A Modest Proposal

It’s early to be picking sides in the 2012 GOP presidential race and ordinarily I’d be scoffing at those rash enough to choose sides months before the primaries. Not now, however. Given the miserable state of my health and the inescapable fact that I am approaching my 85th birthday, there is ample reason to doubt that I’ll be around to make a choice in a year the Mayans are said to have predicted will see the end of times for me and everybody else. (If they were such a bunch of smarty pants how come they are no longer around building tourist attractions and collecting admissions in Yankee dollars?) That being the case I’ll pick the people who I think should be the presidential and vice presidential nominees for the grand old party. (Every time I think about that I recall with amusement the comment of a very young female acquaintance who looked at a sign featuring the GOP elephant and said “Oh look, the elephant’s name is GOP.”) Unfortunately, too often the elephant’s name is Mud. If it were up to me, I’d dictate the choice of Gov. Tim Pawlenty for the top spot, and my present congressman, the extraordinary Rep. Allen West, for the number two spot. Pawlenty, an extraordinarily talented and decent guy, served two terms as Governor of Minnesota of all places, and is very well qualified to assume the presidency. Allen West, a tough, hard-nosed former Army Lt. Colonel who upset his namby pamby superiors by putting his .45 alongside the ear of a terrorist who knew where West’s subordinates were being held captive and threatened to put a nice round .454 caliber hole where the ear was unless he told West where his men were. In the new Army, that sort of thing is frowned upon since my enemy is simply your poor misunderstood equal due compassionate treatment even when he’s trying to kill me. As president, Pawlenty could play nice guy while his number two would do the necessary shady work, much as Dick Cheney did for George Bush. Col. West is highly qualified for that role. He excels in doing what needs to be done, whatever it may be. He’s my kind of warrior, even if he wasn’t a Marine. If my wildest dreams were to be fulfilled, the electorate would suddenly become aware that the Congress of the United States, House and Senate, should be peopled with legislators who understood that they are representatives of the people of their states or districts and not merely rubber stamps for the guy in the White House and his party. They are there partly to cry “halt” when the occupant of the Executive Mansion impinges on the freedom of the American people, or exceeds his Constitutional mandated authority. They are not there to travel into liberal dreamland where they imagine it is their sworn duty to protect their constituents from such imaginary perils as global warming by banning the light bulbs which have provided illumination for over a century, and mandating the use of substitutes that become hazardous when broken, as tends to be the fate of many of the new light bulbs. If they had a sense of reality they would become aware that the real hazard is global cooling – we are in reality sliding headlong into a new ice age as I demonstrated in my 1997 study “Behold, The Ice Man Cometh”. But on Capitol Hill, reality is subject to revision, based on one’s party preference. That’s how we end up stocking up on real light bulbs before they vanish from the store shelves thanks to the will of a Congress which can’t tell heat from cold or light from darkness. All things considered, I will go happily into the night, utterly dependent only upon the will of a merciful God. Bye now! Phil Brennan is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. A WWII U.S. Marine he served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska. He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. He can be reached at pvb@pvbr.com