Ron Paul!!! By: Mark W Adams

Paul Wins Nevada Straw Poll with 32%

You have to admit, watching the GOPers run around like headless chickens looking for the next Ronny Reagan is entertaining.

Yeah, I know. Word is from people who know, like the commentariate at Dean's World, that Congressman Paul has zero chance at the nomination -- and those people are never wrong.

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Sorry, I had to pick myself off the floor and explain to my wife why I was laughing so hard. Where was I?

I think the problem is that these authoritarians don't know HOW to pick a leader. Oh, they can pick a winner. It's just that since Ike swam across the Atlantic to storm the beaches along the Potomac, they've always had an heir apparent to rally around.

Nixon was the chosen successor to Ike, and he begat Ford who foisted Rumsfeld and Cheney on us. Reagan didn't just appear out of the wilderness, but had Nixon's old job as California Governor and he earned the slot by facing off against an incumbent President Ford -- who couldn't beat Carter. Then it was the Gipper's turn to fight Carter and the Gipper gave us Bush (41). Bob Dole was a sacrificial lamb, but he'd paid his dues, staying in a leadership role through the first Clinton term after Pappy Bush lost, and was foolish enough to go up against the incumbent when no one else wanted the job.

Never having been too imaginative, nor would these bedwetters take a chance on anything but a sure thing -- they gave the world George Bush Jr., for no other reason than his name sounded like a winner. Cheney and Rumsfeld assured the party elders they could watch out over the kid so silly stuff like policy would be in good hands. And he lost, but Daddy's consigliere pointed Al Gore to more respectable endeavors.

Naturally, in keeping with his ineptitude in every god damn thing he's ever done -- Junior didn't anoint an heir apparent. They're lost without someone telling them who should rule. Didn't Cheney tell George that yet? Lynn Cheney's picked her guy: a vacuous actor who makes Reagan seem alert -- even three years after his death. But Fred Thompson's late to the party, a party very used to grooming successors. Hell, Dan Quail is more prepared to be the GOP nominee than Fred.

If there was someone Bush (43) could have paved the way for, it was Rudy Giuliani. That was until suggesting Kerik the crook was a straight shooter and no doubt these ideologues couldn't stomach some of Rudy's more reasonable positions on the issues. They didn't hack up half the Constitution just to hand it to someone that would read the thing, and actually passed a Constitutional Law class. Romney has too much of that Massachusetts liberal stench to him, and John McCain -- the natural heir apparent -- went up against the White House too many times, even though he went home with his tail between his legs every time.

That's why Ron Paul has even a hope in hell of turning what was the Republican Party into a bastardized version of Ross Perot's third party insurgency -- without the third party -- or ability to siphon off any Democratic or even many independent voters.

You see, there's a certain, "Oh Hell No" quality to Paul's platform. As much as anyone, right or left, might start thinking that what he says makes sense, he'll stick something in there -- one thing or another, (it differs from person to person) -- that will cause a voter to eventually say, "Oh Hell No! I'm not voting for that guy. He's nuts." Fortunately the only people immune to the "Oh Hell No" symplex are the camp followers of the GOP, the tribalists who prefer cave-dwelling to interactions with other humans.

It's one thing to speculate why nobody has taken a pot shot at the Resident, and of course even suggesting such a thing crosses the line even though it seemed back in the day that someone was shooting at Jerry Ford every other week or so for no good reason at all. So it's mystifying that Dick Cheney hasn't slipped some rat poison into Junior's shredded wheat.

Cheney's got to be furious that the great Reagan coalition he help build over three decades lies in tatters, so much so that some goofball Libertarian like Ron Paul can even make a dent in their machine. But of course, he's got no one to blame but himself.

[Addendum: In my simplistic recitation of GOP succession, I did not mean to imply that Ike "picked" Nixon, someone he undoubtedly had little or no use for. Just that Nixon, as a Vice President was the natural successor to Ike, and even after eight years in the wilderness (of San Clemente) the GOP couldn't pick someone original. Ike was nothing like the current embodiment of the Republican Party.]

[And one more thing: Shut Up Andy. You're clueless on this one. Ron Paul is to the GOP like, Kucinich, not Obama is to the Democratic Party, geez. Obama differs with Hillary Clinton on oh, so very little indeed. That's hardly running a rebellious outsider campaign.]