Editor, Manteca Bulletin,

I didn’t think much of the Republican candidate choices for President since day one but now it is even scarier than ever. It seems to me that none of these candidates ever really wanted the job as Commander-in-chief, with the exception of maybe Mitt Romney.  I think, having known from the very start that they would never win anyway, they all just decided to take a page out of Sarah Palin’s agenda of just making as much money as possible while they could.

Sarah Palin had been teasing her blind followers with pretending to be interested in the job but her real ulterior motive was to make money, lots of it. First she went around making really outrageous speeches, then the bus tours started, selling her book everywhere she went. Never mind that she had little to do with actually writing it. She finally made the announcement everyone else who knew better already knew was coming, which was that she would not be running after all. Surprise, surprise.

Well, it seems the GOP candidates are doing the same thing before dropping out. All of them have the same ulterior motives as Sister Sarah, except the aforementioned Mitt Romney, at least it seems that way for now. If you look at the calendar, for say, Newt Gingrich, you will see nothing but book signings and DVD sales stops for himself and for his wife. Donald Trump was just in it to promote his TV show; with Herman Cain, it must be pizza sales. None of these guys have a chance in hell to make it to the top. Be serious, would you want Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann or Newt Gingrich to answer that call on the red-phone at 3 a.m.? Even Mitt Romney would have to hesitate while he figured out which side of the issue he actually backed.

Even the candidates themselves have their doubts about each other. Recently when Herman Cain suddenly found himself leading the pack, he was asked about being the latest flavor of the month, he replied there may indeed be many flavors but his was a flavor that “had staying power”. He described his flavor as Haagen-Dazs Black-Walnut. Apparently it had been quite awhile since Mr. Cain had visited Haagen-Dazs because that flavor was discontinued a long time ago. He then further issued flavors to some of the others, Mitt Romney was vanilla, Rick Perry was barely-cherry and Michele Bachmann was Tutti-Frutti. I would tend to agree with Mr. Cain’s assessment on that one.

It seems each time one of these guys takes the lead, something comes out about them that makes me shake my head in disbelief even more. From Rick Perry’s memory loss, to Herman Cain’s many, many outrageous statements and Michele Bachmann’s craziness, it’s just an art project. Now with Newt Gingrich coming on in the polls, we learn of his financial involvement with Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae. Not a big surprise there, is there? But Newt doesn’t care, as long as he is selling books and DVDs. You know that’s true, right?

I feel sorry for Mitt Romney because his poll numbers never change, he has been sitting at around 25% since 2008. It seems his party wants anybody but him, which has caused him to take every side of every issue multiple times. He is like a weather vane with too much WD-40. You would think that vanilla would be a nice common flavor to assign to Mitt but apparently the GOP prefers something more like Crazy-Crunch or Tutti-Frutti.

Larry Baca
Manteca
Nov. 17, 2011