F CPAC

Rather than worry about important things, like, well, the complete obliteration of the global economic machine, nuclear proliferation, several countries that we are currently fighting wars against, my lack of health insurance, blah blah blah, Republicans have spent the past bit at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC for those that like making things sound like pharmaceutical solutions to their daily problems. At first glance, I was all for it. I fooled myself into thinking that the politicians, pundits, and personalities I have absolutely hated for years were going to get together to talk about how they could join current initiatives aimed at reforming corrupt government, fixing economic strangulation, and, in general, helping out people that need help (those making less than $200,000, those without insurance, those who have lost their jobs, those who will likely loose their jobs soon).

I was totally wrong. Rather than join in an effort aimed at helping countless people throughout the country, conservatives got together to talk about how stupid the current path is, and to decide that Mitt Romney will be the best next president ever, and of course some chanting of "smaller government, smaller government, blah blah blah".

1) We're, like, 30 days into Obama's presidency, right? A bit of quick math in my head tells me that about 98% or his presidency is left. Lay off with the 2012 campaign for a bit please, no one cares if you guys think Mitt Romney is the right guy now. Chances are, his boyfriend will force him out of the closet, he'll accidentally not love thy neighbor, and who knows, maybe he'll even say a substantive statement concerning realistic current affairs. Any one of these, let alone all of them, will completely alienate the conservative base and will lead to a most thrilling of 2012 landslides.

2) I'm totally on to you. What Republicans are banking on (that's sort of a pun...wait for it) is that the current approach of bailouts and stimulus packages completely fails. That's all they can do. If they join the current administrations remedy, they won't be able to take credit for the achievements, and won't be in a situation to win any seats in upcoming midterm elections let alone a possible presidency in 2012. If the current plan fails, well, we're all screwed. But, if it fails, and Republicans complained about it the whole time, they could sort of take credit for being the party opposed to the thing that failed (not that that's really an accomplishment, it's sort of coincidental). They'd be the party of at least our bad idea, bound for failure, wasn't implemented.

The moral of the story is that the Republican party is willing to let the world collapse due to a stubborn, antiquated ideology that clearly has no chance of alleviating any of our current economic aches. Why are they willing to let this happen? Either because they are completely crazy and actually believe in what they preach (quite literally preach nowadays), or because they need to keep their jobs, either way, it's silly.

All this lashing, and I didn't even mention all the stupid shit people are saying against proposed carbon trading. wow.