Silly Season

The Silly Season is almost upon us, what with potential GOP candidates declaring their intentions left and right these days.  Just this past weekend... and today, if you wanna include Monday as the weekend as I do, because I CAN... two much talked-about possible candidates declared their non-candidacies: Huckabee and Trump.  I put both these announcements in the "good" category as neither man would have received my support and one of them has my contempt ("You're FIRED!").  The field narrows accordingly and that's a pretty good thing.

I said there was all sorts of stuff coming from left and right field, didn't I?  Well, there's this from LEFT field:

Says Andrew Stiles of NRO, “Newt Gingrich’s appearance on ‘Meet the Press’ today could leave some wondering which party’s nomination he is running for.” DrewM at Ace’s site thinks it’s yet another illustration of Newt’s loose-cannon lack of message discipline, but I can’t believe that; he surely must have considered how this will play in the primaries, especially after the pounding Romney just took on the right for his health-care speech. What’s his strategy? Maybe he’s decided his shot at the nomination is so long that his only chance is by Mediscaring seniors, who famously turn out in high numbers at the polls, into backing him. Paul Ryan’s budget has played remarkably well with the 65+ crowd thus far, but an AP poll taken late last year, before he introduced his plan, found even Republican seniors opposed privatizing Medicare to the tune of 71 percent. If professional Smart Guy Newt Gingrich is now warning them that Ryan’s gone too far, their jitters about reform may make them inclined to believe him. It’s desperate, but since he’s not going to win with support from the GOP’s right, why not pander to its left? I just hope he’s prepared for the relentless beating he’ll rightly take in conservative media for kneecapping Ryan at a moment when deficit hawks are frantic to move national opinion on entitlement reform via a unified party message. He’s handed the left a campaign commercial here and they’re already using it.

Oh, Newt.  Now you've gone and done it, Buddy.  Here I was... all set to put one of your campaign badges in my sidebar and you go and blow it.  It's beyond "blow it," actually, waaay beyond.  I could forgive your various personal indiscretions and could even look the other way when you sat on that sofa with The Wicked Witch of the West, coz I've yet to find ANY politician with whom I agree completely.  But you screwed da pooch with your comments about Ryan's plan (I, too, am "over 65" and I approve of Young Mr. Ryan).  Bad mistake, Newt, BAD mistake.  And now my vote is back up for grabs.

Rudy?  You there, Bud?