Real Satire, Womanizing and Dirty US Dollars

The Republicans intended to give outsiders a chance in the coming presidential election but in the final analysis, money was the deciding factor. Now, a look back at the mudslinging and their bizarre field of candidates.

The Republican marathon ends today in the Mormon state of Utah where in May, Mormon Mitt Romney emerged victorious from the primary elections. Since Iowa and New Hampshire opened in January with eight contenders, primary elections and delegates have rallied behind their choice in time for the Republican convention to be held in Tampa at the end of August.

The choice was made when Romney was anointed with the 1,144 delegates necessary for nomination. The fact that the voting and the counting continues is just part of routine American democracy.

Whether the public remains interested in the race since the withdrawal of Rick Santorum on April 10 and Newt Gingrich on May 2, both in no-win situations, remains an open question.

Utah awarded 40 delegates, and the voters might well feel cheated because their votes will count for nothing. That was the situation a week ago Tuesday when their fellow party members in California, New Jersey and three other states went for Romney for lack of an alternative.

The Republican Party decided the 2012 primary election would be held on the winner-take-all basis rather than on proportionality.

The hope was that outsider candidates would stand a better chance under that system. In truth, it was money spent mainly for negative advertising that was the determining factor.

None of the three other candidates still remaining by February of this year was able to keep pace with Romney’s spending power. The bottom line was the dollars that flooded the campaign, the bribes and the imbalance of resources outweighed the voters’ voices.

Do you recall Ron Paul, the radical Libertarian candidate capable of appealing to the liberal Occupy Wall Street crowd, as well as to super-rich conservative gun nuts?

He’ll be going to Tampa with 150 delegates and he’ll be demanding satisfaction. That means he’ll want to have a prime time speaking role at the convention. He and his tea party inspired campaign will want recognition — and the mainstream Republican leadership will be smart enough to give it to him. Those tea party guys are a rough bunch.

And the fact is hardly anyone now remembers the headline-making battles between candidates during the winter of 2011/2012. Michele Bachmann was the early favorite before she began talking nonsense.

Then came Gov. Rick Perry of Texas who got bogged down in televised debates that bordered on exercises in satire.

Pizza king Herman Cain then captured the hearts of the Republican base until suspicions were raised about his womanizing and he wore out his welcome with his audacious but stupid slogans about 9-9-9. Gingrich heeded the call as the last line of defense of Reagan’s legacy and pious Catholicism while currently on his third marriage. A few too many about-faces.

Santorum made the most progress, a pious and charismatic ideologue who finally had to surrender to Romney’s superior wallet, if not to his superior intellect.

So Utah voters went to the polls last, even though Mormon Romney had long since locked up the nomination. They voted for a lot more than just a presidential candidate, and no one even noticed.