Mr. Wrong

by Kevin Theis

You would think that, in the pundit world, there would be rules about how often you can be dead wrong before your credentials are stripped away and you are no longer considered a Serious Journalist. This being the land of the free and the home of the brave, however, no such rules exist.

You can be wrong, wrong again and then dead wrong and still carry on as if nothing happened. Case in point: William Kristol.

I've written about Kristol before (he's "Pie-Face" to my regular readers (do I have regular readers?)) and his abysmal track record is there for anyone to see. He was a big Bush supporter (wrong), a strong backer of the war in Iraq (wrong), he predicted that Obama would never beat Hillary Clinton (wrong) and, most famously, Kristol was the guy who was responsible for bringing Sarah Palin to prominence (can you get any more wrong?).

So now Pie-Face is predicting the 2012 election. And guess who's going to win? Surprise! It's a super-duper right-wing conservative!

I suspect that the person most likely to break into this group of front-runners would be a businessman who stands up against President Obama's big-government proposals, a retired general who objects to Obama's foreign policy or a civic activist who rallies the public against some liberal outrage. If a Republican elected official emerges, it will probably be because he or she champions some populist cause, not because that person is a fine representative or senator or governor.

Yeah! Damn libruls! They're ruining the country! And after Bush took such good care of it, too!

This gets better, the more you read. See, in Kristol's world, this is not simply a center-right country, as many have claimed. It's a far-right country. And a far-right country, obviously, will want a far right candidate. The GOP itself, foundering because it keeps trying to tack to the center, MUST lurch sharply right or it will lose the base. So who best represents Republican (read: American) values? Who else?

The center of gravity, I suspect, will instead lie with individuals such as Palin and Huckabee and Gingrich, media personalities like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and activists at town halls and tea parties. Some will lament this -- but over the past year, as those voices have dominated, conservatism has done pretty well in the body politic, and Republicans have narrowed the gap with Democrats in test ballots.

That's right. The center of gravity is...way, way, way off to the right. I mean...Glenn Beck is good for the Republican Party? Only if GOP is going to stand for Glenn's Obama Paranoia.

These people- Palin, Gingrich, Beck and Limbaugh- are the most polarizing mouthpieces that the Republicans have to offer. And Kristol, that genius, is somehow claiming that they represent the bright and shining future of the party.

Okay, Bill. Whatever you say. Keep up the good work.