Goon Squad

This was going to be a post that examined the timely question: Why do Republicans lie so much?

Is it genetic? Or is it the loving, "family values" based nurturing they all receive?

Is it an inherent part of their profound religious beliefs? Or is it just the easiest way to a big payday from Fox News?

Or could it be that they've gotten away with it for so long, since Reagan at least, that they simply don't recognize the truth anymore? Hmmm.

Clearly these are all questions that deserve long and intense study. But today is my birthday and frankly I just don't have the time for that sort of thing. So instead I'll analyze the 2012 Republican Tea Party presidential candidates.

It occurs to me that what we are really witnessing is a race to see who can be the biggest asshole.

I mean, Christ, look at them! Cain and Bachmann and Willard Mitt and Ricky, and the human cipher, Rick Santorum. And let's not forget Ron Paul--although everyone else has. A day does not pass without at least one of them saying something that is either a bold faced lie, completely inane, clinically insane, or some combination thereof.

I know what you're thinking. "Gosh Mr. Franklin, how can we choose just one?!"

Fortunately there is one candidate whose "assholiness" transcends all the rest. A candidate whose major accomplishment while an elected member of government was shutting down the government, a candidate who made millions of dollars as a lobbyist--and yet insists that he never lobbied anyone, a candidate who calls President Obama an "elitist" while maintaining his own $500,000 credit line at Tiffany's, a candidate with a dime store brain who fancies himself an "intellectual", a candidate who recently floated the idea of doing away with child labor laws, and a candidate who is a known adulterer and yet preaches family values. All this in one person? You betcha!

The list of his credentials is long, but time is short...

Maybe someday scientists will discover a lower form of life than Newt Gingrich, but for the time being we just don't have the technology. As our Spanish friends might say, "Quien es mas de un asshole? Newt es mas de un asshole!"