Waiting For Gustav

The national Republican Party, now under the leadership of a 72-year-old serial liar, has become a surreal, bizarre spectacle that defines the country’s broken political system.

Do we laugh? Do we throw our hands up in despair and give up? Is it really possible that some 60 million people—even if in a losing effort—will actually vote for Republican presidential nominee John McCain? What motivates these voters? Ideology? Party loyalty?

The Republican Party “brand” now reads like a Joseph Heller novel. The current GOP plot reveals its anti-logic, a cobweb of irrationality, contradictions and lies.

The corporate media serves as more than a stenography service for McCain and his new beauty pageant queen. It tries to normalize this carnival freak show. It argues that not only is the three-headed, talking snake real but it also represents what is normal and even natural.

For example, McCain’s choice of vice president is the epitome of gender tokenism and crass political calculation even as it utterly undermines months and months of supposed serious political argument. McCain, who simply cannot run on the Republican Party’s accomplishments, has based his entire campaign on the supposed inexperience of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. But then, in a breathtaking example of contradiction and illogic, he chose as his vice presidential nominee Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, 44, the 1984 winner of the Miss Wasilla (Alaska) beauty contest. She later served as mayor of the city, population 6716.

To be fair, there is more to Palin than just physical beauty. She is, for example, under investigation for using her gubernatorial powers to try to hurt the career of her sister’s ex-husband, who happens to be an Alaska State Trooper. Meanwhile, news flash, we hear the news today that Palin’s 17-year-old unmarried daughter, Bristol, is pregnant. Palin apparently proudly believes in abstinence-only sex education in schools.

Thomas Schaller, writing in Salon.com puts it this way: "What's galling is this: When the subject is a pregnancy to an unwed, minority teenage mother growing up in some (presumably Democratic) urban area, that pregnancy becomes fodder for lectures from conservatives about bad parenting, the perils of welfare spending and so on. But when the subject is a pregnancy to an unwed, white teenager from some small town in a Republican state, that pregnancy is...a celebration of the wonders of God's magnificence--and choosing life!

What will happen in the next episode of the Palin soap opera?

What we do know and what is most important is Palin, who has only served as governor for two years, obviously lacks the world experience and intellectual curiosity she would need to lead the country since she has rarely traveled outside the country. What we do know is her positions on cultural wedge issues reflect the radical rightwing in this country. What we do know is McCain would be the oldest president ever inaugurated in this country, and he has a history of cancer. The untested and radical Palin, with enough family baggage to fill an airport luggage carousel, would be his immediate successor.

As the Palin drama unfolds, Hurricane Gustav reminds us of how the federal government under Republican control now despises the very people its claims to serve. “We Are NOT In This Together, America,” could easily be the Republican National Convention’s slogan. It might not even cost the GOP a vote given the normalization and embrace of anti-logic among conservative voters and the un-American corporate media.

It is a national disgrace with worldwide reverberations that the Republican Party has to supposedly tone down its annual convention because of Gustav, which hits New Orleans as I write this. President Bush, the most unpopular president in recorded American history, has canceled his convention speech on Monday and McCain has said, well, it just is not right to party down when thousands of Americans are displaced and major destruction looms.

Of course, we all know this is a lie, this sudden GOP concern for ordinary people faced with a natural disaster. The GOP faithful are calculating how to use the Gustav’s wrath to their political advantage, nothing more, nothing less. Will it be good or bad for the GOP convention if the levees break? This is the hollow, political calculation that defines the Republican Party and their enablers in the corporate media these days. One thing the GOP will not do this week is discuss the impact of global warming on the growing intensity of recent hurricanes.

So this is the biggest storyline of the political season so far: A major political party in the United States has to cancel portions of its convention because of a weather event that might remind voters of how its bogus Laissez-faire ideology has failed and will continue to fail regular Americans.

Still, recent polls show McCain and Obama in a dead heat.

What can be more surreal than that?