Newt Proposes a Dog’s Breakfast for America
I have no desire to predict what will happen in Indiana and North Carolina today. Pollsters (and political minds greater than my own) have ventured their opinions and predictions. Kos, who at least admits that he pulls his predictions out of his you-know-what, has consolidated a bunch of predictions in this diary. It’s worth a read. Bottom line: CW says each candidate gets a win and the delegates are split more or less 50-50.
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, whose numbers-crunching skills someone likened to Data the android on Star Trek, rightfully points out that tonight’s returns will be the last ones where the voters decide how the majority of delegates left on the table will be divvied up. After this, says Todd, most of the delegates will be apportioned via backroom deals (e.g., super-delegates) and/or trench warfare (e.g., fights over how to seat Florida/Michigan).
Meanwhile, on the Republican side, Newt Gingrich predicts disaster for Congressional Republicans unless they abandon hopes of sinking the Democratic Congressional candidates by tying Obama or Clinton around their necks. His suggestion? Why nothing short of a new bullet-point list of initiatives — a contract, if you will, with the American people. What a concept!
This document (which needs a catchy title — I propose “A Dog’s Breakfast for America“) would include the following initiatives:
- Repeal the gas tax for the summer
- Redirect the oil being put into the national petroleum reserve onto the open market.
- Introduce a “more energy at lower cost with less environmental damage and greater national security” bill
- Establish an earmark moratorium for one year
- Overhaul the census and cut its budget radically
- Implement a space-based, GPS-style air traffic control system
- Declare English the official language of government
- Protect the workers’ right to a secret ballot
- Remind Americans that judges matter
My favorite? GPS-style air traffic control system: now there’s a proposal that will capture a lot of votes — from people who want their own personal jet-pack. The whole thing reminds me of the time Bush announced in his SOTU that we were going to … Mars!
And of course, I love that part about reminding the American people that “judges matter,” although I suspect that won’t include FISA Court judges.
And WTF is up with the Census Bureau proposal? Turns out, it’s part of this meme that says we should just turn the whole Federal bureaucracy over to … Fedex! I heard McCain say the same thing about giving the contract to Fedex to track population migration after the next major hurricane or forest fire. Sounds good, but you just KNOW that Fedex will probably outsource it or — worse yet — double the price and cut their expenses to the point where the only happy people would be Fedex shareholders.
No thanks — at least when the government does it, you can throw their asses out of office if they screw it up by voting against them. On the other hand, Fedex is simply not accountable. For example, you can’t vote against Fedex unless you own shares in the company. And then if you have 100 shares you’re simply not as powerful as the guy who owns 10,000 shares.
That’s what I call Republican Values: One Dollar, One Vote.
