Drawing by Jordan Awan
I admit to being obsessed with the Republican race for president. At some point, I'll probably have to stop enjoying Donald Trump and start worrying about what he'll do to the country if he is actually elected president. Not there yet, however. George Will opened a recent column with this sentence:
Every sulfurous belch from the molten interior of the volcanic Trump phenomenon injures the chances of a Republican presidency.
I think that is probably right, and it is enough for me to keep enjoying his shtick for a while longer.
According to the Real Clear Politics average of polls, Trump is currently leading the Republican field in Iowa by seven points, in New Hampshire by fifteen, and in the whole country by fourteen. There has been a lot of speculation, including by me, that he would not fare well with Iowa's legions of evangelical Christian voters. Speaking for myself, however, I was not meaning to suggest that his margin of victory in Iowa was going to be somewhat less than his overall margin in the country. I meant that he was going to crash and burn in Iowa. So far, that isn't happening.
And, it must be said, his lead in Iowa, where the fundamentalists supposedly rule, is standing up in the immediate aftermath of The Donald having declined to share with some political reporters about his favorite bible verses. He saw where the question was headed and cut off the interviewer before the question was out there, which, depending on whether this was before or after he demonstrated he didn't know a lot about some of the personalities in the Middle East, may or may not have been a learned strategy for compensating for a void. Anyway, at least one witty evangelical--no, not necessarily an oxymoron--has a lot of amusing contributions for the Twitterverse game (#TrumpBible) of guessing at how Trump might have answered, if he had answered. The whole thing is here. A few of my favorites follow.
And Jesus went out into the desert. But he should’ve invested in hotels there. I mean, I’m killing it in Vegas. A LOT of money. #TrumpBible
Love covers a multitude of sins. Sure. But you’d be nuts not to get a prenup. I mean, c’mon. #TrumpBible
Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. For a season. #TrumpBible
And Pharaoh said to Moses, “Do you know how many Hispanics I have working for me?” #TrumpBible
Sarah lived to be a hundred and twenty-seven years old, but even young she was nothing to look at, so you can just imagine. #TrumpBible
The Donald is the gift that keeps giving, and it is evident that what pass for wise men in the Republican party establishment are now officially worried that George Will is right and that the biggest beneficiary will turn out to be a pant-suited Democrat unschooled in the ways of e-mail.
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