Cache
I don't know about the rest of you, but I am relieved. Here we are in April of the year before a presidential election--a good 9 months before New Hampshire '08--and the issue of who is going to win has already been decided for us. Think of all the free time we're going to have during what would otherwise be a long, tedious, drawn-out primary season next year! All that time and energy spent concentrating on all the meaningful races that will occur in the period from the beginning of January to about the second week of February... I don't know about you, but I'm already making vacation plans. I've got two tickets on the Creme-de-Menthe train to La-Z-Boy City where I will occasionally nap when not loudly bemoaning the inferior quality of the second season of Heroes.

It is a grim, clear, triumphantly American truth that elections in this country are about money. The proponents of Campaign Finance Reform would have gotten farther with their reform movement if only they had been able to sustain a three-month-long television blitz, hire banks of hundreds of cold-calling telemarketers and maybe flown a few key Senate committee members to crucial Campaign Finance Fact-Finding Mission to places where the real economic abuses take place, like for instance Aruba.

The failure of the Campaign Finance Reform movement means we have to accept the unsavory reality of money's determining factors in elections. That in mind, it is with some great relief that I can tell you that the next president of the United States will be Willard Mitt Romney, the Man from Michigan/Massachusetts/Utah.

Also he is from three states. Another advantage.

Or if it isn't Mitt, it may be Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, the Woman from Illinois/Arkansas/New York. Another three-stater. I'll be honest with you, that didn't occur to me until I just typed it out. I hate it when I blindside myself.

Anyway, those are the two whom we know have raised the most money.

Sure, there's a little problem of Mitt Romney not actually registering above the margin of error in a lot of polls, but he is a Republican! And a conservative (now)! And deadly handsome! And he believes in Jesus...

...sort of. He's a Mormon. It's Jesus, yeah, but it's the sort of "talked to the Native Americans" flavor of Jesus who makes believers into the God of other planets if they're good. Yeah, I know. I'm a Catholic, so I know about being part of a weird-minority-but-powerfully-influential subgroup of Christianity. You might say that one thing that Mr. Romney and myself have in common is sects appeal.

Did you catch that? Sects appeal. Because it sounds like... you know what, forget it.

The Romney camp, naturally, takes his lead in fundraising as some kind of evidence of enthusiasm for his candidacy that has somehow not found its way into the polling as yet.

And yet in the details we see that most of his impressive influx has come from his contacts amongst other venture capitalists and (wait for it...) the Mormon Church. It's sort of grassroots if the grass was made of green-painted gold, hand-planted one blade at a time and then allowed to marry as many other female blades of precious-metal grass it wanted.

And we know all of Hillary's money is from China and aborted fetuses. Much sexier, but can any of those make a God of some other planet if I vote for them? China maybe, but not until they get their space program a little further along.

It's only April of '07, so I'm reserving judgment. It's the only responsible thing a voter can do. Especially since Obama hasn't disclosed his totals yet. Only when I have all the information can I know for sure who the money wants me to vote for.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 6.5



Pops

---

Opening Day was yesterday. Day One of what will be a magical, historic 162-0 undefeated 2007 season for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Yorba Linda, Seal Beach and (parts of) Fresno. You saw the streak start here. Prepare for certain bliss.

Labels: scrimp

- posted by Pops @ 9:55 AM