Conservative Voters have a love affair with clowns, cons, and liars. Remember the Republican Iowa Summit? We laughed when the the GOP called it the Freedom Summit. But what the conservative middle class and working class need most is freedom from clowns, cons, and liars in the Republican party who have only brought them misery or made their lives less enjoyable than it should be.
Republicans party leaders who spoke at the Freedom Summit gave the people nothing but clown acts, cons, and lies. True to form, however, the cheering throng behaved as if they were at a red neck comedy show. Predatory Republican leaders had them cheering outrageous hyperbole, gibberish, silliness, lies, and foolish rhetoric.
The message their "leaders" gave were so simplistic and emotionally easy, it made cheering easy. But the cheering crowd applauded nonsense that is dangerous to America, especially the conservative middle class and conservative working class America.
Unfortunately this decimated class includes white Americans, especially older white Americans, like the white Americans who cheer the drivel they hear from Republicans who apparently believe they are speaking down to a level their base can understand. They may be right. The base at the Iowa summit cheered Republicans who intone the following nonsense:
1. "Scary Steve King", Iowa congressman who hosted the summit with Citizens United was on record for saying Mexican immigrants were drug mules with calves the size of cantaloupes from carrying 75 lbs of drugs across the desert into the USA.
2. Scott Walker, claimed he was not afraid to go "big and bold to get it done!" What will Scott Walker get done? Will he "go big and bold" to destroy unions and the economy to cripple America just as he has destroyed and crippled Wisconsin?
3. Ted Cruz explained most conservatives never want to see a fence built nor sausage made, but they still want their sausage. And by inference, we assume he meant they want their fence built. Cruz explains to his cheering throng, "if you want sausage, you have to kill a pig". His message? "We need to do some pig killing and make sausage!" Wow! Is that a piece of executive leadership genius or simple clownish posturing?
4. Rick Perry, in his best imitation of Howard Dean, Screamed, "America is looking for new direction! Let's Give It To Em!" Sorry, Rick. Looking backward, even through new eye glasses, is not a new direction.
5. Donald Trump said " We have to build a fence. Who can do that better than Trump? It's what I do!" We know what The Donald does, and it ain't pretty.
6. The biggest clown prize, however, goes to Sarah Palin. The crowd cheered to a rant of poor grammar, subject verb disagreement, irrational incoherent rambling, and folksy idioms. It was the kind of display that prompted Jon Stewart to say "That's the kind of talk one hears just before the pharmacist says, Ma'am you gotta leave the Walgreens".
Ms Palin regaled her public with idioms such as her familiar "you betcha". She also made promises but didn't "want to get into the details of everything." But the best line of all was "We drive in solutions. We be bold".
This kind of rhetoric isn't restricted just to GOP presidential candidates. It goes all the way down to city government and state legislatures . Michele Fiore, a GOP member of the Nevada Assembly regaled in her ignorance of biology when she explained that she believes Cancer is a fungus which can be flushed from the body through a pic line using baking soda.
This is dangerous talk from public officials who make executive decisions and legislative policies that affect the lives of working families. If Fiore believes her remarks about cancer, she is a dangerous clown and not fit for public office. If she doesn't believe it, she is a con and a liar and still not fit for public office.
What was so obvious then as now is what America needs most if freedom from predatory Republican clowns and Right Wing conservative cons and liars who aren't fit to serve the conservative white Americans they profess to love and serve.
Unfortunately, conservative voters aren't interested in democracy nor in what is in the best interest of the middle class or the working class. If they were, they wouldn't continue to vote for Republican politicians who keep red states at the bottom of every metric that is good for American families.
In retrospect, Rick Perry is correct, but not in the way he intended. America is looking for a new direction. It is a direction away from Republican clowns who are incapable of providing executive and legislative leadership that benefit the common good. Or better, America is looking for a direction away from Republican cons and liars who are too greedy, too morally bankrupt,and/or too unpatriotic to provide executive and legislative leadership that benefit the common good.