Buddy Roemer: The Best Republican Presidential Candidate You’ve Never Heard Of

Imagine a Republican candidate for President who truly has all the right stuff:

• Looks the part like Mitt Romney, but not a mealy-mouthed animatronic prig.
• Silver-haired, silver-tongued devil like Newt Gingrich, but not a delusional windbag.
• Defender of individual rights like Ron Paul, but not a torch-waving anarchist.
• Experienced legislator like Rick Santorum, but not a rigid, moralizing dandy.
• Shoot-from-the-hip Governor like Rick Perry, but not a stammering loose cannon.
• Consistent message like Michele Bachmann, but not a gaffe-prone idiot.
• Successful businessman like Herman Cain, but not a womanizing puff-talking wanker.

Ron Paul in One Lesson: A Primer on Libertarianism

Quadrennial asterisk Ron Paul is once again displaying his Libertarian Wolf Boy exhibit at the Republican freak show, again prompting puzzled onlookers to remark "oh yeah, I remember that guy," and "what the hell is he doing up there?" Now that Paul has risen from novelty candidate to so-called "top tier" status, his libertarian principles arguably merit closer examination before being mothballed for another four years.

Why I'm Rooting for Newt Gingrich To Be The Republican Nominee

If you're a liberal, you've probably had at least one Republican acquaintance inform you that you ought to be supporting Ron Paul for President. This is because Republicans don't really quite understand Ron Paul. Since he believes in civil liberties and doesn't like sending young people off to die in ill-conceived foreign wars, Republicans often assume he's a flaming liberal hippie in disguise. In the black-and-white world of Tea Party Republicans, he's not nearly white enough to be white, and must therefore be black.

House Republicans Hit New Low By Passing The Year's Dumbest Bill

While grocery shopping, I often chuckle at (for instance) the myriad varieties of vegetable oil lining the shelves, proclaiming "No Cholesterol!" It's vegetable oil, for crying out loud. Damn well better not have cholesterol. This sort of nonsense often sets me off on another tongue-in-cheek rant, remarking for the umpteenth time that Crisco ought to tout their product as caffeine-free and sugar-free while they're at it. Why, they oughtta introduce a whole new line of "fill-in-the-blank-free" oils and shortenings (at a premium price, naturally) and even beat the competition to market with an ultra premium line Certified Free of Death Crystals. After all, why would one worry about saturated fats or trans fats now that we're all threatened by Death Crystals? You don't want your family eating Death Crystals, now, do you? Of course you don't! And so on....

Dancing with the Devil: Obama's Perilous Pragmatism

President Obama's much-ballyhooed and much-maligned bus tour was reputedly an attempt to "pivot back to jobs" and reconnect with voters increasingly dubious about his ability to right our listing economy. Predictably, Republican Presidential candidates were quick to disparage Obama's message and his performance.

Snooki Kabuki: Comedy, Tragedy, and Tea Party Stupidity

For weeks now, our government has been mired in a bizarre drama the likes of which we've rarely seen, and for weeks I've struggled for a metaphor to fully convey the surreal, theatrical attributes of this manufactured crisis. I finally settled on kabuki, the time-honored Japanese genre of dramatic play. If you're at all familiar with kabuki, you'll have to agree it's an apt metaphor, encompassing the elaborate staging, overt symbolism, and stylized extravagance of the Debt Ceiling Drama, not to mention the fact that—as with true kabuki—the characters' interpersonal and political struggles have completely overshadowed the plot. Sure, this particular surreal drama could potentially tip us into a global depression, but it's the political struggles that seem to have captured the attention of the audience—for now.

Tea Party Zombies Push GOP into Boston Harbor

When President Obama dramatically took leave of the theatrics in Wednesday’s futile debt negotiations, news outlets predictably focused on the melodrama. Right wing pundits pounced on the President as churlish and panicky, with Rush Limbaugh painting a cartoonishly dismal picture: