As the week and the political campaigns roll on, and yet another of the seemingly never-ending political debates happens tonight, the loudest sound we keep hearing from voters and potential voters isn't the sound of questions being asked or answered. Right now, the dominant theme seems to be the muffled grumbles of voter disgust, blasting at top volume through the GOP presidential primary season.
We can't say we blame them.
The GOP candidates for President can't seem to agree on anything these days - and their claims are getting more crazy by the day. Yesterday, Newt Gingrich stated - almost as though it were already a sure thing - that by the end of his second term, America would have a working, livable base on the Moon.
Even foreign leaders like Fidel Castro, the retired Cuban leader, are fed up with the insane claims, posturing, and mud slinging going on in U.S. politics. Writing a column for a Cuban government website, Castro recently called the current state of American politics in general, "the largest competition of crap and ignorance that has ever been heard."
To our surprise, we somewhat agree with Señor Castro on this.
Just focusing exclusively on the way the two GOP frontrunners have been running their campaigns so far is enough to make anyone want to scream.
Mr. Gingrich has attacked the media for keeping the last debate civil. Mr. Romney attacked Mr. Gingrich for attacking the media. Republican supporters like Marco Rubio attacked Gingrich for running anti-immigrant ads - while Gingrich was trying to court minority voters, many of whom are legal immigrants. The level of unnecessary political vitriol being poured into the media right now is unprecedented - and that's not including the multi-million dollar campaigns of the totally unregulated SuperPACs.
Two of the GOP candidates, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, are so fed up with the timbre and cost of the race, they both appear ready to leave Florida before next Tuesday's statewide Republican primary. It's not just that Paul and Santorum are not gaining ground in Florida. Reports are that they're both just sick and tired of the mean-spiritedness, tired of the false political piety - and frankly, they're just plain tired.
We can't blame them for being tired of it, either.
On the issue of fake political piety, Nate Silver and the team over at FiveThirtyEight.com discovered a statistic that makes us want to jam our fingers in our ears even deeper when it comes to the Republican Presidential primaries. In the eighteen official debates that have happened so far, Newt Gingrich has mentioned President Ronald Reagan fifty-five times. Rick Santorum has tried to revive the ghost of Reagan fourteen times, while both Gov. Romney and Rep. Paul have only tried to resurrect Reagan's ghost six times, in the GOP debates.
One of our staff members is an acquaintance of Ron Reagan, Jr, who has assured us previously - his father would find this kind of deification offensive and completely against what his political party used to stand for. As many have pointed out over the last year, however, even Reagan wouldn't likely be able to win an election as a Republican today.
If there was one question we could ask each of the GOP Presidential candidates at this very moment, the only thing we would request is, "Could you please make it stop, now?"
We have a sick feeling they wouldn't be able to agree on an answer for that, either.
