There ain't no Sanity Clause...
Why Romney Could Win The Election

Everything has been blamed for this excruciating summer, from global warming to flatulent cows. Everything, that is, except the noxious exhalation of politicians. - Alan Abelson

Romney photo courtesy: hiphopwired.com

(SASKATCHEWAN) - Think the Republican party has never been in such disarray? Think Barack Obama, with that dentist-approved winning smile, is enjoying a likability rating not limited to Democrats or even independents? Think there could be a landslide on November 6 that will sweep the President back into office for a triumphant second term?

Don't bet your food stamps on it.

Why? Because long ago, in "A Night At The Opera," Chico Marx (when he and Groucho were writing a singer's contract) voiced what could be the final theme song for Presidential Election '12: "There ain't no sanity clause." And election day will be more than a month short of Christmas.

If you follow the news cycles, we all know the basics. Since the nation was tea-bagged in 2010, the Republican party we all know, and have variously loved, has been barely discernible. Mitt Romney, normally noted for his steadfast consistency on issues, has been tacking daily - almost hourly - between traditional conservative dogma and the 1950 rantings of the lunatic fringe.

"A house divided against itself cannot stand," quoth Honest Abe, the prototype Republican, but this house has so many mansions even Fox News can't keep up.

Nobody yet really knows who Mitt Romney is or what he stands for, although he appears to agree with every nutcase who advocates no birth control even for rape victims, trashing the healthcare farce that places us #47 in the civilized world, and marginalizing (a) women (55%), (b) the black vote (20%) and Hispanics (15%).

His running mate, Paul Ryan, whom the party has juxtaposed as a duelist against the youthful ex-Harvard Law Revue President incumbent president, a jumped up junior Congressperson, who apparently studied Ayn Rand as a freshman, Milton Friedman as a sophomore and graduated cum American greed. He has a young family, but agrees with Todd Akin that there's no such thing as rape-induced pregnancy.

Their sum total foreign policy seems to be to increase the $750 billion defense budget, invade Iran, if not Canada, declare martial law in all the Blue States, and pay for it all by lowering taxes - at least for the job-creating 1%.

In case you think that's enough to lose any sane election, you're missing the double-barreled theorem concerning American politics: (a) the Democrats always manage to find a way to blow their advantage, and (b) the Republicans have a residual genius for snatching victory from the jaws of utter lunacy. If you don't believe that, you weren't around in 2000 and '04, when Gore and Kerry went 0-for-two, thanks to swiftboat pedagogy, geriatric balloting in Florida and a Supreme Court coming to the rescue like Jerry Colonna and the 7th Cavalry.

Yeah, but - you're going to say - 330 million Americans can't be wrong THIS time. There must be a sanity clause in here somewhere.

Nope. Because first of all 330 million American don't vote. And the millions that do (despite all the right-wing attempts to delimit voter turnout among the undesirable poor) don't elect the President. The Electoral College does. 538 delegates, electoral votes, people. And this "college," unlike most other colleges, this one is 225 years old and even dumber than when it was originally fashioned as a means of electing rich, old, white guys. If 270 of them agree on anything, it's electing the most powerful person in the world.

Chuck Todd, veteran White House correspondent and television commentator, and also a skilled demographer and state-by-state analyst of voting patterns, took time out recently to produce an hour-long panegyric on Mitt Romney, dwelling on his accomplishments and sluffing over the negatives. Perhaps Chuck knows something we don't.

Perhaps there's some substance to the fact that, while 270 electoral votes are necessary to elect - or re-elect - the President, and one (New York - 29) in the hand is worth ten (Montana - 3) in the bush, there's a hell of a lot of bush among the 48 states. And according to John Morgan, a former GOP election bean-counter, ol' Mitt may just have a lock on so many swatches of bush that he could score as many as 299 delegates.

So it doesn't really matter if a plurality of those smart-ass TV talking heads in New York, California, Pennsylvania and Illinois, all of which Obama almost certainly has in the bag, parade nightly the latest unbelievable Republican/Tea Bag shenanigans, contradictions and outright gaffes. It just doesn't matter, as long as enough of them boys looking over the fence at a corn crop in Kansas, passing laws restricting border-jumpers in Arizona or still dozing in the Palin afterglow in Alaska believe that Mitt can get us back to the good old Bush years, and Paul Ryan knows all about that financial stuff because he graduated from the University of Miami. Miami, Ohio, that is.

And those red-faced States could add up to as many as 37.

But according to Jim McTague, writing in Barron's Magazine, within the states, it's the counties and their demographics that count. A lot of publicity has been generated - rightly so - about gerrymandering, voting restrictions and new requirements, all of which have been engineered in several Republican-governed States, but that isn't the main determinant of what will happen in November. Changes in patterns within the 3,000-odd counties across the nation are what are all-important. Those changes come about because of the race, religion, income and political persuasion within the county jurisdictions.

On both sides, people continue to say that Florida and Ohio, as usual swing states, could determine the election. In '08, Obama won both.

What is happening there is important. For example, take Ohio (please). According to Morgan, the natural gas boom in the southern Republican counties has resulted in an increase in the population, while in Cleveland, always a Democratic stronghold, the population has declined.

As for Florida, where the Geritol crowd are still voting for Taft, Reagan and Bush Le Premier, the RNC convention, the bold machinations of Governor Rick Scott in returning us to the free enterprise Middle Ages, coupled with a lingering red-neck suspicion of Obama's bona fides, will all contribute to making it a tussle.

And then there's the Midwest and the Northeast, where in '08 Obama cleaned the table, but since that time, the Democrats have lost 11 Congressional seats, indicating once again, according to Morgan, the shifting configuration of populations.

Morgan sees the likelihood of a Mitt Romney victory, even though Obama will win the populous, the sophisticated East and West Coasts where all the smart money is. The fact is, the major networks' bailiwick doesn't total enough electoral votes in the hand to equal those in the bush - or the party of Bush.

Who's to argue?

Because of the lack of a sanity clause in the whole proceedings, spring - as in the old Tin-pan Alley favorite - not to mention Christmas, will be a little late this year.

Bill Annett grew up a writing brat; his father, Ross Annett, at a time when Scott Fitzgerald and P.G. Wodehouse were regular contributors, wrote the longest series of short stories in the Saturday Evening Post's history, with the sole exception of the unsinkable Tugboat Annie.

At 18, Bill's first short story was included in the anthology “Canadian Short Stories.” Alarmed, his father enrolled Bill in law school in Manitoba to ensure his going straight. For a time, it worked, although Bill did an arabesque into an English major, followed, logically, by corporation finance, investment banking and business administration at NYU and the Wharton School. He added G.I. education in the Army's CID at Fort Dix, New Jersey during the Korean altercation.

He also contributed to The American Banker and Venture in New York, INC. in Boston, the International Mining Journal in London, Hong Kong Business, Financial Times and Financial Post in Toronto.

Bill has written six books, including a page-turner on mutual funds, a send-up on the securities industry, three corporate histories and a novel, the latter no doubt inspired by his current occupation in Daytona Beach as a law-abiding beach comber.

You can write to Bill Annett at this address: bilko23@gmail.com