McCain-Palin: The GOP's Zombie Candidates Promise a Dawn of the Dead, Not "Morning in America"

It's a bit early for Halloween, but I'd like to suggest what we have in the GOP's McCain-Palin '08 ticket are a pair of zombie candidates. And I'm not just saying this because McCain's old and looks a little desiccated. Hear me out.

Zombies: they don't know they're dead. They just keep stiff-leggedly lurching around trying to eat human flesh and human brains 'til someone stops them and buries them for good.

Take a look at the GOP. They don't have a single vital idea besides Steal From the Poor and Give to the Rich, a rather cannibalistic creed if you ask me. That party is shit of out luck on ideas and policies, and George W. Bush is the Zombie-in-Chief culmination of their total lack of a clue. Even they know it. Their political consultants are running around saying consultant-y things like "The GOP brand is tired/tarnished/dead/damaged." Gee, you think?

The American people know it too. In January, April, and June of 2008, over 80% of people asked say they agree with the statement "America is headed in the wrong direction." That's a wrong direction pushed by--just in the past 8 years alone--a Republican president with the help of a Republican congress til 2006. And before that, 30 years of Republicanism with a slight speed bump of the Carter and Clinton years.

The Obama-Biden '08 team have done a great job of showing how McCain-Palin zombies are hungrily eyeing the public's brain. Obama has politely called it "they must think you're stupid." I call it "apparently Republicans think that Americans are so brainless they don't know how to google to keep track of McCain's flipflops and Palin's lies." Newsflash, GOP suckas: we do, and are keeping tabs.

The GOP and its little ghoul Karl Rove believe that poking the public's attitudes toward "god/guns/gays" is damn near Zombie Viagra and that how you feel on these personal matters will pay your bills, keep your roof over your head, send your kids to college, or bring home troops from Iraq. You'd have to be brainless to believe that.

The GOP especially believes that women voters will go for a woman VP who's out of step with the 81% of Americans who say a woman's reproductive health is her own business and there should be an exception for abortion in cases of incest or rape. Palin's extremist views would make every woman who's pregnant carry to term unless the woman's life is danger.

But Republican hunger for the sweetmeat between your ears doesn't just extend to the electorate. Look at the candidates themselves.

McCain, once a true iconoclast and reformer, sold his soul to the GOP to be the presidential candidate. McCain's all hugs and smiles with the very same Bush who torpedoed his 2000 chances at being the Republican presidential nominee with smears and lies about the McCains' adopted daughter (supposedly a biracial child fathered by McCain, according to the Rove book of dirty tricks). Excuse me--I'm a parent and that's the DEFINITION of soulless, to sell yourself out like that over your child.

McCain chose Palin when denied his true-love running mate, Lieberman, and over Rove's pick of Romney. Apparently the GOP doesn't let out the leash on their nominee much.

Everywhere you turn, there's more examples of how McCain has lost the courage of his convictions and joined the soulless.

He proposed moving the goal posts on GI Bill availability for veterans, and voted against nine bills that would help Iraq war veterans--enough to warrant a 20% rating from Disabled Veterans of America. Pretty soulless when you consider what POW/Vietnam war vet John McCain himself has been through (which we only heard about eleventy kajillion times at the RNC). In that vein, did I mention McCain's flipflopping on torture and the U.S.'s use of waterboarding?

His rhetoric lumbered away from lobbyists and earmarks even as his zombie self lurched toward 7 major campaign staffers who were (are still) lobbyists.

Let's look at the soullessness of McCain's running mate, Governor Sarah Palin.

She's a lipsticked pitbull, by her own account. Or Dan Quayle/George W. Bush/Cheney (in a dress). Or maybe Palin is Extreme Makeover Phyllis Schlafly (in an updo and $375 Kazuo Kawasaki glasses). Mean Girl, or Queen Bee.

She's a Trojan Moose, according to Arianna Huffington.

That red meat speech Palin gave? Don't look too closely or you might find more than a fingernail in that bloody feast...you'll see the remains of some perfectly good Americans Palin ripped from limb to limb. (P.S. narcissistic soccer/hockey moms rooting for Palin--the Iraq war will still have killed over 4,155 U.S. soldiers for very unclear reasons even with a Vagina American a heartbeat away from the White House. And you want a hundred more years of that?)

In short, Palin's resume is so thin and her positions on key issues of the day so inscrutable, we have to describe her shape-shifting self using something that is clearly definable.

Here's what's impossible not to notice:

She's responsible for a string of scandals a mile long. An achievement for someone who's only been governor for about 18 months.
She puts her family out there instead of sheltering them from public scrutiny and The National Enquirer spotlight (what's next, booking appearances for all on Jerry Springer?).
She doesn't wear lightly. And it's been less than two weeks already.
All of her hastily bolted-on political opinions (aside from what would be good for her part of the Valley in Alaska) arrived fresh from the fax in Karl Rove's office.

This is before anyone's had a chance to ask her questions on her carefully coached political stances.

Yaaaaaawwwwwn. We already know what she'll say with Charlie Gibson, right? NO SURPRISES THERE. It's all been scripted to a T. And will be disarmingly and formidably delivered, no doubt, by this GOPAC alumna. Just add ambition and stir.

Because as with McCain or Palin, when you ride the sneering GOP Hate Talk Express to the White House, you have to give up your personality, judgment, individuality, skepticism, and yes--soul.

So, fellow Americans, we can wake to the Dawn of the Dead with Republicans in office again--otherwise known as the "morning in America" that zombies McCain-Palin promise (after ripping the slogan off from Ronald Reagan). Complete with cannibalistic economic policies and brain-sucking propaganda.

Or we can have real human beings govern-- Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who are from planet earth. We've all had months to see them in person, hear them say how they plan to put America on course again, kick the tires on their policy proposals, and ask them hard questions. We know them as people we might ride the train with. Or see them out bicycling with their families. Ordinary people on their way to work. Ready to fix our country's huge problems.

Best of all, an Obama-Biden win in November '08 means you get to keep your humanity and individuality. We can all get out of Iraq. Get health insurance. Wean ourselves from dependence on oil. No one will assume you're too stupid to pay attention. Or that you don't care.

Get America back on track with Obama-Biden, and get rid of that nasty zombie infestation for once and for all.

Remember, when it comes to the GOP's zombie candidates: they're dead, they just need reminding. Your votes can put the hungry pests to rest. Just say no to Zombie Viagra.

Cynematic also writes at P i l l o w b o o k. She is a mom and part-time Zombie Slayer who'd work full-time in a heartbeat writing for either Tina Fey or the Obama campaign.