Todo se paga

That’s a Spanish phrase for ‘what goes around, comes around’, to which some will add, In this life, not the next. It’s certainly nice when we get to witness it, like this week observing the minimally functional remnants of the Republican wing of the ruling mafia trying to dig itself out from under Mitt Romney’s tax returns. Having spent two of the last three years winking naughtily at the wacko birthers’ insistence on seeing Obama’s proof of citizenship, it’s now their turn to come up with reasons why we shouldn’t know if the Mittster paid anything at all on his multimillion-dollar income.

I think they should come clean and brag about it. After all, wouldn’t a goodly portion of their base among resentful, barely employed white guys say, Yeah, good for Mitt! He made a bundle and didn’t share it with any damn body, just like I would/will someday. Then we could go back to discussing why we shouldn’t pay taxes and get our roads fixed and our fires put out for free. It makes for a nice fit: taxes are bad; ergo, I don’t pay them.

Furthermore, this would be fully in the spirit of the takeover of the GOP by the spirit, or ghost as it were, of Sarah Palin, despite the party’s bad manners in not inviting her to their Tampa do next month. She put her buckaroo stamp on the conglomeration four years ago, and it’s been on a Palinesque run ever since, a full-throated celebration of dumb-as-a-stump delusions, snide disdain, cracker racism, insults and demagoguery. Look at the parade of classic dufuses served up during the primary season: Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, Santorum—among whose company Mitt looks like a nuclear physicist for the mere fact that his bouffant doesn’t catch fire every ten minutes. Palin is the template for the whole troupe, and those not cast from the mold (Pawlenty, Huntsman) never generated a blip on the screen.

Yes, the ultra-right is not having a good run-up to the convention/ campaign season, but things can still turn around for them. The job market seems to be tanking further, and Obama’s main attraction is he’s not the other guy. Let’s see if the American people will overlook the fact that one of the two major candidates possesses obscene riches, obtained and maintained through a rigged system, and put him in charge of it. They very well might; New York City’s liberal-minded voters did it three times.