Skip to main content

No need to fear, Underdog is here



Look up in the air!  It's a bird.  It's a plane.  It's a frog.  A frog?  No, it's Lindsey Graham!

Yes, that's right folks, Lindsey Graham is running for President because the "world is falling apart."  He is only polling a miniscule one per cent in GOP presidential straw polls, but not to worry Underdog is here to save us from the evil forces confronting us in this crumbling world.

Lindsey has been sounding the alarm for some time now, firmly believing that ISIS may kill us all.  That's why he plans to send no less than 10,000 troops into Iraq, if elected Commander-in-Chief, to rid us of this pernicious threat once and for all.  Uber-Lindsey doesn't think the Iraq War was a mistake, saying, "at the end of the day, I blame President Obama for the mess in Iraq and Syria, not President Bush."  Are you listening, Jeb?

It is easy to dismiss Lindsey's candidacy as a joke, as he is seen as little more than a fringe figure in the Republican Party.  But, that's the way many felt about Rick Santorum last time around and he ended up winning 11 states and nearly 4 million votes, a whopping 20 per cent of the GOP electorate.  In a much more crowded field this election year, Lindsey would be in the hunt with numbers like that.  The only question is whether the Republican electorate will embrace this rather effeminate man who is now projecting himself as a super hero.

My guess is not, but that shouldn't stop Lindsey from running.  The more the merrier I say.  It's looking like a new season of Survivor with all these candidates. Reince Priebus will have to split these presidential wannabes into "tribes" to accommodate a field that could be as many as 30 candidates, looking at this GOP straw poll.

If it is any help, Lindsey Graham appears to have Sheldon Adelson in his corner, who has pledged $100 million this election cycle.  Of course, Sheldon backed Newt Gingrich last time around and he didn't get very far, only managing to win two states, Georgia and South Carolina.  Still, Lindsey's home state is one of the first primaries, so he should get a leg up early in the race, and maybe more money will pour into his campaign, if Jeb doesn't score well among early Republican voters.

In the meantime, we will continue to see a lot of posturing on the part of the GOP presidential candidates. This is what Lindsey does best, so he should manage to keep himself in the news.  Good luck, Underdog!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005