Randi Rhodes: Nonsense & Nines

Last night featured another installment in the series of Republican debates de jour. Last night actually seemed to have been a little longer than usual since the last debate, meaning I don’t remember there being a debate yesterday afternoon. It looks like Mitt Romney’s frontrunner status has been solidified—kind of like his hair. The rest of them look like lunatics, while Romney merely looks like a slick liar. It’s a question of insanity versus insincerity.

Rick Perry barely said a thing. That may be the best chance he has. At one point, Perry actually said “Mitt’s had six years to be working on a plan. I’ve been in this for about eight weeks.” Brilliant. What’s that boil down to? “Vote for me—I’m much less prepared.” Rick, do you ever listen to what you are saying? I have bad news for you—other people are listening.

Herman Cain couldn’t have been pushing his dumb “9-9-9” economic plan any harder if he offered free crazy bread and a large soda if you ordered it. Cain wants everybody to know the name of his plan. Well, that’s a lot better than letting people know what’s actually in that cockamamie plan. It’s like a brand of sausage—it has to have a catchy name, because if people found out what’s in it, they would be horrified.

At one point Michele Bachmann said “When you take the 9-9-9 plan and you turn it upside down, I think the devil is in the details.” OK, Michele. We’re still a long ways from Halloween to be getting quite that spooky. It was a 666, Beast of the Apocalypse joke! That’s disturbing. What’s even more disturbing is that to a lot of Bachmann’s followers, it wasn’t a joke. Michele seems to be saying that Cain’s 9-9-9 plan would harness the dark power of Satan himself. Actually, that’s the only way it could possibly work. In fact, Satan would take one look at Cain’s 9-9-9 plan and say “Sorry, but this plan is simply unworkable. Hello! I’m evil, not stupid.” Besides, you would really have a rough time passing Cain’s economic plan—almost as hard as it would be passing an extra-cheese Godfather’s pizza. And if you managed to do it, the result would be the same.

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