Iowa oughta know

I haven’t watched any of the Republican debates, choosing instead to read and hear about them the next day. Yesterday’s debate in Iowa reportedly showed Newt “Nut” Gingrich doing well against Mitt “Milquetoast” Romney. Prior to the debate, Liz Goodman, who writes for Yahoo!, had an outstanding feature article on how immigration, legal and not, has affected the little Iowa town Postville.

Gingrich is currently leading solely by the process of elimination — and even then, only because his multiple marital infidelities are older than Herman Cain’s. Newt isn’t presidential material, and he has no chance of ever winning the White House. So the GOP has to find a way to make Romney, who is the only Republican in the field truly qualified to be President, acceptable to its hard right base before next summer.

Honestly, nothing the Republicans have done this year has made any sense. At this point, how the heck can Donald “Comb-over” Trump still have a place at the Republican table? Romney is right to decline an appearance at Trump’s post-Christmas debate, but instead of manufacturing a scheduling conflict he should say he wants nothing to do with Donald Trump and his silly circus. We seem to be in an age where people want political contests to be like professional wrestling matches — loud, rancorous, and low class, where everything is personal.

I signed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ online petition supporting a repeal of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, granting free speech rights to corporations, as if they are distinct individuals that are separate from the people who run them. The real problem is that political campaigns need so much money for TV commercials. TV stations must love the prospect of unlimited funding for “unaffiliated” ads supporting and opposing candidates, but the best thing everybody can do is to simply not watch the TV ads. I trust neither the Republican’s nor the Democrat’s TV commercials, and I actively avoid all of them.