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Vail Daily column: Convention attention creates hypertension

Richard Carnes
My View

“You plagiarized first!”

“No, you did!”

“You copied me copying her!”



“No, you copied her who copied him before copying her!”

“Did not!!”

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“Did too!!”

“Wabbit season!”

“Duck season!”

“Duck season!!”

“Wabbit season, FIRE!”

And so the Republican National Convention began, and it quickly slid downhill from there.

Chances are you’re reading this on Tuesday and the Democratic National Convention began last night, so I’m going to go out on the proverbial political limb and take a guess that it too appears to be full of vitriolic hate for the other side, promoting not so much their own candidate but a myriad of reasons why the opponent is a much worse choice.

I’ll also take a wild stab at predicting a clusterfudge of embarrassment over the WikiLeaks email expose “proving” the con job on Dems by Debbie Wasserman and Co. toward Bernie Sanders.

But either way, just when I thought the GOP couldn’t embarrass themselves any further, they trotted out the big guns (on some planet) known as Antonio Sabato Jr. and Scott Baio, somehow proving that “famous” people with immigrant-sounding names validates Republicans’ love of immigrants.

Yes, calling the GOP the “party of immigrants” is like calling Islam the “religion of peace.”

It appears to me RNC Chairman Reince Priebus chows down on a yuuuuge chunk of Colorado Chocolate just before talking to the press, yet who can blame him? Hawking buttons that say, “Life’s a bitch … don’t vote for one” and shouting “Lock her up! Lock her up!” after Chris Christie’s childish rant in the court of public opinion are hard to stomach without a little buzz.

This was followed by Ben Carson and his Lucifer bogeyman scare tactics for the delusional, to Laura Ingraham and her heil Hitler, to Rudy Giuliani’s spittle-spewing diatribe about how “we’re all gonna die!”

Good grief, I haven’t seen that much fear mongering since being forced to watch old clips of Joseph McCarthy in the fifth grade.

Republicans flip over Democrats’ analysis of Melania’s speech while at the same time bragging about how little Ivanka’s dress cost compared to Hillary’s pants suit.

Shallow much?

The entire mess was eerily reminiscent of the 1964 RNC when Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater rode the fury horse of Republican outsiders livid about the welfare state and the Civil Rights Act, and the 1968 RNC when Richard Nixon declared, “When the strongest nation in the world can be tied down … when the richest nation in the world can’t manage its own economy … when the nation with the greatest tradition of the rule of law is plagued by unprecedented racial violence … then it’s time for new leadership for the United States of America.”

Sound familiar much?

Goldwater was slaughtered (39 percent to 61 percent for LBJ) and Nixon won with only 43.4 percent of the popular vote (thanks to Super Bigot George Wallace garnering over 13 percent).

Being saddled with a “savior complex” and nominating a xenophobic misogynist is not only a guarantee for another Clinton White House but an end to the GOP.

By the way, you can rearrange “Party of Trump” to spell “Tory Fart Pump.”

Coincidence?

I’ll let you decide.

Richard Carnes, of Edwards, writes weekly. He can be reached at poor@vail.net.

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