First off, let me suck up to my bosses, readers, and to the Click Gods in the Sky and mention a phrase that is raw meat to you folks: Pelosi. I’ll say it thrice, Pelosi, Pelosi, Pelosi. I repeat it because every time I write an article featuring Nancy our hits go up to about eight gazillion to the 6th power or whatever. You guys can’t get enough of Miss Botox 1983 and the comment section on the pieces in question proves it, as it is generally filled with none too kind references to the poor limo lib dear, said references having a highly scatological theme. It’s enough to make her exponentially increase her breakfast meal of boxed Chardonnay. Of course, the comments have little to nothing to do with the actual column. But hey, welcome to the Internet! Oh yeah, back to Bill Weld.
He’s running for president against, well, the president in next year’s GOP primaries. I’ll wait for you to stop laughing. No really, he is. Really. He announced it on Monday.
The raw unrivaled genius of Meghan McCain aside, he has about as much chance of gaining that nod as, channeling my drill sergeant now, you’d have had in finding a virgin in Saigon. I personally have a fondness for that line because you get two offensive jokes in one sentence. Kind of like “democratic government.”
Weld is the former GOP governor of Massachusetts and was the Libertarian Party (LP) candidate for veep in 2016. He thinks he still has gravitas in that old waspy sort of way, when in reality there are bloodlines that outrank his at the monthly meeting of the Boca Raton Kiwanis Club.
He will have one thing going for him. The media will anoint him as “the Good Republican” to challenge the salivating ogre who illegally, or something, sits in the Oval Office. Puff pieces will note Weld’s patrician mien, his sober manner, his completely non-GOP views on the issues of the day. He’s not Trump, which is all that matters to them, and they think maybe he can hurt Trump in the primaries before that monster chomps down on who at this point seems destined to be a Dem sacrificial lamb to the slaughter. Dream on, nitwits. Aren’t you the same guys who told us on Election Day 2016 that Hillary had an 85-percent chance of winning? I thought so.
Former Ohio Governor John Kasich is also considering the primary race. Though before that his docs plan to up his Valium prescription, as he always seems so wildly out of hand with cheery high-voltage enthusiasm.
Granted, stranger things have happened and in a weird environment Weld could be a player. Maybe try to pull a John Anderson in 1980. However, I have a stranger plot twist in mind.
What if he just wants increased exposure, goes to about 10 percent in GOP primary polls, loses to Trump, but then with the now higher level of recognition and donations, switches back to the LP, hoping to get to the fall debates, play spoiler, and elect the Dem.
The problem with that scenario is that anyone, him, Kasich, Howard Schultz, Bloomberg, anyone, who runs in a general election opposing the president and is not the Dem nominee will split the anti-Trump vote and allow the president to waltz back into office for another four years.
This is because, as in the UK over Brexit, old party lines have been redrawn. The president elicits strong feelings and the usual magical ten percent of moderate voters who elect presidents has grown to a smaller number. In the GOP the ranks of Vichy Republicans and gobblers-of-the-scraps Dems throw from the big kids table has grown even thinner.
Certainly not enough to mount a serious primary threat to the president. But more than enough for the press to pretend he does.
Stay tuned…
