican front

IF GOV. KASICH IS INTENT on creating more jobs in Ohio, he may have to plow ahead without help from Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman. MSNBC is reporting that when Portman joined all other Senate Republicans in killing President Obama's jobs bill, it cost Ohio 40,700 new jobs. Once again, Obama can expect to receive no support from the Republicans on any substantive proposal to help the economy.

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I noticed that former State Sen. Kevin Coughlin of Cuyahoga Falls has officially withdrawn from the Republican race for the U.S. Senate in 2012. No surprise. Very few people were aware that he was ever in the race.

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You have to admire Mitt Romney's balletic manner in pirouetting from one side of an issue to the other. After declaring he fully supported Kasich on Senate Bill 5 (" I fully stand with John Kasich"), Romney arrived in Ohio to declare to reporters that he doesn't get involved in state ballot issues. But within a matter of hours, he asserted that he is "110 pct. in Kasich's corner on Issue 2, the repeal referendum that is enjoying a 25 pct. margin over the law's supporters in the latest polls. He said he was "sorry if I caused confusion." At least you can say this about Mitt: Most politicians staring at those poll numbers would prefer to say something nice about the Cleveland Browns instead and leave SB 5 to its fate. There is a fine line between courage and stupidity.

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WHEN A TV INTERVIEWER REMINDED RICK PERRY THAT HIS FLAT TAX PLAN WOULD BE A BIG BOOST FOR THE WEALTHIEST ONE PERCENT IN AMERICA, HE SAID HE DIDN'T "CARE ABOUT THAT." IMPRESSED BY HIS SENSITIVITY TO ROYALTY, FOX NEWS IS GIVING PERRY AN ENTIRE HOUR TO HIMSELF SUNDAY.

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Among the no-shows for the Akron mayoral debate this week was Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff. History tells us that when the boss doesn't show up to give at least moral support to the Republican candidate, you can bet that he's decided that the outcome has been settled in favor of Mayor Plusquellic.

And the Republican nominee isn't...

WHILE MANY OF us enjoyed a perfect weather week end of walking, digging, mowing. Marathon running or poring over the Sunday New York Times crossword, there was another event or two that consumed the pundits with new lines of chatter: Herman Cain, the widely described pizza mogul, won the Florida straw vote and Mitt Romney, who was clobbered by Cain, won Michigan. If you've been foolishly keeping score, that gives Cain, Romney and Michele Bachmann (have you forgotten the Iowa outcome already?) each a straw vote victory as they slog for the Republican presidential nomination.

And once again, we are witnessing the media nonsense to be the first to forecast the winner with these meaningless annoyances with the presidential election still 13 months away.

Historians tell us that the first such straw vote occurred in 1824 when reporters from the Harrisburg Pennsylvanian threw straws into the air to determine which way the political winds were blowing. Obviously that was preferable to spinning bottles that could have hurt someone had they been sent aloft.

But what good is a pre-primary campaign if you can't have a front-runner? So far, we've seen mentioned as nominee-designates Sarah Palin, Mitch Daniels, Mike Huckabee, Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Fred Thompson. Whoops. Thompson's 15 minutes of media speculation was four years ago. Nowadays he's coming at us on TV with mortgage commercials in a reassuring voice so much like Dr. Welby's.

It is, however, of passing interest that the conservative folks who were dumping on Romney are now out for a quick end to Perry's dream. Brit Hume , the Fox guru, accused Perry of "throwing up" during the last debate. Words like "collapse" and "weak" were tossed about by the Fox panel that vivisected Perry. It was enough to make him return to sheep-farming.

Others are saying it's time for Chris Christie to reconsider, but that may be like waiting for Godot. Meantime, as puzzles go on warm autumn afternoons, I prefer the big one in the Sunday Times.

Pawlenty turns up on a slow news day

THE USELESS political news today is that former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has endorsed Mitt Romney. And the former Massachusetts governor has happily reciprocated by naming Pawlenty the co-chairman of his presidential campaign.

Aside from the immediate political families, it's not unfair to ask, 'Who cares?' As I vaguely recall, Pawlenty was a candidate for the job himself until he discovered not that many people cared about that either. He only has a $500,000 campaign debt to show for it.

We now await Rick Perry's fellow Texan, Kinky Friedman, to step up with an endorsement of anybody else in the field that might be a tad more thrilling.

UPDATE: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal endorsed Perry. It's a whole new ballgame between Pawlenty and Jindal, if nothing else.

Perry's losing scheme vs. the Ponzi scheme

THE CURRENT BUZZ word in the political lexicon is "Ponzi" - as in Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi. He was the Italian immigrant who arrived on these shores penniless in 1903, went on to take in about $15 million in a postage coupon swindle and from there went on to prison.

From the Republican right-wing tower commanding the presidential road show comes word from Texas Gov. Rick Perry that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Perry goes after some issues as though he is trying to lasso a rodeo bull with a rubber band. But as we have learned from rubber bands, they can snap back into your face.

Nevertheless, you will be hearing about Ponzi's schemes from the comfortable Social Security haters who obviously believe that if those recipients who survive on their monthly checks are going to starve, then let it happen quickly. The chorus of those who agree with Perry includes such modern-day social and economic philosophers as Tucker Carlson, Rush Limbaugh(whose current wealth could help restore Social Security to good health overnight) Fox News gurus Andrew Napolitano and Brit Hume and CNN contributor Erick Erickson. There are others, but this gives you some idea of where all of the Ponzi raps are coming from.

But wait. It should be an absolute in politics that if you scare the hell out of the public on issues like Social Security, you are destined to be an also-ran. On this point, I agree with Mitt Romney's aide who asserted after Wednesday's GOP debate that "Perry just lost the election."

Poor Carlo Ponzi. Wasn't it enough that he went to prison for his bloodless crimes that he must now have his name trashed even more by loony people like Rick Perry and the Fox/CNN crowd?

When some things are more out of control than others

AS TEXANS WORK desperately to contain the fires of hell, here are some figures for Rick Perry's "miraculous" leadership, courtesy of the Crooks and Liars blog:

There are 879 volunteer fire departments in Texas, many of which have responded to the wildfire.

There are 114 paid fire departments.

There are 187 fire departments with volunteers as well as paid firefighters.

The state has cut its financial support to the volunteer departments by 75 pct.

P.S. Perry, who has attacked Washington for being "out of control", apparently excludes those times when the wildfires are out of control in his state. He now says he wants Uncle Sam's help for this particular emergency.

Meet Rick Perry, the "miswriting" author

WHEN SEN. JON KYL wrongly accused Planned Parenthood of spending more than 90 pct. of its money on abortion services, he was roundly booed. After all, the Arizona Republican IS a senator and should be expected to know what he is talking about. To make matters worse Kyl's press aide insisted that his boss's words "were not meant to be a factual statement ". As for Kyl, he conceded that he "misspoke" and wanted to move on.

That comes to mind as Texas Gov. Rick Perry is taking another route to distance himself from his pre-candidate book, Fed Up!: Our Fight to Save America from Washington. It wasn't that long ago that he was out there autographing it for his fans.

His communication aide, desperately reaching for damage control on Perry's treatise, said the book was "not meant to reflect the governor's current views."

Life is short, so I haven't read the book, nor do I intend to. But from others' accounts, I am told that Perry slammed many of the New Deal programs - including child labor laws and Social Security - as being "unconstitutional."

Well, is he now prepared to disavow that? Or has he added a new twist to political missteps by wanting us to believe that as an author, he "miswrote" his vision of what ails America?

Tsk. Tsk. I would say that as a candidate he should soon learn that many folks will soon tire of his illogical rants. But that would assume that he is capable of any logic at all.

After all, he IS a governor.

Meet Rick Perry, GOP macho traitor-hunter

WELL,THERE HE goes again and I guess we had better get used to it. Rick Perry, I mean, the boastful chest-pounding marauder just out of Texas who likes to remind everybody that they do things quite differently in his state, pardner. That much is clear from his threat that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Beranke was a traitor who would be treated "pretty ugly down in Texas''. You can read a lot of macho in this Lone Star cowboy with an ego twice the height of an oil well.

In some ways he is an expansive innocent abroad in a nation that dwarfs Texas in size and perspective. At the moment he is riding the media-driven fascination with his dashing entrance into the Republican presidential field as the party's latest Mordred, the bad Arthurian knight who disrupted the round table. The TV folks love something new and controversial on the scene. But can he sustain it all of the way to the GOP convention next year? Should we think Donald Trump?

In the meantime he will pepper his remarks with geographical references that "Back in Texas, etc etc. etc." or 'We can tell you that in Texas blah blah blah." Even Karl Rove, no slouch himself at causing mayhem, found Perry's comments offensive and "non-presidential".

But Rove is one guy that the Biblically pure Perry will not pray for salvation.

Rick Perry's self-styled apostolic vision

SHOULD WE ALL be preparing to don our Sunday Best a day earlier this week to witness the official arrival in the Republican presidential field by America's 13th Apostle, Texas Gov. Rick Perry? Rather than Mt. Sinai or the Alamo, Perry has chosen South Carolina as the honorary center of his universe for his pursuit of the next Enlightenment that has been created by something they call the Texas Miracle. Sorry, but that won't qualify him for sainthood.

Still, for a guy who has talked of secession for rhe Longhorn State, South Carolina is as worthy of his vision as any other place. It was, after all, where they fired on Fort Sumter and declared themselves free of the Feds, if not slavery.

You may expect to hear a lot of crowing from now on about that Miracle - a fiction writer's term to flatter the rise of the Texas economy under Perry, regularly calling attention to the report that Texas has created more jobs than any other state. That, plus the wisdom that Perry says he has received from God, will lead him to take his revival meetings across the land now deprived of milk and honey. But as with most statistics, there is a catch : For starters, Texas, which boasts of scant taxes, has a $4.3 billion budget deficit with a projected downside of upward of $27 billion.

Social services are a disgrace. The neglect is hardly benign.

The Huffington Post recently reported that 37 pct. of the jobs Texas created last year paid at or below minnimum wage. "Texas,"according to a public policy expert quoted by the the Huff Post said, "is tied for last with Mississippi for the highest perentage of minimum wage jobs and Texas by far the leader of residcnts who don't have health insurance " The article added: Dig beneath the talking point and you find a more troubling picture: Rising unemployment, a glut of low-wage jobs without benefits, overcrowded homeless shelters and public schools facing billions in budget cuts,..,."

Having noted all of the dark side of Texas planet there is one other thing to keep in mind as Perry adorns his campaign rhetoric with a Bible in one hand and an elixir of progress in the other: He will be also reminded often by the fact that he was a willing accomplice in the execution of an innocent man - Cameron Todd Willingham, the father of three who was wrongly convicted of arson in the death of his three children. Although Perry was alerted to the faulty evidence against Willingham, he approved the execution - and then blocked any inquiry into the grave injustice as further evidence exonerated the executed man.

And Rick Perry wants us to believe that he is qualified to be America's president.

How I imagined Michele's own "response"

Sorry, folks, but couldn't resist this "exchange" between two of America's leading Christians in which Michele Bachmann turns down Rick Perry's invitation to a pas de deux at the Texas governor's pray-in in Houston. Her dance card is filled these days in Iowa.

Gov. Perry's pray-in: the church becomes the state

ONE WONDERS: Are we reaching the point where the separation of church and state is no longer a national issue because church is actually replacing state in the corridors of political power? There is no better example of this merger than the one that will occur in Texas on Saturday - the date set aside for Gov. Rick Perry's seven-hour pray-in that is being orchestrated by some of the nation's leading right-wing religious groups.

Perry, who is said to be considering a presidential candidacy, denies there is a whit of politics in the spacious event in Houston's Reliant Stadium. Besides, the guv's partner, the American Family Association, is picking up the tab. The association's shopping list of social concerns not only oppose the usual suspects as abortion and homosexuality, but also has an interesting excursion into the Constitution. The AFA argues that freedom of religion only applies to Christians!

So far, the event has only received 8,000 RSVP's for the stadium that holds 71,000. However it turns out, it will doubtless be a an A-list subject in Sunday's news - which would certainly please the "non-political" governor.

Out of the oil spillage of the slippery apologists

NOW THAT WE are approaching the 8th week of the faux BP oil spill cleanup, it's interesting how its apologists have been caught as unprepared as BP to add their slippery words to the disastrous oil slick. Left with little more than absurdities to defend BP, the defense team has been as trapped as the pelicans sinking in the muck. Some extraordinary comments:

"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of oil and dispersant we are putting in it is tiny in relation to the total water volume." - BP chief executive Tony Hayward, during the early days of the spill.

"We will get this done. We will make this right." - BP ad campaign, which is making it wrong even though the company just hired Anne Womack-Kolton, Dick Cheney's former press-secretary to get at least a little of it right as BP's spokesperson.

"The spill would never have happened if we would have drill-baby-drilled in the National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska." - Republican Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri.

"Acts of God are acts of God." - Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a most ardent supporter of Big Oil.

"We don't wash our face in it but it doesn't stop us from jumping off the boat to ski." - Mississippi Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, comparing the spill to a "harmless gasoline sheen found around ski boats." And this guy is considered to be a potential candidate for president in 2012!

"It may have been an act of God." - Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who couldn't find anybody else to blame at the moment.

"...the ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and was left out there. It's natural. It's as natural as water is." - Who else but Rush Limbaugh, who never leaves alone any chance to blame environmentalists, liberals and oil company critics?

Haley Barbour: Another door left open

A WASHINGTON source is reporting that Haley Barbour, the Republican Mississippi governor, has "left the door open" to a candidacy for president in 2012.  In political jargon, Barbour, once the Republican national chairman, is sending a coy signal that he may very well run if the planets line up in his favor.    It's smart politics.  He'll keep everybody guessing that he might be the 25th or 50th potential Republican candidate in the race and lobbyists and donors will tread carefully around him the next year or so  in the outside chance that the will be in the presidential pack. 

The former New York Times columnist Russell Baker once called it the great mentioning game.  And you have little chance of winning a free lunch at McDonald's if you are not at least mentioned on all of the Sunday morning talk shows, particularly by George Will on a good day. Newt Gingrich also says he might run if things don't change.    He had better hope that they do inasmuch as President Obama's latest  ABC News poll numbers gives Barack a startling 72 pct. "favorability" rating with Americans.  Against  congressional Republicans, he leads 61-24.

 But the mere fact that Gingrich is now leaving the door open means he will be a regular guest on conservative talk shows to revive his failed "contract with America."  Right now, there are doubtless 20 others leaving the door open with a promise of letting in some fresh air.  It works wonders with political egos. So if any of them is invited to throw out the first pitch at a baseball game, the announcer is bound to say, "Congressman Smiley is from Arkansas and has left the door open to run for president.

One, however, must be careful not to get too far ahead of the curve.  Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, made quite a spectacle of himself at a photo-op to declare that Texas might secede if the Feds don't leave him alone with stimulus money and other Big Brotherly incursions.  How silly he must look today after he asked the very same Feds for help in combatting the swine flu epidemic. (Sorry, Texas politicians never think they look silly about anything.)

I never left the door open for myself.  Happily for me, when I came home from grade school with a report card with two c's on it, my mother sensed my gloom, but came though with a consoling remark by a dear mother who preferred bingo to books.    "Don't worry," she said. "You're never gonna be president anyway."

She was right.  Mothers usually are.  

  

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