Often, inside a fat guy abides a small man.  This is the reality exposed to the nation last week by the antics of New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie. What else is there to make of that display? While the media and candidates are chewing their cuticles down to the nub, Christie prances in a gunslinger approved performance where he rattles the tools around in the back shed while telling the expectant world that he is not up to anything. And then, he really isn’t. Well, he’s not up to running but he IS up to a perverse faux obeisance at the Reagan Shrine, including some ritual canoodling  with the widow Reagan, a pro forma popping of Christie ’12 balloons and then an immediate, fawning, truly disgusting appearance with Mitt Romney where they each break their own necks patting each other and themselves on the back. Noted expert on all things, Christie declares that no comparison of any kind can be legitimately made between Romneycare and Obamacare. Not suprisingly, he offers no foundation for his absolutism, simply a promise to write such nonsense out of sane discourse. Here, in a Mormon approved ceremony, Romney and Christie exchange lachrymose compliments and pledge until Death do They Part. Chris shows that he is down for the struggle with reason and perception and willing to endorse whatever inanity necessary to grease the skids for Mitt to the nomination and then the coronation. Christie might as well have simply announced while extending a signet ring: L’establishment de Republique? C’est moi! They say that Christie is conservative for New Jersey. Yes, and as a New Jersey native I can also inform you, he is quite fit.

Until his inevitable installation as Romney’s VP pick, we may leave Christie on that sturdy table where we found him for we have experienced, I suspect, a fortuitous burst of x-rays from the sun or other cosmic source. This week we have seen more clearly what everyone on the public stage is made of. We have a quite dour diagnosis for Marco Rubio of Florida. While he squawks the squawk and is a TEA Party darling, he is also behind the scenes pulling strings with the best of them colluding in and advancing the scheme to push the Republican Primary schedule back to a Halloween Super Saturday. Such action, in tactical sense, can only benefit Mitt Romney and it can only benefit him by preventing repeated questioning and public scrutiny of his career, character and (cough) principles.

That game of Scrabble some of the candidates engaged in with Charlie Rose Thursday last was somewhat illuminating, though not in any way intended. Michelle Bachmann and Jon Huntsman each give their quotes of a political lifetime. For these and only these statements are they destined to be remembered. Bachmann puts in a textbook example of “dog whistle politics”, sounding the ultra-sonic note that only she and her kind can hear. That is the only explanation for her bizarre inversion of Cain’s 9-9-9 plan to a scandalizing 6-6-6! She asserts, though in a code tuned to evangelicals, that Cain is, perhaps, the original Cain. After all, he is black which is the mark of Cain to some believers, and his plan to control all commerce with three digits is clearly an Anti-Christ sort of dealio. Either that or she is appealing to the heavy-metal demo, saying that HER plan, the opposite of Cain’s is demonic and therefore both cool and efficient. The simple truth is that some gunslinger, expert on evangelicals, came up with this at some stupid strategy meeting and Bachmann thought it killed which is actually much worse than either of the two scenarios above. Huntsman, also, fell prey to his handlers. “I thought it was the price of a pizza.” Ha ha. If some heads don’t get unstuck from some asses we will dream fondly of the days when we fed ourselves with ten dollar pizzas. Don’t look for any action from Huntsman either to pull his own head out or apply any leverage to any others.

Cain is the man of the moment. Some like his colorful language, some his colorful resume and plenty, it must be admitted, dig that colorful skin. This really would be the ultimate screw you to the Democratic racialists, wouldn’t it? You’re gonna elect a fat white guy and call HIM a black President, then you’re going to elect some miscegenated Harvard pinhead and call HIM the First Black President? We’ll send up the first ALL black President! That will show you! And while it is nothing to encourage, this petulant sentiment also should not disqualify the man. Nor does it qualify him. By historical standards Cain has a plausible biography. He is Truman without the baggage of the Kansas City Machine but also without that experience. Eisenhower and Grant came straight to politics from war. Wilson came nearly straight to politics from the heights of the Academy so Cain’s business history, his crowning technical education and his apparent straight-shooting should shut up any fool who says he can’t win either the nomination or the election. All Americans would be wise to keep quite a close eye on Uncle Herm, however (as we know him in Georgia). If you are a TEA Partier or Wall Street Occupier, you are down on all those bailouts, no? Well, what the Occupants don’t seem to know about Obama and the Patriots don’t know about Cain is that they are both, full-square and proudly in support of all those bailouts, transfers, cash-infusions, platinum parachutes, bonus funds, forgone haircuts and backed-up assets. Well, one or the other fellow might be against this one or that one that is truly absurd but then they have their own precious little absurdities that also need funding, ya know!

Lately there has been some vigorous scrubbing of the OWS and hilarity has ensued. The insularity that lets one denounce the bailouts and endorse a totalitarian socialism makes for some wrinkled brows and belly laughs but that should not be the end of it. By the same standards of consistency, one cannot be FOR the bailouts etc and be AGAINST socialism. That should be obvious but is not. Why is it we have only ONE candidate who is and was against the bailouts of all kinds? What is Romney’s position on this? Catch it quick before it changes. What is Cain’s position on this? If you knew nothing of the man but that he was a Fed governor you could easily guess. Perry? He hasn’t denounced the bailouts in specific and on principle that I have heard and I understand crony capitalism is alive and well in Perry’s Texas, especially in the oil industry. Bush and McCain, yesterday’s men, were in solid agreement with Obama and Biden and Kerry and Frank and Schumer and Dodd and Clinton who were also in agreement with plenty of Republicans in the House and Senate, at the Fed, on Wall Street and at Treasury. Unlike the Stimuli and Obamacare, these were bipartisan actions, saving us, allegedly, from a brutal downturn and chronic implosion. Gee, good thing they acted then. But there are plenty of other avenues for Venture Socialism (DeMint’s genius portmanteau) and plenty of Republican hoof prints there. Where is the prominent Republican who is against ethanol? Where is the one against Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the welfare state on principle? There is only one; He Who Must Not Be Named, and even the Texas TEA  gadfly, when you look closely at his votes and actions, seems to be filling only a brand vacuum. His principles are as elusive as the others’.

Now, like all these interventions, the bailouts, as distinct from money printing, securities manipulation etc, had many names and structures but the big one was TARP; the Troubled Asset Relief Program which did what? Bought up mortgages that seemed to have little chance of being repaid. Or that was the Original Sin, they came up with others, mostly taking cash equity positions in the ginormous banks that were wobbly and then taking token positions in the sound institutions so no one knew which was which! And this is now the great achievement of Too Big To Failism as a creed. We are told the banks have mostly repaid those sums, and so they have, but even if that were the end of that story, and it is not, still we must say it should not have been done. Why? Because as a “success” it becomes the bludgeon that opens the way for every fake “investment” you could conceive whether it is clapped out, worthless energy schemes or the government takeover of medicine. It seems there is a great opportunity here. Although they are indeed late to the party, if the Occupiers are sincere in their complaints there might be a chance for a Left-leaning Libertarianism; an anti-socialist Left. That sounds pretty whacky today, I understand, but if you believe, as some claim to do, that socialism cannot “work” then there is little risk in letting it run a bit rampant, certainly if by that we mean it is running through the odd park and public fountain. In the public eye and bathed in the revealing and providential x-rays, the Occupiers may see themselves and their fellow citizens more clearly. As the inevitable failures accumulate there might well be one of them thar “teachable moments” while everyone is briefly transparent, where the dreadlocked denouncer of Corporate Bailouts can be persuaded that stopping it all is the only way to stop the worst of it. But if we do reach this concord, sadly, there is still no one for this desperate consensus to back.

Said person, if you are out there, speak up.

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