If you play a Rick Ross song backwards, does the rap star regain whatever dignity he lost when his court-ordered monitoring ankle bracelet started beeping during an Obama shindig at the White House?
Probably not.
Similarly, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, repurposed as The Dynamic Duo, won’t help either regain footing lost to Donald Trump earlier in the primary process. Count this as yet another inexplicable event in a political season that flew over the cuckoo’s nest some time ago.
Ted Cruz and John Kasich don’t have much in common aside from the fact that both have lost repeatedly to Donald Trump. Ted Cruz is unapologetically conservative. Reliably so. When Democratic voters are asked which Republican they would vote for, John Kasich is most often their response. The mail man’s son is strangely acceptable to those who Feel the Bern and/or feel a thrill running up their leg when Hillary delivers her peculiar cackle and Joker smile.
Cruz-Kasich, or virtually any combination of contenders except for maybe Pataki-Gilmore, might have worked had it been tried earlier. At this stage of the game – and with a fortune in delegates to be won in California – it’s a little late.
At this point in the article a pundit somewhere is rapping his or her fingers on the table while mumbling something along the lines of: but If they team up as nominee and running mate…
Okay, so they team up as nominee and running mate, then what?
Which one bows before the other as gracefully as Obama once did before the Saudi royal family, and then hands over their delegates? Chances are those delegates would be harder to come by than the missing emails off a server that used to be housed in someone’s bathroom.
Who was it that ran a server out of her bathroom? Anyway…
Delegates schmelegates. What kind of delegates would they be? Bound? Unbound? With or without cheese? Fat free? Extra sauce? You want fries with that? If Cleveland descends into the bowels of the contested netherworld, all those delegates are apparently free to support whichever candidate they want.
They can go for Trump. Cruz, Kasich. Rubio. Bart Simpson. Tickle Me Elmo. Or the life-size Tickle Me Elmo also known as Jeb Bush.
So in other words, don’t put too much stock in Cruz-Kasich as they put forth their best here-we-come-to-save-the-day impersonation. Keep an eye on what the other hand is doing as the GOP primary process unfolds. It’s getting ready to get…well…
…as the voice from the cockpit once said, “do you have any idea how drunk I really am right now?”.
Yes, it’s going to reach a whole new level of crazy.
Images: Modified from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Kasich_photo.png; courtsy of Gage Skidmore; flickr; CC 2.0;and photo credit: Ted Cruz via photopin (license); courtesy of Gage Skidmore
