Some days you come home so tired even things you’ve been looking forward to—trying that new chicken recipe, curling up with after-dinner coffee and the latest episode of Scandal—are just too exhausting to think about. So you end up ordering Chinese food and falling asleep on the couch before the cliffhanger ending of the show, chopsticks still in hand.
I’m starting to feel that way about this election.
It’s not that I don’t yearn for a new president with every fiber of my being. Believe me, I do.
It’s just that waiting for it has become so emotionally draining I barely have energy left to even watch the debates (Republican debates—I have to mainline double chocolate espresso, just to get halfway through the Democratic ones). It’s all I can do to watch the Republican debates without wishing half the candidates would get lost on the way to the studio and end up on the side of the road, as actually out of gas as they are metaphorically. With Jindal out and Fiorina at the big kids’ debate, the “kids’ table” seems like a bad high school play–or a worse Model U.N. And the real debate is like watching a handful of adults try to talk, while petulant teenagers and one babbling whiny baby keep interrupting (you can figure out who’s who on your own; I’m too tired to go into it.)
I know. Voting is important.
It’s just that every time we vote, it seems like something comes along to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory for those of us who are conservatives, or patriots, or whatever we are called when we believe in small government, the Constitution, private markets, and traditional values. That used to be conservative, but Trump-cultists tell me I’m an establishment RINO because I despise the use of eminent domain for private use and like my conservative candidates straight-up conservative, without a Clinton-loving twist, or or a wealth tax chaser. .
After being handed our heads in 2008, by a man whose state Senate career was distinguished only by the number of times he voted present and whose US Senate career was distinguished only by the number of times he didn’t show up to vote at all, I was disappointed, but I wasn’t tired. By 2010, despite having had Obamacare crammed down our throats without even one Republican vote to help the medicine go down, the loyal opposition was starting to rise, even as the world’s worst “first woman” anything–Speaker Pelosi–was still reassuring us we were going to love Obamacare, once we knew what was in it.
In 2010, the “Tea Party” shocked the nation and won elections. Republicans won all over the country. John Boehner prepared to redecorate the Speaker’s office. We gained six Senate seats, and sixty-three House seats. We got Mike Lee, Marco Rubio and Kelly Ayotte into the Senate. We even won Barack Obama’s old seat. It was the worst the Democrats had done in decades, and it was sweet.
But, then, something (quite possibly the Internal Revenue Service) stalled our progress. Between 2010 and 2012, the Democrats managed to rouse their legions of low-information voters, who heard the siren song of Lena Dunham and the faraway cannons of the “war on women” and staggered like zombies to the voting booth to vote for the cool president. They didn’t care about some guy named Ben Gazi their parents and grandparents were yelling about. They cared about free birth control and…I don’t know, more free birth control, I guess. When the smoke cleared, Obama was still president, Harry Reid was still the Senate Majority Leader, and Obamacare was still barreling down on us.
But we did gain Ted Cruz.
2014 brought another brief moment of joy as, despite dark predictions that we would lose horrendously because of Ted Cruz “shutting down the government,” we had another astonishing top-to-bottom-of-the-ticket grand-slam home run of an election. This time we knew things would have to turn around. We won the Senate.
And then horrifying reality set in, as our two-house majority simply failed to get anything done. So conservative activists roused themselves again and petitioned and pushed, until Boehner stepped down and held out the gavel to….Kevin McCarthy.
Oh, no. No.
We had already had enough of McCarthyite establishment RINO-ism. So before he could reach for the gavel, activists pushed him out of the way to make way for…Paul RYAN??
We still don’t know how that happened.
So, Republicans, I’m just warning you. I’m tired. You might have to drag me to the polls this time. You might have to sober me up and get me dressed, because right now I feel like lying on the couch in my pajamas, watching reruns of The Good Wife, having Scotch and ice cream for dinner until next November, even though I quit drinking two decades ago.
Look, my primary is in May, so I don’t have much of a say in this. I usually get to choose between the guy who’s basically won and the guy who no longer has a chance. Being able to vote for Ted Cruz would get me on my feet. But if he’s not available by then, I just want you to know you’re going to have to send a get-out-the-vote kid for me in 2016.
Make sure he brings coffee.
Images: Modified from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/o5com/4951026891; https://
nachalooman.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/can-black-democrats-and-black-republicans-ever-get-along/
