THE OUTRAGED ELEPHANT!

By Edwin Cooney

As Republicans gather in hurricane-ravaged Tampa, Florida this week, they face a long-term serious dilemma.  They risk enraging their party symbol the Elephant.  It may not be entirely accurate, but I’ve been told that a pissed pachyderm can be nearly as destructive as any hurricane!

It’s an historical fact that the Elephant has been the symbol of the Republican Party since the presidential campaign of 1876, our national centennial.  That year, cartoonist Thomas Nast drew him as the Grand Old Party’s mascot to counter the Democratic symbol the Donkey. There’s something, after all, quite American about a hard working (although stubborn) jackass, but my understanding is that the elephant’s roots are more permanently implanted in Africa and Asia!  Be that as it may, after the 2006 Congressional Election, I interviewed Abe, the GOP Elephant, and Jack, the democratic Donkey, for this column. Having met them personally, I know they’re real.

Here’s the dilemma: the party is absolutely sure of only one thing and that is that it’s their patriotic duty to rid America of that “audacious, radical, left wing, terrorist foreigner” who’s determined not only to tax your last dime, but also to give the oil-richest part of the Alaskan archipelago back to the Russians secretly and free of charge.  Even worse, or just as bad, he’s arranged it so that in just a short time your disabled grandmother will be forced to commit suicide in order to keep down the costs of Obamacare -- which many conservatives regard as unconstitutional regardless of what Chief Justice John Roberts says!

Meanwhile, if Hurricane Isaac lets them, they’ll nominate two respectable men, Willard (Mitt) Romney of Massachusetts, who was born and raised in Michigan (the son of George Romney, a former governor of that state) and Paul Ryan, the young Wisconsin economic ideological “wunderkind.”  It’s possible, of course, that the party, loaded with money, its own right-wing media, and its very own brand of intense anger, will unseat “that uppity Obama.” However, even if the Republican Party does unseat Obama, there are signs that it is likely to consume its new president once it has him in place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The first sign is the high regard most of its angriest ideologues have for its possible vice president, Paul Ryan.  Distrusting, as many of them do, the politically wily Governor Romney, they are excited about his running mate because they are convinced that Vice President Ryan would see to it that President Romney would live up to their socio/economic agenda.

Since there’s no historical precedent for vice presidential dominance over any president, a President Romney is likely to believe that it is his prerogative, rather than Vice President Ryan’s, to set the tone and agenda for his own administration.

The second sign lies in the GOP of my youth, the early 1950s.  When Dwight D. Eisenhower took office in 1953, the Republicans not only regained the White House for the first time since Herbert Hoover defeated Al Smith (the cigar chomping, wet Catholic Democrat) back in 1928, but they also had majorities in both houses of Congress.  The party had been in the minority for so long -- in opposition to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Harry Truman’s Fair Deal and conduct of the Korean War -- that it wasn’t used to cooperating with a president.  So, in a number of ways, the GOP didn’t.  They nearly rejected Ike’s nomination of Charles (Chip) Bohlen as Ambassador to France because he’d once worked for and had been close to the hated FDR.  Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin began his Communist witch hunt against Ike’s beloved army and Senator John Bricker of Ohio -- who had been Thomas E. Dewey’s vice presidential running mate in 1944 -- sought to restrict Ike’s capacity to negotiate treaties with other nations with his proposed Bricker Amendment.  Ike, being Ike, was able (with Lyndon B. Johnson's help) to kill the Bricker amendment in the United States Senate by one vote.

However considerable Mitt Romney’s administrative assets are, he doesn’t even come close to Ike in experience or influence either in or out of the GOP. However, he would have the upper hand of policy setting in the executive branch of the government, as he by tradition and constitutionally should, once “Barack the Bad” is gone.

Hence, there comes into play their enraged Elephant.  There’s little doubt that Abe sympathizes with his party’s frustration with President Obama and will cheer on a possible Romney victory come November.  However, and this is important, elephants are vegetarians rather than carnivorous—-they never, never, never eat their young nor do they eat their leaders.  The very thought absolutely infuriates them.  If GOP conservatives, in their angry dogmatism, declare Mitt Romney “a one term president” as they did President Obama, Abe will reduce the flimsy GOP political shelter to shambles.

You can be sure of one other thing.  Abe, who never forgets his pledge of loyalty to his leader, is not happy about the possibility of being replaced as the GOP symbol by a lousy tea bag!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY