Spending Spree

Calhoun’s Can(n)ons for February 3, 2012

Happy Days are heeeeere again, The sky’s of blue are cleeeeear again

            Oh, thank goodness.  We’re saved!  Our economic woes are finally over.  The worst crash and burn since the Great Depression is about to lift.  We’ll soon be rolling in money.   The mighty economic engines of our various newly formed political super PACS have been unleashed in the recent Republican primaries and if the waterfall of moolah keeps up at the same pace it did in Florida, we’ll all be on Easy Street.

            Who would have thunk?  Here we’ve all been mooning around begging for Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! Begging somebody, somewhere to plueeeze, plueeze bring manufacturing back, restore our great Rust Belt, put people to work. And all the while, there it was, staring us in the face all along --the greatest Rain Maker in history, thanks to the Supreme Court.  Yes, the Super PACSs!

             Mitt Romney’s “Restore Our Future” super PAC blew through nearly $17 million in Florida alone, while Newt Gingrich’s “Winning Our Future” super PAC got a good run at spending its $10 million donation from gambling tycoon, Sheldon Adelson. Talk about Trickle Down.

            And look what all that money bought: Ron Paul mostly skated outside the thundering elephant rumble, poking the candidates with sharp pointy “issues” questions that nobody wanted to address. Rick Santorum was exposed as a dead-baby-hugging, gay-on-dog homophobe loony who can’t wait to nuke Iran to keep it from getting nukes. Mitt exposed his primary rival as a hypocritical, bloviating, philandering, sleazy, untrustworthy Washington lobbyist whack-a-doodle who wants to colonize the moon.  Newt exposed his rival as a flip-flopping, hypocritical, wooden-headed, tin-eared, job-destroying, blood-sucking Bain Capital predator Mormon who loves to fire people.  Oh, and a . . Massachusetts Moderate.

            Well, who knew?  In total, the GOP candidates and/or their PACS have spent about $53 million, with $25 million on TV ads alone. Oh, lucky Florida and South Carolina!  Heck, even comedian Stephen Colbert’s PAC has reported out that it raised $1.02 million and spent a nice chunk of that in Colbert’s South Carolina faux campaign. All that nice money raining down on the primary states.  Keep that up for a few more months – next up, Nevada! Arizona! - – and single-handedly the Republican PACS will lift the economy, state by state, all without raising a single tax. 

            And soon, President Obama’s campaign war chest and PAC, which is nearing $82 million in donations, will meet up with “American Crossroads,” Karl Rove’s Pac, which already has over $51 million, with more coming in, and you’re looking at a real job-creating economic engine of unimagined power.

            Think of all the trickle-down jobs what will be created – precinct walkers, phone callers, mailer stuffers, poster printers, Quick Response Teams of copy writers, rumor mongers (and rumor blockers), and all those jobs required to create TV ads stuffed to the gills with innuendo, spin, flat out Swift-Boaty lies and scary music.

            And what will we get for all that money?  Well, we’ll learn that President Obama is a Kenyan muslim socialist who wants to make abortion mandatory, kill old people with his “Obama Care death panels,” give rich people’s money to dirty, lazy, undeserving Saul Alinsky poor people, become a surrender monkey by appeasing Iran and turn America into . . . France.  While Mitt Romney will destroy the unions, reduce the minimum wage to zero, turn the major corporate players of American business into one big Bain Capital predator which will devour all small business, destroy Medicare and Social Security, fire the 99% to further enrich the 1% (his peeps) and make Mormonism the official national religion.

            And frugal little Ron Paul with his tiny war chest will nimbly keep dancing just off stage asking annoying “issues” questions that nobody will answer.

            But, really, who cares if all that money is basically going to be wasted on sheer crap?  Or that the American electorate is about to be badly served, at best, or grotesquely misled, at worst. Or that the voters still seem blissfully unaware that Congress is still the dog that wags the presidential tail; unless they change Congress, they’ll just end up with more do-nothingness.  Which is what happens when the focus moves away from imperfect real people imperfectly trying to solve real problems and becomes the faked-up persona in thrall to the deadly Cult of Political Purity  – election autos-de-fe, American style.   

            No, nobody cares about all that.  It’s raining money and for a few minutes, which seems to be the maximum extent of our attention span, happy days are here again. Until the political money rain stops and it becomes clear once again that despite the billions, the balloons, the confetti, the clowns with their toootle horns, the wolf is still on the doorstep.