Letter to Our European Friends - Everything you need to know about our presidential campaign.

Weekly Standard ^ | 02/04/2008 | P.J. O'Rourke

[gpapa]

America is in the midst of an all-important electoral campaign. But, talking to Europeans, I've discovered that there is puzzlement and misinformation on your continent about what's happening on ours. Europeans feel an understandable confusion when faced with a political system consisting of two houses of Congress and a White House, and nobody is home in any of them.

Also, America's political parties are indistinguishable to the European eye. A British journalist once described the situation thus: "America is a one-party state, but just like Americans they've got two of them." (I forget which British journalist said that. But there are so many British journalists who should be forgotten. Maybe it was Alexander Cockburn.)

The difference between American parties is actually simple. Democrats are in favor of higher taxes to pay for greater spending, while Republicans are in favor of greater spending, for which the taxpayers will pay. In foreign policy, Republicans intend to pursue the war in Iraq but to do so with a minimal number of troops on the ground. This is not to be confused with the disastrous Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld policy of using a minimal number of troops on the ground to pursue the war in Iraq. Democrats intend to end the war, but they don't know when. Democrats are making the "high school sex promise": I'll pull out in time, honest!

[RKV]

PJ is a national treasure.

[Vigilanteman]

PJ at his best. Especially loved this little gem:

Mike Huckabee lost some support among the hard-core fundamentalists when Bible Belt denizens realized that John McCain was the only candidate with enough guts to really handle rattlesnakes at church. The rest of the public remains alert to the fact that evangelical Christianity, as a movement, has two faces--the Moral Majority face and the Tammy Faye Bakker face.

[Textide]

"Being a Republican, I'm backing Hillary Clinton. Because she could lose. The reason is not that she's a woman. The reason is that she's the particular woman who taught the 4th grade class that every man in America wished he were dead in. Hillary Clinton is Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. Hillary Clinton is "America's ex-wife.""

Good stuff!

[kalee]

pretty funny

[bill1952]

bump

[rellimpank]

—you need to repost this later after everybody is up-—

[BfloGuy]

you need to repost this later after everybody is up

And raise the ire of the multiple-posting police?

[Savage Beast]

I can't get up off the floor and can't stop laughing!

I liked this one: "The Republicans will have a hard time coming up with someone who can't beat Hillary Clinton. But I don't put it past them."

[neverdem]

thanks, bfl

[Kellis91789]

” If they want votes they shouldn’t campaign to make abortion illegal or legal. They should campaign to make it retroactive. If a kid reaches 25 and he or she is still jobless, feckless, and sitting around Starbucks acting like a—no offense—European, then whack.”

Now THAT’S funny !

[Cacique]

btt

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

PING!

Funny stuff. Read the whole article.

[stand watie]

PONG!

free dixie,sw

[3D-JOY]

Thanks, I marked it for morning.

NIGHT-NIGHT!

[Albion Wilde]

Amazed this saw the light of day. If Ann Coulter had written it — and she is almost as good a wordsmith as O’Rourke but not quite — there would have been blood on the floor. It completely expresses the lunacy of our current situation, without cutting Europe any slack, either.