GOP searches for its Mondale

Whatever else you may say about this election cycle’s Republican nomination process, you have to admit that it has not lacked for entertainment value. This week Rick Perry treated us to quite a show courtesy of his widely-discussed YouTube video aimed at primary voters in Iowa, where the first major electoral event of the 2012 election will take place in just a few weeks.

In the video, which was targeted at staunch social conservatives, Perry promises voters that he will end President Obama’s “war on religion.” He looks into the camera and earnestly tells voters that “there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.”

If you’re anything like me, your reaction to hearing that runs along the lines of – Jiminy Cricket! President Obama has somehow passed legislation preventing children from celebrating Christmas and praying in school and I completely missed it? Why didn’t I hear about this on Fox News?!?!

I immediately went into research mode after viewing this video, trying to figure out how the President had managed to implement a covert plan to stamp out Christmas celebrations and praying in class so far under the radar. Are children being pulled off Santa’s lap in the shopping malls and remanded into custody? Are they being sent to the principal’s office when caught silently praying before their big geometry test? I had to know.

If anything like that has been happening, I could find no evidence of it. In fact I could not locate a single piece of legislation the President has signed that would prevent any child from celebrating Christmas or praying anywhere he or she might choose to pray.

It is true that there are laws in place, and they have been in place for many years, that prevent public school officials from leading prayers or having specifically religious celebrations of any kind. But those laws did not originate under President Obama, and it seems unlikely that a Rick Perry presidency would lead to their undoing.

The ad is both silly and misleading, and it’s no wonder that under the YouTube rating system it had garnered, at last count, 660,000 dislike votes against only 20,000 likes. A good attack ad can be effective even when it distorts the truth a bit, but you can’t just make up ridiculous claims that bear no relation to reality. Many Christians are passionate about their beliefs, Rick, but they aren’t stupid.

On the bright side, Perry was already fading in the polls before he committed this belly-flop, so the whole incident has been something of a sideshow. Still, the whole Republican nominating process has had the air of a slow-motion car wreck. Prospective primary voters seem to have been sorting through the candidates one-by-one, and then systematically discarding each as they hold them up to the light for a close look.

The current front-runner, Newt Gingrich, definitely has spirit and an active intellect and seems to have convinced social conservatives that he is finally settled on a wife he can stay faithful to after a series of infidelities and divorces. But really, can you imagine the phrase “President Newt Gingrich” actually becoming a reality? I can’t.

The Republicans seem to be headed down the same road the Democrats found themselves on in 1984 and 1988, when they nominated candidates who appealed to the extreme left wing of their party but left moderate, non-partisan voters (who end up deciding general elections) cold. And they got trounced as a result.

If the Republicans nominate anyone other than Mitt Romney, I fear they are heading for a similar fate. Romney is unpopular with the far right wing of the party because of his moderate-leaning past (which he has tried to renounce) and because he doesn’t go to the right church.

But unless they want a second helping of “hope and change”, they’d better decide if Romney would at least be a better alternative, or if they want to “Mondale” this election.