GOP Insiders Proclaim – No Fools On Our Ticket!

With New Year’s Day in the middle of the week, business won’t get back to full volume here in Washington until this coming Monday, when I am booked up solid for ten hours of consultations.  The rest of next week is like that too, and so when Gretchen had to begin offering clients the choice of Monday, January 13 or today, a quite substantial number of them decided to cut their holiday season a couple of days short and book a Saturday appointment.  There were so many of them, in fact, that I had eight hours of consultations starting at ten in the morning.
My four o’clock appointment was Jack Dartmouth Ripper, of the United States Chamber of Commerce.  I give the man credit for showing up for a policy consultation on a Saturday wearing a $9,000 bespoke suit ensemble.  He immediately chose the chair to the right of my desk and leaned in, at once both concerned and conspiratorial.
“You know Tom,” he began, “a lot of people in this town are worried that Karl Rove may recently have gone insane.”
“Recently?” I responded with a noncommittal tone.
“Right.”  Jack gave me a curt nod.  “Understood.   What I meant was, they fear Karl Rove has gone from being an insufferable, amoral, scheming, plotting megalomaniac to being an overt, raving lunatic.”
“How so?” I inquired, changing my tone to one of interested innocence.
“Oh, come on,” Jack shot back, “it’s general knowledge, what he did, telling Megyn Kelly on Fox News that everybody thinks the Tea Party has taken the Republican Party hostage, but that if you, and I quote, ‘check the basement room in Warehouse C off Fleet Street in Baltimore, you will find that that is simply not the case.’”

“Well,” I conceded, “it’s obvious there’s something wrong with his brain if he goes around spouting sentences so badly constructed he has to say ‘that that’ in order to render them comprehensible.  And what’s more, Warehouse C off Fleet Street in Baltimore belongs to the Russian Mafia, not the Tea Party – and although I admit that sometimes it may be difficult for a lay person to tell the difference between those two organizations, a high priest of Byzantine skulduggery like Rove should be able to do so.”
“Indeed,” Jack agreed.
“Besides,” I pointed out, “the Tea Party keeps its hostages in the Koch Industries warehouse on Dyess Avenue at the Port of Charleston, South Carolina.  Rove knows that, I’m sure.  But maybe there’s a simple explanation – perhaps he was stinking drunk.”
“If only it were that simple,” Jack fretted.  “We could catch him with a DUI and ship him off to rehab.  But unfortunately, Rove’s not a lush, and we’re thinking perhaps he’s becoming… unhinged.”
“If Karl Rove does, in fact, go batspit looney,” I shrugged, “it certainly won’t be the first time that a job in Washington DC sent an obsessive narcissist to the nut house, would it?“
“No,” Jack conceded, “but right now, Karl’s at the helm of a combined effort between the US Chamber of Commerce and his own Super PAC, American Crossroads, to defeat Tea Party candidates in the 2014 Republican primaries!  Tom, the business community is desperate to have some Republicans in Congress who will legislate, not filibuster and obstruct!  US Chamber of Commerce member firms need new tax breaks, more gutted federal regulations, more oversight laws to hamstring the SEC, the NRC, the EPA… all the usual suspects!  We haven’t had the kind of corporate… um…”
“Socialism?” I helpfully interjected.
“…support, yes, that’s the word I was looking for,” he continued, “the kind of corporate support from Congress that we multinational companies so urgently need to be competitive in global markets.  That’s why my boss, Scott Reed, told the media that when it comes to the 2014 Republican primaries, the US Chamber of Commerce needs the candidates it backs to sweep the field – there simply cannot be any loser candidates.  And that will be our mantra, Tom – No Fools On Our Ticket!”
“Let me get this straight,” I sought to determine, “you’re worried about Karl Rove having toys in the attic after saying something about the Tea Party taking hostages, while your own chief political strategist over there at the US Chamber of Commerce tells the world that ‘No Fools On Our Ticket’ is your campaign slogan?”
“Not slogan,” Jack protested.  “Mantra!”
Placing both palms together and closing my eyes, I chanted, “No Fools On Our Ticket, No Fools On Our Ticket, No Fools On Our Ticket, No Fools on Our Ticket, No Fools On Our Ticket…”
“Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot!” Jack exclaimed.  “What are you doing, Tom?” he demanded.
“Testing out your new mantra,” I explained.  “I don’t think I’m getting any delta waves from it, though.”
“Okay,” Jack huffed, a bit miffed, “so maybe ‘mantra’ wasn’t the best word to describe ‘No Fools On Our Ticket,’ so what?”
“Well,” I prodded, “if it’s not a mantra and it’s not a slogan, what is it?”
“Hell, I don’t know,” Jack muttered in frustration, “how about… ah… how about… er… about… oh, oh, I’ve got it!  ‘No Fools On Our Ticket’ is the US Chamber of Commerce motto for the 2014 Republican primaries, that’s what it is – our motto!”
“You mean,” I inquired, “that ‘No Fools On Our Ticket’ is, ‘a phrase chosen as encapsulating or representing the beliefs or ideals which guide or inspire’ the US Chamber of Commerce?”
“Jesus, Tom,” Jack complained, “if you’re going to go and apply all the frigging definitions for what ‘No Fools On Our Ticket’ could be, then of course it sounds incredibly stupid.  So okay, point taken.  Give me a break, will you?  Look Tom, the reason Scott sent me here today is, okay, well, frankly, we’re worried that this strategy of using big, big money to push Tea Party candidates off the ticket in the 2014 Republican primaries might… well, I guess you’d say… backfire.”
“Backfire?” I echoed, watching for his reaction.  He winced.
“Yeah, well,” he sighed, sagging into his chair and glancing contemplatively up at the ceiling, “we’ve got $50 million dedicated to this already, and it could go much, much, higher.  Call it a cost of doing business, I guess, but usually, when you spend money doing business, you get something for it, and we’re not all entirely in agreement that’s what’s going to happen.”
“Because,” I speculated, “of the gerrymandering?”
“That’s one thing, for sure,” Jack affirmed.  “Thanks to conservative Republican control of state legislatures across the nation during the redistricting based on the census of 2010, most of the existing congressional districts with incumbent Republicans look like Picasso painted them.”
“Actually,” I noted, “they look like Willem de Kooning painted them, but I know what you mean.  A typical Republican congressional district these days zig-zags through city and village on one side of the state to encompass all the barefoot, Bible-thumping creation-believing, snake-handling, tongues-speaking, Pentecost-obsessed evangelicals; then shrinks to twenty feet wide and jogs fifty miles up the Interstate median to grab a nice slice of remote rural country where the folks all love alcohol, tobacco and firearms while enjoying a healthy hatred for the federal government – except when it’s handing out farm subsidies, of course; then shrivels back down to ten feet wide so it can avoid a college town and snakes down into a major urban metropolitan area past black, Hispanic and middle class neighborhoods to pick up a cluster of gated communities with average annual household incomes over four hundred thousand dollars.”
“All perfectly legal,” Jack observed.  “That’s our system at work.”
“But it results,” I concluded, “in a problem for the US Chamber of Commerce and American Crossroads, because now, after years of gridlock on Capitol Hill, you want to spend wheelbarrows of Benjamins backing candidates who will make deals with Democrats instead of simply saying ‘no’ to everything the Democrats propose, and you don’t know if the barefoot Bible-thumpers, the remote rural gun-loving farmers – or even a majority of those millionaires in those gated communities, for that matter – will actually go along with your idea.”
“But we’ve got to do something!” Jack protested.  “Look at the situation!  Thanks to the Tea Party, the Republican Party is less popular than Congress, and my God, Congress is less popular than athlete’s foot!  Tell me Tom – how can we cope with this?  What’s the solution?”
“Recruit actors,” I suggested.
“Actors?” Jack repeated with a slack-jawed, amazed and puzzled expression.
“That’s right,” I confirmed, “you need to recruit actors.  Don’t go to your local or state Republican organizations and try to find the magical ‘moderate’ or ‘centrist’ candidate there, because all you will find is Republicans with a political death wish – Republicans who actually believe in something, and we both know, that something in which they believe isn’t the accepted troglodytic Tea Party doctrine.  Yet consider this – they think they can win the Republican primary in a congressional district such as the one I just described.  Did you say you don’t want any fools on your ticket?  I assume that applies to ‘moderate’ and ‘centrist’ fools, as well, doesn’t it?”
Jack stared at the floor for a moment.  “Yes,” he admitted, “I suppose it had better.”
“Precisely,” I agreed.  “So use those deep pockets to recruit handsome, well-spoken, glib and willing professional actors.  Place them in the Republican infrastructure as soon as possible, then back them with big, big bucks in the 2014 Republican primaries.  During those elections, have them follow carefully prepared scripts promising everything, for example, that the self-righteous Bible-thumpers, gun-toting farmers and isolated, selfish rich people in my hypothetical gerrymandered Republican congressional district want to hear.  But here’s the trick – when they’re doing that, have them use code words that only those groups will understand and relate to – phrases like ‘family values,’ ‘Constitutional freedoms’ and ‘individual responsibility’ instead of ‘anti-abortion,’ ‘unrestricted firearms’ and ‘cut welfare and social security in favor of even lower taxes for the one percent.’  Also note that using code words will offer the additional advantage that none of the members of the disparate groups of dupes – um, make that Republican voters –  comprising the gerrymandered congressional district will be able to understand what your candidate is promising to do for the others.  Instead, to those outside the target group, the code words will just sound like postive, patriotic happy-talk – much better than taking the risk of having some sincere, well-meaning moderate Republican idealist tell the public what they actually think; much better by far.  Then, after your actors have won their Republican primaries, you can have them deliver a moderate message – one which you will carefully tune to the polls in each general election congressional race.  And after your candidates are elected and arrive in Washington, you give them scripts which serve the interests of big business and the military-industrial complex, ensure that they perform those, and things will return to how they were back in the day, when the US Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street ran the show.” 
“It’s certainly an interesting proposal,” Jack allowed.  “But are you sure it’s a… viable solution?”
“Absolutely,” I assured him.  “It worked with Ronald Reagan, didn’t it?”
A pregnant pause ensued.  Then, without warning, Jack jumped up from his seat. “Tom – hurry – get to work on some of those scripts with the code words in them, right away!”
“My pleasure,”  vouched.
“I can’t imagine how we missed something so obvious,” he lamented as he made for the door.  “There’s not a minute to lose.  Can you email me the links for some… discreet actor casting agencies so they’ll be there when I get back to my office?”
“Consider it done,” I told him.
“Good!” Jack smiled.  “It’s going to be a long, hard weekend, but now there’s light at the end of the tunnel!”
“You bet!” I shouted as he rushed out, then mused quietly to myself, “Just make sure it’s not an oncoming train.”