Hey, kids! Looking for a swell Halloween zombie costume? Look no further than your nearest political poll.
Talk about rotting corpses lurching around frightfully when they should be six feet under—Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, John Kasich, Martin O’Malley, Lindsey Graham, Jim Webb, and George Pataki are all polling below the plus-or-minus margin of error.
They’re soulless (they’re politicians). And they want to eat your brains (because they don’t have any or they would have dropped out months ago).
Costumes are easy to make. Get one of dad’s dress shirts, rumple artfully, roll up sleeves and loosen necktie to look like a “Regular Guy.” No need for masks since these Creatures from the Campaign Crypt do not have any distinguishing features.
And parents need not worry about their kids getting tarted up and going to parties. If anything, these costumes will ensure that your children won’t be having sex that night or anytime before high school graduation.
Bonus—as a 2016 Zombie Presidential Candidate, you can trick-or-treat at the houses in your neighborhood as well as Town Hall meetings, senior centers, VFW Posts, Volunteer Fireman spaghetti dinners and evangelical churches.
Downside—you might get spaghetti, a Bible and/or two delegates to the Republican National Convention instead of candy.
Why aren’t these would-be candidates buried at the ballot crossroads with electoral stakes through their hearts?
Bobby Jindal is in the race as a token of how Republicans just love diversity—as long as you’re prosperous, don’t talk funny and dress like a Republican the way Ben Carson does. Oh, and, Bobby and Ben, it’s all right if you have some cousins who, er, aren’t involved in legitimate business. But don’t feel that you need to bring them to the country club.
Republicans talk a good social conservative game, and Rick Santorum is the Republican voice of social conservatism. He’s against abortion, illegal immigrants, and gay marriage and he likes going to church. And so are Republicans—until our kid knocks up the 15-year-old next door, the yard chores need doing, offending the LBGT means decorating your home yourself and Christ conflicts with tee time.
John Kasich is the conservative governor of Ohio, a state as purple as Barney.
Barney’s friends are big and smallThey come from lots of places
And they hate each other. The conflicts in the Buckeye State mirror America’s: intransigent labor vs. greedy management, indignant blacks vs. angry whites, illiterate nativists vs. illegal immigrants, Tea Party crackpots vs. liberal dingbats, the filthy rich vs. the dirty poor vs. the grubbing-to-get-by middle class. But they all get along with Kasich.
He beat an incumbent Democratic governor and was re-elected by a landslide. Before he was governor Kasich served nine terms in Congress shoveling important shit—18 years on the House Armed Services Committee and six years as chairman of the House Budget Committee.
And Kasich is well-liked by colleagues on both sides of the aisle. So no wonder he’s polling at 2 percent among likely Republican primary voters. The GOP is in no mood for competent, experienced politicians with broad popular appeal. John Kasich is a two-word Republican suicide note.
Martin O’Malley is the ex-governor of a no-account state. Lop off Maryland’s Washington suburbs and you’re left with Appalachia in the west, the impoverished fishing villages of the Delmarva peninsula (Corsica without the sunshine) in the east and Baltimore, which is Baghdad on the Patapsco.
Speaking of, O’Malley was mayor of Baltimore before he became governor. And the city he left behind is grossly impoverished, has a homicide rate 26 percent higher than Detroit’s, and ABC News has called it the “heroin capital of the United States.”
After becoming governor, O’Malley raised Maryland taxes by 14 percent, passed traffic speed camera legislation and repealed the death penalty. (People who committed Baltimore’s 270 murders so far this year say, “Thank you, Marty.”)
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is too hawkish to appeal to the general electorate and not crazy enough to appeal to Republicans. Maybe he thinks he can gain support from “progressives,” a group that is—to judge by Bernie Sanders rallies—currently larger and more stupid than usual.
Lindsey’s strategy is to have a girl’s name, tricking progressives into thinking they are voting for America’s first transgender president.
Jim Webb has dropped out of the Democratic presidential race, but he’s still trying to scare us by threatening to run as an independent.
As a Democrat, Webb was a strange candidate—a Marine, a highly decorated Vietnam vet, President Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy and a former senator from Virginia. In other words, as a Democrat, he was a Republican.
Maybe Webb is suffering from loss. More than 5.3 million Americans suffer from memory loss—that’s about the same as Obama’s popular vote margin of victory over the Romney Zombie in 2012. Webb could be a factor in the 2016 election. If he remembers to run.
Or… Don’t want to be a political zombie on Halloween? Too many catatonic creepy creatures already stalking the streets (and the hustings, campaign stumps and obscure political blogs)? Here’s an idea—dress up as Bigfoor!
Legend has it that once, long, long ago, there was a Republican governor of New York State. His name was George Pataki, and he was very, very tall. He’s said to have mysteriously disappeared from politics, and he never returned. Now some people say he’s running for president. But, much like Sasquatch, no one has ever seen him, save for some grainy footage coming from the Republican undercard debates.
