I'm beginning to dislike the primary process. Too much bashing going on.
Actually looked up "Restore Our Future" or whatever it's called -- the Super PAC that's funding Mitt Romney's campaign. No, not funding his campaign, but raising and distributing lots and lots of money ($12 million and change) to organizations that do the anti-Gingrich and anti-Perry ads.
No secret... The Wall Street Journal and other publications have already looked at Restore Our Future. Huge contributions, including donations of $1 million from Nu Skin Corp., F8 LLC, and Eli Publishing. These are all basically Nu Skin Corporation -- with the dummy corporations being prinicipals in Nu Skin donating their own funds. Then there are several members of the Marriott family, as in Marriott Hotels, who gave in the neighborhood of $200,000 to $500,000 each. Astronomical numbers, no? I mean, coming from individuals.
Curious about all of the above-mentioned donors, they're all Mormons. Saints, you know, as in Church of the Latter-Day Saints. I have nothing against Mormons. Been to Salt Lake City and was rather impressed that the streets are so clean.
The Saints weren't such good neighbors 100 years ago or so, but I don't want to dredge all this stuff up, mainly because it's probably totally irrelevant. They don't do polygamy anymore, at least not as an official part of the religion (Sister Wives notwithstanding). Otherwise, Utah would not have been admitted as a state in the USA.
However, I wouldn't like to be a Mormon. They don't drink coffee for one thing. When I was in Salt Lake City, I went for breakfast and asked for coffee, and the waitress promptly brought me a whole carafe all to myself, and with a friendly, understanding smile. I bet she probably smoked, too. (Mormons aren't supposed to smoke, either.) I felt like I'd found a friend, a kindred spirit.
Mormons seem to be relentlessly pleasant. Look at the Osmonds. Maybe that's why it's so hard to believe in what the press is beginning to call Mitt Romney's "authenticity."
Mormons are also kind of died-in-the-wool capitalists, and not always so meticulous about exactly how they make money. And this goes way back, too, and may not be entirely worth mentioning... but on the frontier in Missouri and Illinois, when that was the frontier, the Saints had this attitude that you could short-change and rip-off anyone who wasn't a Mormon. Because the Mormons were privileged, God's Own, and non-Mormons weren't. That simple. So they were extremely -- and I do meant extremely -- accommodating and helpful to each other, and didn't give much of a damn about how they treated anyone else. No one else mattered. Not good neighbors. They got booted out of Missouri and also Illinois. That's how they ended up in "Deseret," Salt Lake City nowadays.
But that's history.
Another source of candidate-bashing is the Ron Paul campaign. Like Romney, Ron Paul also targeted Newt Gingrich, primarily. Paul's people put out some very pro-level stuff, and Gingrich has lots of baggage. However, I find it interesting that Ron Paul, who's been in congress for going on 30 years now, has so little baggage.
I mean, what has Ron Paul accomplished in 30 years?
Do you expect he'd suddenly begin to get along with congress and manage to get anything done as president? This "functionality," for want of a better word, has eluded even the Comrade this season, and the Comrade apparently has more friends in congress than Ron Paul does. Already the Comrade is seizing all kinds of dictatorial powers in order to "get something done." Will Ron Paul do the same?
And then just yesterday or so, someone ran a TV ad in New Hampshire, which is the current stage under siege of a Republican primary, that targeted Jon Huntsman. Huntsman was ambassador to China and adopted two Chinese kids while over there. The ad features Huntsman speaking Chinese and holding a little girl, he and little girl with red dots on their foreheads. Is that supposed to be somehow subversive? Nasty ad, though. Asked if the viewer believed Huntsman had American values. Because of the red dots or because Huntsman speaks Chinese? (I speak French. Does that make me a can-can dancer or an existentialist?)
And the ad ended with "Vote for Ron Paul."
Ron Paul has disavowed the ad, and now large and small-L libertarians are falling all over themselves trying to figure out what nasty snark ran the ad and attributed it to Ron Paul. I supposed that's possible. Perhaps more than possible.
Jon Huntsman is also a Mormon. But I have no doubt he has American values. I actually do agree with some of his political positions, but have only a slight familiarity.
(What is this sudden pervasiveness of Mormons?)
Then there's Santorum, who upset the Iowa primary by running about dead-even with Romney. Santorum is Catholic and apparently making an appeal to Catholics in New Hampshire. Thus far, he's confined his bashing pretty much to the media, but we'll see....
Anyway, so apparently the Republicans are self-destructing. So much bashing going on.
There's actually a reason Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and even Mitt Romney have so much that they can use against each other. It's because they've experienced the chaos and back-stabbing and need-to-compromise of everyday politics. They've all got baggage. None of them are perfect.
There is no perfect. I'd settle for "effective."
So hard to watch the bloodletting when you don't have a horse in the race and just want solutions. I wish they'd stick to policy.
Save the Republic.
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