Wanted: Sidekick, Must Be Able To Take A Punch

So, it's come down to Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney?

After three years of listening to the screechy monkeys wailing about Obama and crying about taking "their" country back, conservatives have apparently chosen Mitt Romney as the de facto GOP candidate.

Mitt Romney.

It's just me, right?

Yeah. It’s just me. Pardon me while I guffaw in hearty, yet ironic, amusement.

Mitt Romney.

Really?

Let's review, shall we?

The first to fall was the warm up comedy act, Dominar Rygel the Sixteenth Donald Trump.

The first real actual candidate to bow out was Jon Huntsman. As I said when he declared his campaign beneath the baleful copper gaze of Lady Liberty, Huntsman never had a chance. And that is a damned shame, because Huntsman probably came closest to what most Tea Party, Libertarians, and large number of conservatives say they want. Ironically, these are the same things moderates of both parties, many Liberals, and a significant number of the Occupy movement say they want as well. But I digress. Savvy, smart, experienced, down to earth, hardworking, about as non-partisan as you can get and still be a politician, a guy who understand business, a guy who was one of the most popular governors in US history, and a solid leader who likely understands China and Asia better than anybody else in the world (certainly orders of magnitude beyond any other current politician). Huntsman is a guy who doesn't much care for either of the mainstream American political parties and he is somebody who advocates for congressional term limits, profound campaign finance reform, and a major overhaul and strict limits on Congressional redistricting. A rather large number of Americans who have been going around calling themselves We The People claim they want to take their country back from the politicians, the things Huntsman advocates would go a long, long way towards giving them exactly that.

Naturally, Huntsman was eaten by the flying monkeys first.

The Three Stooges were next. Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Rick Perry each appealed to their own small paranoid fringe demographic of underpants gnomes. It should give all of us pause that they made it as far as they did, obviously there is a much larger population of the untreated mentally ill running about than any of us would have guessed. None of these goofs ever had a real chance, despite the personal endorsement of the Almighty, there just aren't enough Unibombers or members of the Texas Independence Movement to make a significant voting bloc, and let's face it, Godfather's pizza sucks giant dirty donkey balls. I do admit, however, that as somebody who writes about politics and as somebody who is as easily amused as I am, I was really rooting for Cain. I would have paid actual real genuine American cash bucks to see Herman The Pizza Man debate President Obama one on one, man to man and mano a mano, constipation to Constitution, live on national TV. I might even have subscribed to HBO for that that, because, honestly, there hasn’t been a really worthwhile comedy special since Palin's interview with Katie Couric. In my mind's eye I picture Cain’s head flopping backward and a crazy little Herman face looking out of his neck like Sam Rockwell's character in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy madly shouting, "Magrathea! Magrathea!" (or maybe "Cheese Pizza! Cheese Pizza!").

Cain, Dread Cthulhu, talk about a guy whose brain runs on lemons, but I digress yet again.

Seriously, Zaphod Beeblebrox had a better chance at the nomination than any of these three twits.

Much less amusing was the other glassy-eyed religious zealot in the mix, Rick Santorum. Santorum is about as funny as cervical cancer and his brand of theocracy is just about as accepting and tolerant as an Ayatollah at a Castro District Pride parade. He was supposed to appeal to the conservative base, but he couldn't even muster up enough votes to win his own home state primary.

Next out was Newt Gingrich. Of course, he's not actually out yet, but will apparently announce next week that he's officially quitting the race. Then he'll take all his toys and retreat to Moon Base Reagan and write a book about how he won a moral victory and how he’s not really sulking. We're all just supposed to ignore the fact that Gingrich has repeatedly sworn he would stay in until Tampa, no matter what, cross my heart and hope to die. Of course there's nothing surprising about Gingrich's failure to keep a promise, it's pretty much his trademark. If he can screw over a couple of wives in the process, he gets a royalty payment.

Frankly, Gingrich only lasted as long as he has because the universe doesn't prevent crazy people from being Las Vegas billionaires or starting superPACs.

Then there's Ron Paul. I don't think I've made any secret of the fact that I really dislike this guy. I think he's a galloping goof and if his kid is any indication, it's probably a hereditary condition. His followers are starting to verge on the walleyed gibbering version of lost cause fanaticism (Magrathea! Magrathea!).  If they all decide to move to a jungle compound in Guyana and start eating each other I won't be even mildly surprised. But even I have to admit that Paul does seem to live up to what he preaches - that's fairly unique in a professional politician, especially this crowd, and especially one from Texas (Yes, yes, I know. Look I hate to keep busting on Texas, but seriously, you stop and I'll stop).

Ron Paul doesn't have to drop out, he was never actually in the race to begin with.

And so, after all the moaning and wailing and teeth gnashing, after three frantic piss-filled years of Hitler-tossing and horror struck dire warnings of sodomy and socialism, liberalism and death panels, communism and the end of the world and the Anti-Christ, totalitarianism, Marxism, the shambling undead corpse of Ronald Reagan, and OMFG Nazis! we're finally down to it.

And who did the Republicans pick?

Romney.

Mitt Romney.

Ha ha h… wait, what?

After three years of bitching about presidential arrogance and the red tide from China, Republicans didn’t pick the down to earth guy with the foreign policy experience.  After three years of pointing out how the current occupant of the White House never served in the military and hates veterans and the working man and America, they didn’t pick the pray for rain cowboy cargo pilot.  After loudly lamenting the death of “traditional family values” and the insidious sparkly gay agenda, they didn’t pick Ford-Tough-Super-Duty-Uterus  Lady who also happens to be an expert in degayification.  Despite complaining bitterly about a lack of business acumen in the White House, they didn’t pick the guy who more or less claims to have invented the pizza industry single handedly, while walking up hill, both ways, to work barefoot in the snow. After a decade of pissing themselves blind over Muslims and bemoaning the lack of Jesus in the classroom they didn’t pick the Uber Christian. And after three years of complaining about the president’s comparative lack of experience in Washington and the cancellation of the space program, they didn’t pick the Beltway insider Moon Man either.

No, they picked the one guy who is politically closest and ideologically most like, wait for it, waaaaaaaaiiiiiit for it, most like Barack Obama.

Buwah?

You're shitting me, right?

So, in the end, after all the rhetoric and all the anguished rending of garments and self flagellation, after repeated threats of government shutdowns, after all the talk of taking our guns to Washington, after tea parties and talk of treason and secession and civil war, after the patriots and powdered wigs, after the tear gas and the Tasers, after the ridiculous idiotic birther nonsense and the endless silly comparisons of who the better Christian was, after all that bullshit about elitism and who had lost touch with the common man, they picked the handsome moderate elitist millionaire with a private elevator in the garage of his vacation mansion and the weird religion made from magic underpants and the funny marriage customs who championed universal healthcare, gun control, big government and made his fortune by liquidating jobs and closing businesses and who said that he would do pretty much exactly what the current President has been doing to end the war and fix the economy (only he'd do it faster and without any OMFG Nazis!).

Refresh my memory, what was all the rabid frothy objection to Obama again?

What could it be? What could it be?

Hmmmm. It’s a puzzle.

What’s that you say?

Oh, yeah, that. Riiiiight. I'm sure that's not it. Never mind. Move along, nothing to see here.

So anyway now that the GOP Sausage Machine has spit out this cycle’s wiener, the only question remaining is: who's Romney going to select as a running mate?

Marco Rubio? Chris Christie? Paul Ryan?  Rubio is supposed to appeal to Latinos because apparently Mexicans can’t tell themselves from Cubans either. Paul is supposed to appeal to people who like spread sheets and poverty. Christie is supposed to appeal to people who are still in mourning over the end of The Sopranos.  All likely choices. All boring and predictable. Just like Mitt himself. 

Romney needs to shake things up, show some spontaneity for crying out loud.  Appeal to those fringe elements who bailed out of the process and hightailed it for their mountain shacks and bible bunkers when Romney’s fellow candidates fell by the wayside.

Sarah Palin?  As amusing as a rerun of Word Salad Sally would be, there’s spontaneity and there’s going rogue.  Rogue is what they call it when an enraged elephant goes completely nuts, begins trumpeting wildly and biting at its own tail, tramples everything around into pulp, and is then eventually shot dead by the surviving bloodied villagers after rampaging through a church bus filled with crippled orphans.  Nobody wants that (well, OK, almost nobody wants that).

How about Ted Nugent? He’s already on a first name basis with the Secret Service and he’d be a hoot at fundraisers.

No?

So who then?

Republicans picked the candidate most like Obama for president, doesn’t it make sense to find a guy similar to Joe Biden for Veep?

Let's see, Biden is old, white, outspoken, profane, gaff prone, a lawyer, Catholic, immodest, nonintellectual. He got out of going to Vietnam with a draft deferment … holy hell! Joe Biden is practically a Republican already! If we could get him to snort cocaine out a gay prostitute’s belly button, or maybe torture a prisoner or two, his journey to the dark side would be complete! He’d forget all about that equal rights and sissy global warming stuff.

Sure, that’s it!

Joe Biden. He could be both Obama and Romney’s running mate.

Hey, smaller government, right? It’ll foster closer ties between Left and Right. C’mon, it’ll be like one of those arranged marriages in Game of Thrones.  Sorry Joe, it’s your duty, for the good of the realm.  You marry Prince Joffrey tomorrow at noon. Buck up, Man, you’ll grow to love him. 

Think of the money we’ll save.

States will save money by having one less name to print on the ballots, it’s not much but it adds up – especially if we could reuse Biden for two or three more election cycles. No matter how it shakes out, we don’t have to change the name on the VP’s office, don’t have to hire new staff or clean out the fridge or redecorate the VP Residence.  Hey! I’ve got an idea.  Dig this, the Constitution doesn’t assign any actual duties to the VP, in fact nobody is really sure which branch of government he even belongs to. He just sort of lurks around Washington watching TV and surfing the internet and making smart Alec comments.  But, and this is my point, he gets a government paycheck.  That’s right, the Vice President of the United States gets paid to do nothing, hell, even Prince Charles has to attend shopping mall openings and polo matches and stuff.  The American VP? Nada.  I say that’s a luxury we can no longer afford to keep on the payroll.  We save money by recycling the VP, we can save even more by putting him to work. So, what can the Vice President do?  Oh the list is endless, somebody needs to wash Air Force One, walk the First Pooch, weed the Rose Garden, clean up after GSA parties.  That kind of thing. There’s nothing in the Constitution that prevents it (that’s totally true, I looked it up on the internet). 

Sure, that’s it, Joe Biden, he’d be the perfect guy for Romney’s running mate.

Ok, just think about it. That’s all I asking.