Tom on Super Tuesday

 So after Super Tuesday, the General Election campaign has started.  Mr. Trump, in his own inimitable style, kicked off the race by making fun of Joe Biden's stutter.  But our expectations of Mr. Trump are so low at this point that nobody seems to notice anymore, certainly not his Kool-Aid drinking followers.  Even moderate Republicans, (the few that are left), make excuses for him, saying that: "He didn't really  mean it", or "He was just joking".  It's funny how his "jokes" are not remotely amusing.  They're cruel barbs designed to wound and hurt.  It takes a real man to boast about sexually assaulting women, or to denigrate the sacrifices of those folks who served their country, be it in peace or war. He reserves a particular contempt for those who suffered wounds in the course of their service, calling these folks "suckers", and "losers''.  And if you're a Gold Star parent, he minimizes the ultimate sacrifice made by your son or daughter, especially if you're a Democrat.  And if you happen to be a Democratic Gold Star parent who happens to be of Indian descent, you're doubly damned.  But I didn't go to my keyboard to rail against Mr. Trump.  As the late Rep. Louise Day Hicks, (D-South Boston), once noted: "You know where I stand" 

Let us instead talk about some of the emerging Republican "stars" who gained prominence on super Tuesday.  Take Sen. Katie Britt, who gave the rebuttal to Mr.Biden's State of the Union Address this past Wednesday.  She was a cheerleader in high school, (which should come as no big surprise, because she still cheers for the GOP, God's Own Party), and she was once Alabama's "Junior Miss':).  Interestingly she was one of 19 valedictorians of her HS graduating class.  Perhaps that signal honor was reserved for those lucky graduates who managed to learn to read during their 12 long years of schooling.

Anyway, she showed her complete lack of personal integrity when she dedicated part of her rebuttal to a teary story of a woman who was the victim of sex trafficking from the time she was 12 until she was 16.   Sen. Britt blamed this horrific story on the immigration policies and actions of the Biden Administration.  Except she happened to leave out a few inconvenient facts.  One was that the abuse referred to in Sen. Britt's rebuttal took place in the early 2000s, when Joe Biden was a Senator, not during the Biden Administration as Britt infers.  The alleged exploitation actually took place during the George W. Bush administration, if we're keeping score.  All of the purported abuse took place in Mexico, organized by Mexican human traffickers who provided underaged girls for the pleasure of visiting tourists, some of whom may have been Alabama constituents of Britt's.  In a recent note, I made a comment about not letting the facts get in the way of a good story, and that holds here as well.

Sen. Britt's delivery of her rebuttal was seriously weird.  Sometimes her delivery was sort of breathy; the kind of thing that you might see in a Lifetime movie just before the heroine kisses her studly suitor and the director mercifully fades to a commercial.

Sometimes she reminded me of a girl who's slightly tipsy, over pronouncing her wods just a bit. and on one occasion she gave the sort of sniff that any frequent cocaine user would recognize.  

But such rebuttals can be treacherous. When Florida Sen. Marco Rubio gave one, he stopped, mid-sentence, to take a glass of water from someone off-camera, and guzzle it as if he'd just returned from a trip to the Mojave Desert. (link: https://youtu.be/19ZxJVnM5Gs?si=IC9RP4DGjKCkC3i1)  

Then-Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal  opened his rebuttal by wishing those tuned in a "Happy Mardi Gras'. (link: https://youtu.be/QFK8aTpYAmg?si=dXUBakQ2hb4dvVSn)  Jindal was a notorious policy wonk who had an extraordinarily high 'Geek Quotient', so nobody shouldn't have been surprised when he blew his chance at political fame and fortune. 

Michell Bachman was clearly distracted by something occurring off camera during her rebuttal, and we never did find out whether it was some gyrating Chippendale dancer, or a newly discovered corpse. (link: https://youtu.be/1fRxO_Yx99I?si=bq4Lz8h8C1ZzJEji)

Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy appeared to be on the verge of tears during his rebuttal. (link: https://youtu.be/5RKmiivRrBU?si=XtubwdhMCygbS0mw)

 To be fair, I should note that some managed to use their rebuttals to make political hay. Bill Clinton,  Nikki Haley, Gretchen Whitmer, and Paul Ryan all acquitted themselves well.  But the rebuttal is a poisoned chalice more often than not, and a savvy politician would do well to avoid this opportunity that has trapped many.