Editor, Manteca Bulletin, 

After loading up the Clown Car trunk with their Bibles, assault weapons with extended magazines and extra tea bags, they fueled it up with High-Test Hypocrisy fuel and headed for center ring in the large circus tent where their Conservative Political Action Conference audience waited. 

The crowd, fresh war paint on their faces, knew the Clown Car was revving up for another war, not some little 10-year thing with a tiny country like Iraq where there would only be a miniscule 100,000 casualties or so. No, what they wanted was to go mano a mano with the Ruskies, the evil empire no less. 

Rolling down the windows as they sped around the center ring, the frenzied crowd could see all the clowns waving their assault weapons, flexing and puffing their chests. First out of the Clown Car was Sarah Palin, looking more like Tina Fey than ever. Giving the crowd her best wink, took the microphone and shouted: “Mr. President! The best way to stop some bad guy with a nuke, is a good guy with a nuke!” Like most of Crazy Sarah’s statements, she didn’t seem to think this one though either. It’s not very smart to be promoting a nuclear exchange with Putin when you can see Russia from your house.

Next out of the Clown Car was Dick Cheney, one of the main architects of the now infamous “Weapons of Mass Destruction” Iraq War. Cheney asked, “How could the President allow Putin to slap the United States in the face by moving on the Ukraine?” as the villagers started to light their torches. Apparently he had forgotten Putin had done this and much more in Georgia during his time in the Bush Administration.

Just when the villagers were getting ready to storm the castle, out stepped Grandpa Munster look-alike himself, Ted Cruz. You know, the guy who wanted to force the de-funding of Obamacare by shutting down the government causing the government to lose billions in revenue. Later saying he knew it wouldn’t work, he was just kidding around! Apparently he just wanted to make John Boehner look like a fool. Remember John Boehner’s “Are you kidding me?” outburst when he found out what Ted Cruz had done? Cruz went on to describe himself to the villagers as Reagan reborn, who would never back off from a good fight. Apparently making that statement after taking a good huff from the Clown Car fuel tank because he plain forgot all about Beirut, didn’t he? 

Thankfully there are some comparatively sane members of the GOP. Rand Paul said this about Cruz: “Every Republican likes to think he or she is the next Ronald Reagan. Some who say this do so for lack of their own ideas and agenda, Reagan was a great leader and President. But too often people make him into something he wasn’t in order to serve their own political purposes.” Paul also said Reagan “believed in diplomacy” and agreed with the direction President Obama was taking. 

Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan calls the GOP the War Party. Surely not everyone in the GOP is a warmonger but then you couldn’t blame anyone for thinking otherwise, when the Clown Car goes to war. 

Larry Baca 

Manteca