It is official. The search for a new sheriff is over. Despite the stagecoach rumors, Christie and Daniels never even showed up. Huckabee is making too much money preachin’ in that big church at the edge of town, and let’s face it, he could never handle a six shooter. Michelle Bachmann don’t know how to saddle a horse. Gingrich shot himself in both feet, so his wife took his gun away. Pawlenty's too skinny. Some say Santorum rides side-saddle. Sarah Palin is in a wild west travelin show, doin’ ridin’ tricks, shootin in the air and ringin’ bells. Herman Cain? C’mon. He talks good, unless you really listen, but he has never even ridden a horse. Besides, he can’t command the respect of the deputies. He just don’t look right, if you catch my drift. We all like Ol' Ron Paul, but you can’t scare Obama and his men by ridin' that old nag and carryin' that big lance.
Now, word is that crazy rancher, Rick Perry, has been spotted on the rise outside town, sitting tall in the saddle, just watching. Can’t tell from here, but he might be headed this way. He looks good from a distance, but people say he and his drunken hands have been making trouble in other towns.
Some say we have to act before Perry gets here. So schoolmarm, Peggy Noonan, and local saloon madam, Ann Coulter, have joined forces and resigned themselves to the city slicker, Mitt Romney, as the best hope for bringing back law and order in 2012.
Miss Noonan began her resignation speech by asserting that Romney just had his first good week. This may not be a good sign, as he's been running since 2005, but Miss Noonan’s excitement is unrestrained. “He had a reasonable announcement speech followed by a lot of national interviews.” And although Sarah Palin upstaged him by making a stop a few miles up the road just to suck attention from this announcement, this only served to display the contrast between “Crazytown [and] the man of sober mien.”
Madam Coulter, on the other hand, loves Crazytown. But she doesn’t want her to run, because she knows Crazytown can’t outdraw Obama. How do you get a “fabulous” potential candidate not to run? Tell her, “You won’t be happy as president. Even Senator is much more fun. Stick with the wild west show. Trust me.” We all know Miss Palin is too proud to handle the truth.
But there are rumblings on the right about Coulter’s endorsement of Romney. She has been doing interviews to hawk her new pamphlet, Demonic. (This one attacks the Left and touts the moral superiority of the Right.) When she visited right wing radio stations on her tour, historically favorable territory, she was attacked for supporting Romney in 2008. She responded by comparing their attacks against Romney to birtherism. At the 2011 CPAC, Coulter changed her tune, announcing, “I’ll put it in a nutshell. If we don’t run Christie, Romney will be the nominee, and we will lose.” (Coulter loves Christie’s theory for belt-tightening--make the fat cats fatter.) But she has since changed again, and even claims to be confident that Romney will win, because, as she puts it, anybody can beat Obama with this economy.
I don’t mean to imply that Coulter is head over heels for Romney, particularly given his Achilles heel of Romneycare. As she put it, “Romney isn’t a disaster.” But Coulter sometimes makes statements casting doubt on her commitment, as she recently distinguished the personal attacks inflicted by liberals on Palin from the substantive attacks conservatives make, by stating, “We don’t like Obama because of Obamacare.” Is this not a case of cognitive dissonance, or does she really believe Romney “tricked liberals into voting for him?”
The question is whether the real GOP will support Romney in the general election. There are the additional problems of Romney backing abortion rights, adoption by gay couples, and science showing man-made global warming. But, as Miss Noonan recognizes, the most important problem may be that he is a Mormon.
Miss Noonan is upset that Piers Morgan interrogated Romney on his religious beliefs. “It's not something we do in America. Because we still have a little class.” Noonan is dishonest in her suggestion that religion is not important to Republican voters. It is the most important thing to many. But she is correct in the sense that most American reporters probably think it is inappropriate to question the religion of a politician. But Morgan is British. Most Brits are agnostics. They believe in evolution. The mainstream media in Great Britain assume most intelligent people are nonbelievers. Thus, Tony Blair was roundly attacked by the British press for using his religious beliefs as guidance in governance, especially on Iraq. In preparation for this interview, Morgan undoubtedly learned a little more about the Mormon religion, and while an atheist will find all religious beliefs incredible, he will likely find the Mormon beliefs even more incredible. In other parts of the world, fundamental beliefs, especially when they are aberrant, are fair ground in an interview.
Miss Noonan says Catholics like her don’t have a problem with Mormons. She begs the evangelicals to take the same position, since “...[I]t is absurd and ignorant not to support a political figure only because” he is, in the words of Ann Coulter, a member of a “wacky religion.” Miss Coulter agrees. But Miss Noonan and Miss Coulter seem to ignore a couple thing about evangelicals. First, they are absurd and ignorant. Second, the Book of Mormon contradicts the Bible, and evangelicals don’t like that.
The most successful play on Broadway today is The Book of Mormon, which is described by its creators as “an atheist's love letter to religion." I assume it will be made into a movie. While not overly offensive to the Mormon elders so far, the creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, also make a cartoon called South Park, which had a slightly harsher episode portraying the beginning of the Mormon religion. The refrain through the episode was, “Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb,” as in, Mormonism was created by a con-man from New York in 1830, and his claim to divine inspiration can fairly be described as so ludicrous that it could fool only those who are, well, very dumb. This episode is probably the primary source of information on Mormonism for those under 30. If Romney becomes the Republican nominee, this South Park episode could go viral among evangelicals. Cats and dogs, living together.
But the schoolmarm and the saloon madam have, for the time being, agreed. We can have peace in town. All we have to do is get the church ladies and the cow hands together on Saturday night. And to do that, we just have to agree on the place, the food, the drink, and the entertainment. Should be no problem.
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