Saturday, August 13, 2011

The Crazies

So Michelle Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll today (CNN Story). And Rick Perry has made it official, he's running as well. We still don't know about Sarah Palin, but it is safe to say that the crazies are ruling the day in Republican politics. As many have recently pointed out (including the lead story in TNR's The Mall this week), Iowa is an overrated event that has little to do with the overall primary -- except that the media makes so much of it and it can thus kill a candidacy prematurely. In any case, I have already written on Bachmann in the past and imagine I will be writing a lot more about her in the coming months. For today, I would like to focus on the newest crazy to join the fray -- Rick Perry. Let's highlight some of the lovely facts about the latest Republican governor to put his name in the Presidential ring ...

- Perry believes that Senators should not be directly elected by the people: Dailykos
- Perry wants to end social security and medicare/medicaid. In fact he called both "Ponzi Schemes":  Hullabaloo
- In May, talking about the financial crisis, he made the following argument: "I think it’s time for us to just hand it over to God, and say, ‘God: You’re going to have to fix this." Hullabaloo 2
- Perry is a big fan of the 10th amendment, except of course when it comes to abortion and gay marriage. 
- Perry once argued for secession as a viable strategy for Texas. 

It is just this sort of crazy that should have no semblance of a chance in American politics. But just as crisis was barely averted with the debt ceiling, as the U.S. debt rating is dropped by one of the big 3 raters and as our financial crisis continues to persist and in some ways grow, the answer appears to be that we should simply shrink the size of the federal government, rely on states that are in even worse financial shape and rely on the market and/or God to save us from complete collapse. Sounds like the script for a good sci fi film; unfortunately these are supposedly viable candidates to lead the largest economy on earth.

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