Looking back on the general election, of all the bizarre experiences we collectively had, in many states, on many campaign related adventures that involved far too much Iowa for any one lifetime, the one that still haunts us is the Chicago Gay Pride Parade on June 29th, 2008.  We had spent two weeks trying to get the Democrats’ presumed nominee to attend his first-ever Pride Parade, right here in his hometown, but instead he decided to get his hair cut and play basketball at the tony East Bank Club downtown (because, Heaven knows, there are no hairdressers or rugged, athletic, shirtless basketball types who could have helped a candidate out anywhere NEAR Boystown on the last Sunday of June, in the middle of the largest Gay Pride Parade between New York and San Francisco…where it’s almost guarateed said haircutting and/or basketball playing would automatically result in a water and/or tickle fight of some kind, scored to the Weather Girls blaring off Rahm Emanuel’s strawberry-pink boombox). 

We were watching the parade slink by Sidetrack’s in Boystown, camped out at a choice air-conditioned spot by the big floor-to-ceiling windows, as our friend Jorge flaked on us to chase after a pastry chef he’d been after for a while (there are so many bakery-themed cruller, hot buns, and buttered rolls jokes we could do here, you have no idea). Left to our own devices, in Team Hillary rainbow-bedazzled shirts, we found ourselves in the company of a 50-something Republican and his 20-something “friend”, as the case typically is at Sidetrack’s.  This was very early in our Democrats for McCain efforts, and we were still, at the time, suppressing with great difficulty our indoctrinated impulses to run screaming from the room at the sight of any Republican (“Vampires.  That’s what they are. Vampires. Run, run and never look back,” the primitive, partisan, medulaoblongomacrat center of our brain egged on). 

“I voted for Hillary, you know.  I never thought I would say that, and I never thought I would like the woman, but man alive, did she fight.  She undid years of everything I thought about her and I see her as a real person now.  We all do.  Even Rush likes her. Sort of,” the Republican in front of us said, basking in the rainbow-sparkling Hillary tees dazzling before him, which, to be honest, are as 100% effective in warding off unfavorable remarks about our champ as garlic and Holy water are at fending off real vampires.  It’s hard to imagine anyone giving us a hard time about Clinton when we’re geared up with her big smiling face on our sparkly chests. 

But, it was even harder for us to imagine what the Republican said next…and it still leaves us stunned. 

He told us that while he would have preferred Hillary Clinton to the Democrats’ eventual nominee, Dr. Utopia, there was no way he was going to vote for John McCain, because McCain was too moderate.  He wasn’t going to vote for Dr. Utopia (though he might have voted for Clinton), so he was going to skip the first election in his adult life.  He just wasn’t going to vote, and launched into a long and still, to this day, head-scratching explanation of why he thought 4 years of economy-destroying, malaise-inducing, Carteresque buffoonary was better than electing John McCain the 44th President of the United States. 

“Because then we get a new Reagan after the new Carter,” he said, taking a long sip off his even longer Island ice tea, like a cat that had just finished doing something especially vile in secret somewhere, savoring every last drop of schemaliciousness. 

And his little friend, still in college, agreed with every word he said, before asking for a pair of twenties to buy another round, then cruising every last Aberzombie he passed en Byzantine route to the bar. 

The Republican said a lot more, but he might as well have been talking underwater because we were too stunned to hear most of it, on top of the distractions of the parade and a busy bar in general. By the time the massive Sidetrack’s float passed by the windows and the place really got loud with cheers for the rainbow-speedo-clad bartenders turned Pride Parade go-go boys on the bar’s sponsored float, a few more Log Cabin Republicans had joined us, including one whose name we never remember because he’s a dead-ringer for a young Troy Donahue (but we call him Tab Hunter, since that’s more fun to say, and most people we know don’t have a clue who we’re talking about anyway). 

Tab Hunter agreed with the first Republican, saying it was the opinion of Log Cabins at large that having 4 years of national acid reflux with Carter Redux was far more appealing than a one-term moderate presidency for John McCain (who very few ever expected to run again in 2012). 

We’ll never forget their faces, as the young “friend” returned with the round of drinks (but, conveniently, not any change) and everyone stared blankly at the floats passing by, firm in their belief that everything they knew would happen to the deficit, to inflation, to increased government graft and corruption, to an empowered and better-funded ACORN, in the four years Dr. Utopia would have in Washington would be markedly preferable to four years with a moderate Repubican in office. 

It was a parade of fools. 

And the lot of us in that bar, crossing the aisle for the first time in our lives, realized we were working much, much harder to elect McCain than REPUBLICANS were, and that was the scariest and craziest thing any of us had experienced in a long, long while. 

It still doesn’t make any damn sense, to be honest. Maybe it will in 2012. 

But, the video above of Schumer is no accident: it is part of a very well-orchestrated plan hatched at the DNC to use the MSM and every available platform to push a weak Republican candidate to face Dr. Utopia in the next election, to guarantee him a second term.  Schumer’s saying the GOP is too conservative, and needs to be moderate, but moderate is what cost the GOP the 2008 race. That’s like Oprah waking up one day and realizing little chocolate doughnuts, so delicious, are the cause of most of her girth and problems, yet deciding to order two vanloads of them today instead of her usual delivery. If something is a problem, you need more of it.  We have always been at war with Eastasia. This strategy is indeed doubleplusgood. 

Bobby Jindal is repeatedly pushed as the Webster to Dr. Utopia’s Arnold, the Deep Impact to his Armageddon, the Bug’s Life to his Antz.  Jindal is a fatally flawed national candidate who will be excoriated by the media once he’d become the Republican nominee.  It’s the same with Charlie Crist, who the media also pushes, much to the GOP’s detriment.  Crist and Jindal should never have a slot on a national ticket.  Because the MSM will indeed protect a Democrat from anything embarassing in his past (like his myriad latenight adventures in Chicago nightlife), but they will NOT extend the same ass-covering courtesy (literally) for someone with an R at the end of his name (or a Bob Mackie, Cher-inspired, sequined original in his closet, as the case may be). 

Mitt Romney has too much of a gooey center as well.  Though, if you listen to Schumer, you’d think he’d be just the candidate Republicans need, or at least just the candidate Democrats advise the Republicans they need, the same way the Washington Generals dutifully listen to every pointer Globetrotters like Schumer give them. 

Tab Hunter and the rest of the Log Cabin pride crowd aren’t going to get revved up for Romney any more than they were mad for McCain. “Let him have another term, and then in 2016, we can have a new Reagan, or even a new Bush, after eight years of Clinton, unless Clinton runs again, and then we’ll have to go back to hating her for no reason.”  We can just hear this nonsense now. 

We clearly want to see Sarah Palin take Dr. Utopia on in three years.  CLEARLY.  But, the MSM is having a very real effect on many Republicans we know here in Chicago:  more and more of them say that Palin can’t run for national office again because the MSM keeps pummeling her, and that Tina Fey will still be around to ridicule her more for the next three years, so Republicans should dump Palin and find someone who the MSM and SNL can’t make fun of. 

Good luck with that. 

Everyone can be made fun of.  

Bobby Jindal will be depicted with his exorcism kit, expelling demons from under every bed, evicting Satan from every closet…where Charlie Crist just HAPPENS to be hiding, trussed up like Charlotte Rae, pearl necklace courtesy of the regulars down at the Green Iguana in Tampa…where Mitt Romney enters, clad only in his sacred magic underwear, lost, mugged, and looking for a phone to call Salt Lake to send Elders to save him. 

Look what we did there, and we’re not even particularly original or talented. 

But, at least we’re aware enough to realize that NO MATTER WHO Republicans run, that person will be ripped to shreds by the MSM and an entire entertainment industry that EXISTS to belittle and bemoan conservativism. 

Republicans, in many ways, have themselves to blame for this.  What Schumer does NOT offer as advice is something we tell all of you each and every day: lay off the gays, stop using abortion as a wedge issue, and send your religious zealots to the back of the bus if you want fiscal conservativism to relate to people who would truly embrace you, if not for all the hate flung at them in the form of weaponized religion. 

Believe what you want.  Keep pictures of Tom Cruise, Nathan Lane, and us for all we care up on your dartboards.  Hate away!  But just shut your mouths in public about it.  Damn people to Hell silently, secure in your knowledge that you know best, but realize that all those male-male couples paying WAY TOO MUCH TAX on the spacious three bedroom condos they share on the Gold Coast with adorable labradoodles named Will and Grace would be votes you could have if not for Leviticus this or abomination that. 

Because we have enough Obamanation currently and don’t need an extra four years of it because of your myopic stupidity. 

And the greatest fear we have in this world, at this moment in time, is that we’re the only ones who see what the MSM and people like Schumer are doing:  they are setting Republicans up for a 2012 fall.  Mercifully, we were able to tell Michael Steele this in person when he was here in Chicago.  No one can ever say a group of Hillary Dems in Boystown didn’t warn the Republicans about the heaping helpings of Jindal, Crist, and Romney coming their way.  Robots sent from the future couldn’t have done a better job getting apocalypse-halting messages to the RNC than we did at the Union League Club (especially considering how we weren’t allowed in at first wearing jeans, and time-traveling cyborgs arrive completely nude in their temporal orbs, so we imagine the Union League Club would have had a problem with that too (but then again, maybe they just really, really hate jeans, but Austrian nudism is perfectly fine).