caucuses

The Real Reason for Presidential Primaries

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

Every four years, political writers, reporters, observers, pundits and prognosticators dust off their expense accounts and travel off to places they wouldn’t go for any other reason at any other time.

It’s the presidential nominating process. And for reporters it serves two purposes:  it lets them see how the quaint people live, and it gives them a chance to polish up their use of state nicknames.

State nicknames are used only by political reporters and the occasional sports writer.  The nicknames, like state flowers, birds, rocks, insects and weeds are the product of long hours of legislative debate by people specifically elected for their lack of imagination and creativity.

But because of an inane journalistic convention that says you can’t use the same word twice in the same paragraph, reporters are loath to write the name of the state in consecutive sentences.  Every political reporter carries a copy of “Ohrbach’s Official Listing of Arcane Facts” to use for just such occasions.

So far this year, we have the caucuses in The Corncob And Cows State and the primary in The Mirror Image of Vermont State.  Today voters are going to the polls in The Segregation State.  Next comes Florida, The Wishes It Was California State.

That’s followed by The Slot Machine And Hookers State, and then Maine, The May As Well Be Canada State. February 7 is the caucus in Colorado, The Would Have Been The Mountain State If West Virginia Didn’t Get First Choice State and Minnesota, the Nine Months Of Winter And Three Months of Bad Sledding State.  It’s also the date of the primary in Missouri, The I’ll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours State.

Then there’s a little break until voters in Arizona, The Almost Uninhabitably Hot State and Michigan, the Ugly Football Helmet State go to the polls on February 28.  March starts with the caucus in Washington, The Not Enough Creativity To Come Up With An Original State Name Much Less A Nickname State.

And then Super Tuesday on March 6.  Only in America would the definitive presidential nominating contests be held on a day named after a football game.  There are three caucuses and seven primaries on March 6:

Alaska           The Gateway to Godforsaken Territory State

Georgia         The We Ain’t Gonna Have No Yankee Nickname State

Idaho            The Ought To Be Part of Montana State

Massachusetts The Consistently Misspelled State

North Dakota The Not Known For Anything State

Ohio             The We’re Really Sorry About Cleveland State

Oklahoma      The Nobody Would Have Ever Heard Of Us If It Hadn’t Been For The Grapes of Wrath And That Stupid Musical State

Tennessee     The Moonshine State

Vermont        The No We’re Not New Hampshire State

Virginia        The How Would You Feel If A Ham Was Named After You State

Then the reporters will have to go back home and submit their expenses so they can be ready to go to the convention and find out that despite what they said, all the candidates always loved the nominee all along.  Cue the balloons and confetti.

In Just One Week

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

The week between Christmas and New Year is supposed to be slow in the news business.

Donald Trump left the Republican Party and changed his registration to unaffiliated, causing unaffiliated voters everywhere to reconsider their lack of commitment.

Rick Perry was asked about the proposed Keystone oil pipeline from Canada to Texas.  He’s in favor of it because “Every barrel of oil that goes south is one barrel of oil that we will not have to import from foreign countries.”  I’m not making this up.  You don’t have to make up stuff about Rick Perry.  He does it to himself. Maybe he knows something about Canada that the rest of us don’t, like that it’s really part of Montana?

Aren’t you going to miss Rick when he packs up and goes back to Texas?

Gary Johnson became the fourth candidate to officially leave the Republican Party presidential cavalcade (Not counting those who were courted but refused to run in the first place, including Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, Haley Barbour, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan, John Thune and the aforementioned Trump) and became the Libertarian Party’s tenth candidate for president. In so doing, he went from obscure to invisible.

Rick Santorum is being talked about as a viable candidate.  Really.

Newt Gingrich, facing the prospect of finishing fourth in the Iowa caucuses, continued his positive campaign by promising not to say anything negative about the people he considers incompetent ignoramuses who are challenging him for the nomination.

Gingrich proved unable to find 10,000 people in Virginia – the state where he lives – to sign a piece of paper saying he ought to be allowed to run for president.  Not that they would work for him, vote for him and even consider him, but just that he should be allowed to run if he wants.  Having failed to thus qualify for the primary ballot, Gingrich declared Virginia has a “failed system” because nothing is ever his fault. He then announced he would launch a vigorous write-in campaign, unaware that his home state does not allow write-in candidates in primaries.  If he didn’t know that as a resident or a presidential candidate, then as a self-described renowned historian he should have know Virginian has never in its history allowed write-ins in primaries.

Michele Bachmann’s Iowa campaign manager quit her campaign because, he said, she couldn’t win the nomination.  Later that day he joined Ron Paul’s campaign, presumably because he thinks Paul can win.  Bachmann claims the campaign manager told her he was given a large sum of money to defect.  What he really said was more along the lines of “you couldn’t pay me enough to vote for you.”

Mitt Romney campaigned at a corporate headquarters in Des Moines where he spoke mostly to the building because, as only he knows, corporations are people.

It appears likely either Romney or Ron Paul will finish first in the Iowa caucuses.  Either way, Romney wins.