The Patriot Post® · Puppets and Puppet Masters

By Burt Prelutsky ·
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/7058-puppets-and-puppet-masters-2010-09-04

It will soon be Election Day and already I’m catching heck from a number of readers who are taking me to task for suggesting that it’s better to vote for a mediocre Republican than for a wonderful Democrat, although I can’t for the life of me think of anyone who fits that description.

Most often, I am attacked by pure and earnest conservatives who threaten to, one, stay home on November 2nd or, two, cast their votes for third party candidates. While I understand their anger and frustration, I accept that the Republicans who wind up on the general ballot are the men and women who won their party’s primaries. They may not resemble George Washington, William F. Buckley or Ronald Reagan, but they are the only defense we have against Obama’s adding cap and trade, card checks, tax hikes and amnesty for illegal aliens to ObamaCare, Government Motors and his loony spending bills.

The fact is a great many Republicans are moderates and not true believers. Even among the ranks of the Tea Party, not everybody is as conservative as they have been portrayed. Some of them are only as far right as they are because Obama and his cronies have positioned themselves so far over on the left side of the political teeter-totter, and it’s the only way to balance things out. By breaking away and voting for third party candidates, the only thing conservatives will manage to do is split the ranks and enable liberal candidates to be elected with 40% of the vote.

If the notion of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid continuing to run the House and the Senate isn’t enough to bring you to your senses, you’re every bit as deranged as Van Jones, Valerie Jarrett and Rahm Emanuel. You may hold yourself in high esteem, but essentially you’re no more principled than the infamous dog in the manger.

Liberals like to talk about their love of democracy, but idle blather is all it amounts to, when you get right down to it. In the not so distant past, California voters went to the polls in support of capital punishment and their opposition to social services being bestowed on illegal aliens. To the cheers of liberals, all it took to nullify millions of votes were a few left-wing judges shaking their empty heads.

Just recently, Vaughn R. Walker, a federal judge based in San Francisco, decided that California’s voters didn’t have the right to determine that marriage was to be defined in the state constitution as the union of one man and one woman.

Apparently it never occurred to any of the numbskulls involved in the legal system that Judge Walker, an admitted homosexual, should have recused himself from hearing the case. But, then, gays, like blacks and illegal aliens, seem to enjoy a special status denied to others in our society.

Speaking of judges, I just became aware of a very bizarre fact. For reasons beyond my ken, Republican presidents seem to turn into blithering idiots when it comes to judicial appointments. People like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are savvy enough to realize that long after they’ve vacated the Oval Office, their legacy, left for safe keeping in the hands of such goofy jurists as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, will live on.

Now consider what the Republicans have bestowed on us. Eisenhower was responsible for Earl Warren. Nixon named Harry Blackmun and Warren Burger. Ford, who barely held office long enough to hang a few pictures on the wall, found the time to saddle us with John Paul Stevens for 35 years. Reagan, of all people, placed Sandra Day O'Connor on the Court. George H.W. Bush was not only responsible for David Souter, but was the bonehead who placed the aforementioned Vaughn Walker on the federal bench. Read my lips, George: “You’re a nincompoop.”

Speaking of dumb clucks, I don’t think it’s entirely fair to ridicule Robert Gibbs. I realize he comes across like a sack of potatoes, the sort of guy who was probably pantsed every other day in junior high, but how would you like to be Barack Obama’s press secretary? How would you like to wake up each morning and know you’re going to have to try to make Obama’s radical agenda palatable to the American public when every poll tells you that most of us can’t wait for November 2nd to roll around so that we can start repairing the damage?

Heaven knows I’m not suggesting that Mr. Gibbs is particularly good at his job. But it strikes me that criticizing Gibbs makes about as much sense as taking Charlie McCarthy, Jerry Mahoney and Lamb Chop, to task.

Still, even I have to admit that in a certain light he bears an uncanny resemblance to Mortimer Snerd.