by Smitty
Tea Party: Worst. President. Ever. [to the Bartender] Sam Adams.
GOP Elite: Concur. Gotta continue the momentum of 2014. Must. Retake. White. House.
For me: a Cosmopolitan, please.
[Bartender shuffles off]
TP: Violent agreement. Which is why we should expand the tent and unite early behind an acceptable candidate. Can’t afford to repeat 2012, much less 2008.
Elite: Concur. Clearly you need someone fundraising ability to overcome the Democratic Party machine.
TP:Somebody whose record in office speaks for itself.
Elite: Somebody from a state that is key to victory.
TP: Somebody that has enough leadership chops to unite every voter with two brain cells and a pulse.
Elite: Somebody with enough name recognition to be an easy sell to the unwashed masses.
TP: I don’t know about that. Scott Walker has work to do getting his name circulated beyond the Midwest and Tea Party circles.
[Bartender returns with a pint and a martini glass. Tea Party starts lifting the beverage unceremoniously to lip.]
Elite: Your health, sir. Now, Scott who? I’m talking about John Ellis Bush.
TP: Wut?
[Spills beer down his chin.]
Elite: The Jebster. The Jebbage. The Jeb-o-rama.
TP: Well, sink my car and call me Ted! I thought you were serious about getting conservatives together next year, not foisting some equestrian squish on the base. Haven’t we had enough abuse?
Elite: Oh, just lay by your dish! You little Tea-Party-come-latelys think you can be all pizza, beer, and guns; jacking about Hazzard County, Georgia your whole lives; then swoop in and call some shots just because the country elected a no-talent rodeo clown in 2008.
Well, get stuffed: half the battle in politics is showing up. The other half is staying engaged. When you have the frogskins and the stamina not to get routed by the IRS like you were in 2010, your little “hostile takeover” attempt won’t look so rank and amateurish.
[Quaffs from his Cosmo.]
TP: Hey, thanks for nothing, big brother. You fat cats only pause from delivering the floggings long enough to throw out some patriotic posturings. Then demand we vote for whatever tool you pull out of the roll-away.
Elite: Seriously. I love your enthusiasm. But this is not 1773, you’re not George Washington, and running around as though Nothing Whatsoever Happened since 1787 is just silly. Stop it. Go to school. Do the homework. The Devil’s in the details and hates us both. We can no more reasonably implement your ‘magic wand’ solutions than Obama could manage rolling out a website.
TP: Well, botox my face and call me Nancy! Your response to Jezebel seems to be “get in bed with the wench”. Every time the base listens to you, we get some bogus farce of a candidate that couldn’t inspire a gambler to roll the dice in Vegas. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me thrice, and I might as well swear allegiance to Her Majesty, Hillary.
Elite: This is precisely why we need adults like Jeb in the room. You treat the Constitution as some magical Scroll of Integrity, and think “All we gotta do is just follow it, and all our ouchies go away”. It’s merely the first breadcrumb, as it sat in 1787. And now we’ve got 11 million people illegally present. What the focaccia are you going to do with them? Form them up and force-march them to Mexico? No lousy optics there! And to what effect? People don’t take you seriously because you’re about as grown up as the Wisconsin Teachers Union going after your boy Walker.
[TP puts down his beer with the glass half full.]
TP: Help me out here. The last time we did this drill was. . .the Reagan Administration? Do we, at some point, get to learn from our mistakes?
Elite: “We” have no corporate memory. It’s all in the heads of individuals, and has to be carefully curated and carried forward. Sort of the way the Tea Partiers failed to do these last decades. You lads haven’t got hair #1 where it matters, much less a teenage pizza-face yet. Now, calm down and pay your dues, or daddy spank.
TP: Well, bust my ribs and call me Harry! The Captain of the Titanic wants to give lessons in seamanship! Will that get folded into Common Core, my sweet statist?
Elite: And what are you going to do? Actually take local control of matters, and. . .drumroll. . .raise taxes to pay for education? Here’s the ground truth: you haven’t paid attention to how everything got turned upside down since the Great Society. The Fed prints the money, DC doles it out, and that’s how all of the services that you rely on, but don’t even consider, actually operate. And so now you and Grover Norquist want to cry “foul” and change everything. To what effect? So you can just go back to NASCAR until your inner child gets all pouty again?
TP: So, you’re saying “Trust me,” and then blaming me for trusting you?
[Finishes his drink.]
Elite: Let’s cut to the chase. If we put Walker on as VP, can we expect your support?
TP: If you want a re-run of 1992, I can guarantee the Inaugural’s going to resemble 1993.
[Sets down the empty beer glass, puts a $20 on the bar.]
Elite: Would the other way around look more like 1980, then?
TP: Look, if the John McCains, Mitt Romneys, and Jeb Bushes want to convince people they care for more than their own overstuffed egos, they need to support the Convention of States. This country is screaming for substantial reform and re-commitment to the fundamentals that make her exceptional. Just because despotic rule by an elite few happens to be the human historical norm is no reason for this country to follow down that path.
We’re like the Jews at the end of the Book of Judges, having entered a promised land, goofed up, and hit some tough sledding. The correct answer here is NOT “Hey, let’s elect a king!” And if you want to tell me that the only “conservative” capable of carrying the 2016 election has a name rhyming with “tush”, you can kiss mine. Not playing.
Elite: Speaking of human historical norm and Israel, you negotiate with all of the flexibility of somebody working the Palestinian question. Bravo.
TP: Well, you tell me how to negotiate with cancer, and I’ll give it a whirl.
[exeunt]
