The GOP Presidential Contenders in a Nutshell

People give me considerable grief for taking Barack Obama to task so often in “What’s the Diehl?” and Facebook. It’s true that I complain about the guy more than I praise him, but I view it as giving my brother a hard time more than trash-talking an enemy. His ties to Wall Street and many disappointing decisions notwithstanding, I still feel closer to Obama politically than to any of the freaks and losers vying for the GOP nomination. Let’s take a look at the kooky Republican field for a minute, shall we?

Mitt Romney

Someone posted a photo of the Mittster in Facebook the other day with the following caption: “He’s worth a quarter of a billion dollars, earned by liquidating profitable businesses and firing their employees. He’s the 1%.” This kind of sums it up for me.

Romney, the son of former Michigan governor George Romney – who I met and liked – and a former governor of Massachusetts, has always given me the heebie jeebies. Maybe it’s his slick, robotic, President-from-Central-Casting persona. Maybe it’s his flip-flopping on the issues. I can’t really put my finger on it but I wouldn’t let the guy babysit my kids, let alone vote for him to lead the country.

So he was in charge of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. I’ve always thought the Olympics were an overrated, overblown, cheesy production intended more to sell sh*t and give NASCAR-loving Merkans another reason to pound their parochial chests than to highlight genuine athletic achievement and foster international goodwill. So this doesn’t impress me much.

I was impressed when I learned that Romney signed first-in-the-nation health care reform into law as governor of Massachusetts, providing almost-universal health insurance to his constituents. Then I watched him subsequently downplay and deny and backtrack and disown this one achievement that would make me give him a second look, and I turned away.

Why this creepy Mormon millionaire is leading the GOP pack is a mystery to me.

Herman Cain

The guy said publicly that God told him to run for president. Do I need to write any more?

Okay, fine. Before becoming the head honcho at Godfather’s Pizza, he was in charge of 400 Burger King outlets in Greater Philadelphia. (A Burger King in New York, you may recall, just refused to serve Occupy Wall Street protesters.) The food sucks at Burger King and is a major reason why many people in this country are morbidly obese.

So then he became the head of Godfather’s and cut costs by reducing that company from 911 stores to 420 in little over a year. Maybe that was a good business decision – even though I’m sure a lot of folks lost their jobs – but I’m not one of those twits who wants this country run like a business. It’s not a business. It’s home to more than 307 million people, with a myriad of needs and views and hopes and dreams and problems. There’s more than one bottom line in the USA. Sorry, conservatives, but one size doesn’t fit all here.

Cain has ties to the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity (AFP), which “promotes economic policy that supports business and restrains regulation by government.” According to one source, AFP is heavily involved in political activities aimed at reducing regulation of the oil and gas industry.

He was a senior economic advisor to the Bob Dole/Jack Kemp presidential campaign in 1996. Does anyone remember how creepy those two were? I wasn’t surprised that Clinton/Gore carried 31 states to Dole/Kemp’s 19 in that election.

Lastly, Cain’s silly “9-9-9” economic proposal – which would replace the current tax code with a nine percent personal income tax, a nine-percent business transactions tax, and a nine percent federal sales tax – has been criticized for shifting much of the current tax burden from the rich to the poor. That’s why the hippies are sleeping in tents on Wall Street, isn’t it?

Michele Bachmann

This Congresswoman from Minnesota is bat-sh*t crazy.

She received her law degree from Oral Roberts University. She founded the Tea Party Caucus in Congress. Her husband, Marcus, received his master’s degree from Pat Robertson’s Regent University and runs a Christian “counseling center” even though he’s not a licensed psychologist. (He allegedly does the whole “pray away the gay” thing for poor, misguided homosexuals.)

Even though Bachmann poses as a defender of taxpayers, her husband’s clinic received nearly $30,000 from Minnesota government agencies between 2006 and 2010 and at least $137,000 in federal payments and another $24,000 in government grants for “counselor training.” And her family accepted $260,000 in federal crop and disaster subsidies between 1995 and 2008.

Bachmann proposed a constitutional amendment that would bar her state from legally recognizing same-sex marriage. At one time, she was part of a church that believed the Pope is the Antichrist. And this pro-life activist has engaged in “sidewalk counseling,” a protest activity in which participants approach people entering abortion clinics in an attempt to dissuade women from obtaining abortions.

That’s what every troubled woman struggling with this traumatic situation needs: an “intervention” with an insensitive, judgmental, hypocritical wench in front of a place she probably doesn’t want to be in the first place.

I could reference other positions she’s taken – such as her opposition to the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007 which would have slightly increased Pell grant amounts and lowered interest rates on student loans, making it possible for more students to attend college – but I feel like it’s a waste of time.

Suffice it to say that this individual is a loon, a grotesque political anomaly who deserves to be President of the United States as much as I do. (Apparently her entire New Hampshire staff agrees. Although Bachmann initially denied that they resigned en masse, it was confirmed last Saturday.)

Newt Gingrich

This jackass shut down the federal government back in 1995-1996 because he felt slighted by Bubba Clinton.

Gingrich, who represented Georgia in Congress from 1979 to 1999 and was Speaker of the House from 1996 until he resigned, felt snubbed by the president while on a trip to Israel for Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral. The co-author of the disastrous 1994 “Contract with America,” Gingrich resigned after Republican losses in the 1998 mid-terms. (His being disciplined for ethics violations probably had nothing to do with it.) Turns out the Republican Party’s attempts to delve into Bubba’s personal peccadilloes and remove him from office weren’t so popular with the American people.

Now he writes books, is a fellow at conservative think tanks like the Hoover Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, and shows up on my television, making his b*llsh*t points with his pompous, nasally voice. He blamed 1999’s Columbine massacre on liberals. He said the only way to avoid future tragedies like Susan Smith’s 1994 drowning of her two young sons was to vote Republican.

He blamed the residents of New Orleans’ Ninth Ward for a “failure of citizenship” by being “so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn’t get out of the way of a hurricane.”

This guy shouldn’t even get quoted, let alone make a bid for the Oval Office.

Ron Paul

A pro-life gynecologist and Texas congressman, Ron Paul has been called “the intellectual godfather” of the Tea Party. He has the most conservative voting record of any member of Congress since 1937. He spawned Rand Paul, a U.S. Senator from Kentucky and pro-life Tea Partier who scares the sh*t outta me.

He was an advisor to Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign. (I hope Buchanan doesn’t sue me for saying he’s one of the biggest dicks on television.) He’s endorsed the elimination of most federal government agencies, including the Department of Education; our withdrawal from the United Nations; and the abolishment of the income tax. Oh, and he opposes the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and has written racist and anti-gay newsletter articles.

I understand why he’s popular with people who oppose excessive government spending. I don’t understand why that makes him a viable presidential candidate. The guy’s as wacky as Michele Bachmann.

Rick Perry

This pro-life Eagle Scout and former Democrat also gives me the creeps – not because he’s Mitt-like but because he glorifies the fact that Texas has executed 234 human beings since he became governor. (I wrote about how Texas murdered an innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham, in 2004.)

As Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Perry publicly supported Bubba Clinton’s health care reform efforts. But as governor, Perry has been an outspoken opponent of federal health care reform proposals.

In 2009, he signed Grover Norquist's pledge to "oppose and veto any and all efforts to increase taxes.” (Talk about creepy: Grover Norquist’s photo is next to the word in the dictionary.)

In February 2007, he issued an executive order mandating that little girls in Texas receive the HPV vaccine, which protects against cervical cancer. Then it was discovered that the vaccine’s manufacturer, Merck, contributed almost $30,000 to Perry’s campaigns. (That May, the Texas Legislature passed a bill undoing the order which Perry decided not to veto.)

He’s on record as stating that people who don’t accept Jesus as their savior will go to hell. He’s a darling of the National Rifle Association. He’s a climate change skeptic who’s called social security a “crumbling monument to the failure of the New Deal” and “an illegal Ponzi scheme."

Need I say more? I think not.

Jon Huntsman

Surprisingly, this guy – a Mormon, Eagle Scout and former governor of Utah who’s been described as a “center-right conservative" – isn’t that bad. For a Republican, that is.

Although he worked for St. Ronnie of Reagan in the White House and was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Singapore by Dubya’s daddy, George H.W. Bush, he’s said publicly, “I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming,” and Barack Obama appointed him U.S. Ambassador to China, where he served from 2009 until earlier this year. He’s got a lock on the “cool factor,” joining REO Speedwagon on the piano for two songs during their concert at the Utah State Fair in September of 2005.

But he signed numerous bills restricting abortion as governor. He's a strong supporter of Israel and has made a number of trips to the “Holy Land.” And he’s a third cousin, once-removed, of the Mittster.


This is not a crop of presidential candidates of which I could be proud. In fact, I couldn’t vote for any of these stooges even if I plugged my nose and closed one eye.

Yes, I’m tough on Barack Obama. And yes, there are things about him that disturb me. But he’s no Republican – if I believed in God I would thank her for that – and fortunately or unfortunately, he’s getting my vote next year for that reason alone.