Little Shop of Horrors

The very thought that any of the current Republican candidates for president might win the election next year and take over the White House is enough to make one shudder. Sandwiched between new conservative radicalism and personal shortcomings, this wandering circus scheduled to kick off the primary election cycle in Iowa at the beginning of January is probably the weakest field of candidates in many years.

The frontrunners, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and one-time Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, have both been recently resurrected from political obscurity. Gingrich shamed himself in the 1990s with his grandiose Contract With America and his call for a “conservative revolution,” after which he spent most of his time making money and lobbying.

He is as much a part of establishment politics as it is humanly possible to be. Meanwhile, Romney likes to tout his business credentials — but the fact that many of the firms he advised went belly-up one after another and a lot of employees lost their jobs is something he tries to ignore.

Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are conservative radicals too alien to the American mainstream — at least we hope that’s still the case — and are unelectable. Libertarian Ron Paul might draw some anti-war liberals away from the Democrats, but he isn’t acceptable to religious conservatives. Jon Huntsman is for all intents and purposes invisible, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry made such a fool of himself in the debates as to rival the already disgraced and departed Herman Cain.

The good news: Barack Obama need fear nothing from any of these candidates. The bad news: People are beginning to doubt that Barack Obama is their best hope for future improvement.