The Newt and I

Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary by trouncing multiple Mitt Romneys (Mitt, NotMitt and other combinations in between). This was definitely a blogworthy event. Hence I approached the Gingrich campaign for their comments. To my utter surprise I was actually invited by the candidate himself for a confidential interview. 

Me: Mr. Speaker, congratulations on your fantastic victory in the South Carolina primary. And thank you very much for giving me this privilege as an Indian American blogger of American political matters.

Newt: Thanks. But the reason I gave you an exclusive interview, which must remain confidential, is because I have a lot to learn from you guys. 

Me: ? 

Newt: ‘You guys’ means Indians. Now you must be wondering what the great Newt can learn from the Indians?

Me: Indeed Mr. Speaker. I am all agog to hear this.

Newt: You see, we in America have a lot to learn from Indian politics. We are just beginning to get good at all this politics of identity that you people have perfected for decades. Look at your esteemed politicians such as Mayawati, Lalu Prasad, Mulayam Singh, Karunanidhi, Sharad Pawar to name just a few. Americans are making a big deal about the 1.6 million dollars that I was paid by Freddy Mac for teaching them History. Compare that to the amount of money made by each of these great leaders of Indian public. And they didn’t have to do stupid stuff like teaching history and all. I met an Indian politician recently and told him about the ruckus Americans are creating about my 1.6 million dollars from Freddy Mac. He felt sorry for me. He felt sorry because he said that in India a corporator, which is equivalent to a city council member in America, makes more than that in one year; and they don’t even have to pay taxes on it. Each one of these great Indian leaders is a billionaire and still people don’t give a rat’s ass about it and still vote for them. This is something we are just beginning to learn in American politics. Now after all this fight I was able to win South Carolina because I followed the basic rules of Indian politics. 

Me: ?? 

Newt: As an avid student of history, I analyzed the success factors for each of these great Indian leaders. And what did I find? I found that people don’t give a damn if you take bribes, spout nonsense or boink another woman while your first wife is battling cancer even though you attack another guy for being unfaithful to his wife. All that is forgiven if you make them feel that you belong to their group. In India that group is called a caste. America being a relatively new civilization hasn’t had the opportunity to invent castes but we are learning fast. 

Me: ???

Newt: Take the pro-lifers for instance. So anybody who opposes abortion at any cost is considered to belong to the caste of pro-life. If you really belong to the pro-life caste, your caste members will vote for you even if you do a Freddy Mac every month. Take anti-gay-marriage. Anybody who vociferously opposes same sex marriage belongs to the caste of anti-gay. These people vote by blocks just like people in India. I have established myself as anti-gay. I am definitely more anti-gay than Romney is.

Me: ????

Newt: (In his natural condescending manner) Let me explain it to you. Romney has had only one partner in his life, admittedly she is from the opposite sex. But how can you guarantee that if he had had another partner, that would have been a woman too? With me, I have proven, not once, not twice but thrice, that I will definitely go for the opposite sex. Can you say the same about Romney? Or for Santorum or Paul?

Me: ?????

Newt: I am telling you, I have this thing in the bag. Just watch me in Florida. I have already proven my membership of the anti-gay, anti-abortion, and anti-Romney castes. Now in Florida I have to belong to be the anti-Palestine caste for the Jewish retirees, anti-Castro caste for the Cuban immigrants, anti-Republican establishment caste for the tea-partiers and that should do it. Romney won’t know what hit him.

(A noise of some heavy object hitting the ground)

Newt: Can somebody get a glass of water for this Indian guy? He seems to have fainted due to overexposure to my brilliance.

Deep Inside a Romney Strategy Session contd..

As an Indian American blogger of American political matters I was given a special observer seat at a recent campaign strategy session by Gofernor Mitt Vhomney’s Stoff (this is how the words ‘Governor Mitt Romney’s Staff’ sound when you speak with your tongue firmly in cheek!). Anyway, I thanked his campaign staff profusely and took my seat as an observer and here is what transpired at the strategy session (please refer to the previous post for a description of the participants in the strategy meeting):

The meeting started amicably and everybody congratulated the Romney-Mixer for achieving the great feat of making the candidate appear many things to many people in Iowa and New Hampshire. However, there were distinct undercurrents of dissatisfaction just below the surface. The Estrat (the evangelical strategist) was given a contemptuous look by the Mstrat (the moderate strategist), who, in turn, let out a torrent of some Biblical curses (or was it verses?). The Hstrat (the Hispanic strategist) excitedly said some nasty things to the Istrat (anti-illegal immigration strategist) but thankfully he said them in Spanish hence the Istrat couldn’t understand them. But he responded by waving the Arizona law in Hstrat’s face and threatened to have the Hstrat arrested for being an illegal alien. The Hstart countered by citing Romney’s own record of employing illegals to tend his lawn. The business strategist, Bizstrat and the Blue-collar strategist, Bluestrat were always at each other’s throats but had kept their uneasy truce for the fear of being fired. The campaign manager (CM) had to restore order within minutes of opening the meeting by separating the warring strategists from each other’s throats. 

Then the chief polling officer (3CPO) prepared to reel out his polling data of the key issues in South Carolina. Everybody knew that South Carolina was the real test of their team. This was for 3 main reasons. Firstly, the Romney-Mixer had turned the knobs far enough left on many issues to suit the New Hampshire market. Now he would have to turn them around far enough right to suit the South Carolina market. This was not an easy task. Secondly, they knew that Santorum, Perry and Gingrich were already ‘far out’ on the right side and had vowed to make their last stands in South Carolina; at least Perry and Gingrich had vowed so. Thirdly, Ron Paul, the perennial nutcase had suddenly loomed as a threat. The team didn’t even have a strategist that could counter Paul and the Mixer would have been clueless how to mix the existing ingredients that would make the Romneys look like or unlike Paul. It was imperative that 3CPO came up with very fine poll numbers or the Romney team would meet their first defeat. The tension was palpable in the room.

The 3CPO began, “I have the following data. 16% of the Palmetto state wants Romney to be Romney, 28% wants him to be not Romney, another 15 % want him to be Baptist or Presbyterian but there are another 6 % who want him to continue as a Mormon. 12% prefer him to be a Catholic while 19% said they would send him to purgatory if he tries to pull a Newt on them at this late stage. And anyway, Romney’s Confessional would be outright insipid compared to Newt’s colorful one. 62% want him to give them affordable healthcare but 80% want him to repeal Obamacare even if it is affordable. 60% want him to attack Iran while 75% want him to bring back the troops. 35% want him to cut Federal budget and 45% want him to get them jobs, in Federal Government preferably. 20% want him to attack Newt for being anti-party while 30% want Newt to attack him for being anti-conservative. 25% want him to be like Ron Paul when Paul talks about the federal spending. 20% want him to be like Santorum when Santorum is frothing at the mouth against gays, abortions and liberals. 15% want him to be like Perry when Perry is not debating or doing math. 10% want him to be like Newt when Newt is asleep. 5% want him to be like Huntsman but they didn’t know who was Huntsman.”

“Oh Maah God! I ain’t so good at math mahself but that one there is gonna add up to a million percent, you betcha!” the Blue-collar strategist exclaimed. He used to work for Governor Perry and taught him math back in Texas.

3CPO delivered his polling numbers of the Palmetto state in a single breath (like Shankar Mahadevan’s Breathless) and slumped in the chair. Just then there were two distinct sounds. One was the sound of a soft thump when the Mixer fell down in a heap with a dazed expression on his face. The other was the electrical cracking sound that came from the Mixer’s Romney-mixing machine as it short-circuited automatically after hearing the polling numbers.

Deep Inside a Romney Strategy Session

As an Indian American blogger of American political matters I was given a special observer seat at a recent campaign strategy session by Gofernor Mitt Vhomney’s Stoff (this is how the words ‘Governor Mitt Romney’s Staff’ sound when you speak with your tongue firmly in cheek!). Anyway, I thanked his campaign staff profusely and took my seat as an observer and here is what transpired at the strategy session:

Note: All the comments in parentheses are mine. They are also made with my tongue firmly in cheek but if I transcribe them the way I transcribed the words ‘Gofernor Mitt Vhomney’s Stoff’, then most of my readers (about thwee or foub mibbion of them) will not understand them. So I am sticking to how they would sound as if my tongue was not in my cheek. My readers should take a note.)

Note 2: The strategy session happened after the NH primary where Mitt Romney got 20% of the vote and NotMitt Romney, also played by Mitt Romney, got the remaining 19%. (The Academy of Motion Pictures is seriously considering nominating Mitt Romney for playing several roles simultaneously, successfully. Kamla Hassan is rumored to have applied for apprenticeship with Romney for taking tips in order to better his performance in dasavatharam. The Academy is waiting for the Republican nomination process to be over before doing their own nomination for the Oscars. Other serious contenders include Rick Santorum posing as a semi-liberal in California, Newt Gingrich posing as a conscientious candidate since his conversion to Catholicism and as a devoted and non-fornicating husband since his marriage to Callista, Ron Paul acting as a decent human being by disowning his own bigoted newsletters and Rick Perry playing the role of Albert Einstein in an upcoming Telemundo serial.) This gave the Mitt Romenys a total of 39% vote in the New Hampshire. A great victory for the many Mitt Romneys any way you slice it.

Participants:

Campaign manager: One of the many campaign managers for the Romney campaign (the extra campaign managers are going to be fired sometime when the campaign has made enough profit on their services. This is called the Bain Capital strategy.)

CPO: Chief Polling Officer; also called 3CPO by the rest of the staff because he speaks in many tongues (this quality is much prized by the campaign and the candidate himself. After all, the entire campaign is based on the candidate’s uncanny ability to successfully speak different languages to different people).

Estrat: Evangelical Strategist, responsible for the many Romneys’ evangelical postures. He makes sure that every Mitt Romney is pro-life, anti-gay marriage, pro-gun, anti-planned parenthood, anti-Hollywood, anti-gays-in the-military, pretty much anti-everything.

Mstrat: Moderate Strategist, responsible for the many Romneys’ moderate postures making sure that every Mitt Romney is exactly opposite of the above.

Bizstrat: Business Strategist, responsible for the Romneys’ business-friendly postures. He makes sure that every Mitt Romney is pro-business, pro-small-business, pro-big-business, anti-regulation, anti-taxation, pro-NAFTA, and so on.

Bluestrat: Blue-collar Strategist, responsible for the many Romneys’ blue-collar-friendly postures. He makes sure that every Mitt Romney is exactly opposite of the Bizstrat. 

Istrat: Anti-immigration strategist, responsible for the many Romneys’ anti-immigration postures. He makes sure that every Mitt Romney is anti-amnesty, anti-NAFTA, anti-those-businesses-that-hire-illegals, anti-Spanish language, anti-in-state tuition fees for illegals etc.

Hstrat: Hispanic Strategist, responsible for the many Romneys’ pro-Hispanic postures. He makes sure that every Mitt Romney is anti-everything that the Anti-immigration strategist does. 

Mixer: This is the most important post in the Romney campaign. This guy is responsible for mixing the ingredients from all the above strategists and creates a new Mitt Romney for every public appearance of the candidate. He has a machine with a bunch of dials and knobs that Mitt Romney sticks to his head before every campaign appearance. Then the mixer feeds in the data from 3CPO and does his magic with the dials and knobs. Out comes a new, highly calibrated Mitt Romney that appeals to the particular audience. This guy gets paid by the percentage of vote the many Romneys get, minus the vote percentage attributed to the original Mitt Romney. This guy started with 99% Mitt Romney and 1% NotMitt flavor back in the days when Mitt Romney was the Governor of Massachsetts, and today in NH he has almost surpassed the original Mitt Romney percentage (as I explained before, Mitt Romney got 20% and NotMitt got 19%). This guy’s goal is to reverse the original ratio he started with. By the time the Romney campaign conquers the other Bible belt states, he will have achieved his ambition. 

To be continued...

From Iowa to New Hampshire

The Iowans finally settled on Rick Santorum as the official not-Mitt Romney. However, Mitt’s campaign of dissimulation by faking himself to be not-Mitt Romney also bore fruit by dint of the millions he spent on this image makeover. Roughly the same number of Iowans believed that Mitt Romney was not Mitt Romney as those who believed that Mitt Romney was Mitt Romney but Rick Santorum was not Mitt Romney. Also Iowa showed the rest of America that the state contained about 22% people with a questionable grasp on reality by voting for Ron Paul. This figure was later used by Iowa’s perpetual Governor Terry Branstad to demand more federal funds for the care of patients with mental issues. 

Michelle Bachman garnered only 6% of the vote and once again showed exceptionally unsound judgment by dropping out of the race. Bachman’s exit has considerably reduced the leeway to several humor columnists and bloggers. I am sure that I could have collected a substantial amount of money from like-minded people for Ms Bachman to stay in the race, just to get her to expound her theories on other topics similar to vaccinations. With that, my secret wish for another masterpiece like ‘Who’s Pricking Bachman’ (similar to ‘Who’s Nailin Paylin’) or some such corny title faded away. Perry garnered 10% of votes. These 10% had severe mathematical challenges and could not count beyond two; hence they never realized that Perry could not name the third colossal example of federal waste. Jon Huntsman (who dat again?) was perplexed when he actually garnered some votes and mumbled something in Chinese. The most interesting result was the 13% garnered by Newt. Within a couple of weeks, Romney’s Super Pac had pulled down Newt from a front-runner to an also-ran. Newt didn’t take this lightly.

When I was in college, one of our most beloved movies was Tezaab where Madhuri Dixit took our collective breaths away with her ethereal beauty (and much else!). But the movie also had other highlights. One of them stayed in my mind. This is when Munna (Anil Kapoor, the protagonist of the movie) and his pals visit Lotiya Pathan (the villain character played by Kiran Kumar) in his den and destroy it. Just before the interval, Lotiya Pathan surveys the destruction of his empire with a boiling rage and solemnly swears thus: ‘ab Lotiya ki zindagi ka sirf ek hi maqsad hai, Munna ki tabaahi!’ (Henceforth, Lotiya lives for one and only one goal in life, to destroy Munna!). When Mitt Romney’s Super Pac practically destroyed the nascent and ephemeral Newt Gingrich rise in Iowa polls, Newt vowed something similar. Henceforth he would live for the sole purpose of hurting Romney, the fake conservative, the moderate Massachusetts manipulator, the epitome of everything that was wrong with Republican Party in Newt’s exalted opinion. This was going to be just another war of Northern Aggression, where once again the son of soil from Georgia was going to be locking horns with the carpetbagger Yankee from Massachusetts, but the Georgian was damned if he was going down quietly. And anyway, as a History professor from some third-rate college in the South, Newt’s grasp of history was tenuous at best, the millions paid to him by Freddy Mac for giving them history lessons notwithstanding.

And Newt had legitimate grievances against Romney. Newt believed that a few connubial indiscretions were hardly worth commenting upon, especially by his own Party-people. What are a couple of discarded wives and a few extra-marital dalliances, between the torchbearers of the Conservatism? Newt felt that the attacks sponsored by Romney’s Super Pac were a transgression of the oath of a positive campaign that Newt had taken. Nobody had the temerity to ask Newt if his oath of positive campaign was also reciprocated by others in the field. And Newt’s oath of a positive campaign can be summarized by an apt Hindi proverb: ‘Sau choohe kha ke billi chali hajj ko’ (The cat dons the mantle of penance after gorging on a hundred mice. I think the flavor of the Hindi proverb is impossible to impart to an English translation). But in spite of Newt’s height of hypocrisy, he remained a potent threat to the rest of the Republican field. They, especially Romney, never knew when Newt might don a suicide bomber vest and take down the entire Republican field in an orgy of mutual recriminations gleefully thrown about at a nationally televised debate. They wanted the ex-speaker to stop speaking altogether. Bill Clinton had a Schadenfreude moment when he recalled how he had cautioned against this ex-speaker when he was not ex and was merely boinking his soon-to-be ex-wife (the one who had cancer) and also his much later-to-be ex-wife while simultaneously ranting about Bill Clinton’s ex-tra curricular activities. But Newt, like Lotiya pathan, was way past sensible politicking and was baying for Romney’s fake conservative blood. He found some investors (rumor has it that the Obama-camp gleefully orchestrated the financing of Newt’s post-Iowa revenge trip) who financed his Revenge Super Pac that launched TV ads that could really hurt Romney, especially in the general election. Newt always believed in scorched earth policies.

During all this time, Rick Santorum enjoyed his moment in the sun. Finally the thick-headed Iowans had figured out that he was not Mitt Romney, even though he lost that race by 8 votes. He took it as a nationwide endorsement of his bigoted policies of anti-abortions (even though he and his wife had come within a whisker of having their own abortion, in fact, the purists might have accused the Santorums of having opted for an abortion when they opted to inject Mrs Santorum with a drug that probably eventually caused her miscarriage), anti-homosexuality (which he equated with bestiality, polygamy and a host of other Biblical transgressions), anti-federal spending (even though his signature was there on the famous ‘bridge-to-nowhere’ earmark and hundreds of other earmarks) and many other typical right-wing shibboleths. This is a special feature of the Iowa caucuses – they always throw up the most rabid candidates. Mostly they make the rest of the sane America throw up in disgust. 

So on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, it still looked like Mitt Romney and his other avatars were likely to romp home, in the granite state at least. Gingrich looks set to self-combust at the altar of revenge, Rick Santorum looks set to eventually self-combust in his zeal to appear like the Old Testament disciplinarians, but that would probably require the Super Tuesday. Ron Paul would peter out somewhere between the Granite State and the Super Tuesday as he always does. Huntsman would make a feeble showing in NH but being a Mormon businessman would realize the futility of throwing good money after bad and retire after endorsing the front-running Mormon. The Iowa caucus was the fun time, from NH onwards the fun will diminish unless either Gingrich or Santorum continue to stand up. I know I will be rooting for either of them.