a popsicle redux

A couple of weeks ago, I pos(i)ted that Sarah Palin will be the Repub candidate for president in 2012, no matter what the Mayab have to say about it. (Yes, Mayab, as my friend Richard has taught me.) I had a lot of fun writing about the precedents that will guide the Repubs, so much fun that I exhausted myself on the topic and just about for anything else. Let's precede in a more jugular vein....
The great models of the modern Republican presidency are Reagan-Bush and Bush-Cheney. They are each a magic dyad of affability and ability, crinkly smile and sinister smirk, popular charm and privatized greed, the instantaneous and the invisible, the plane and the fractal, I could go on. Each was a roaring success, in terms of changing the public discourse (as then-candidate Barack Obama smartly pointed out about Reagan and was stupidly savaged for) and popularizing the ideas and mechanisms of transferring public wealth to their supporters' pockets.
Reagan-Bush, Bush-Cheney. Republican success stories, never forget.
With Bush-Quayle, they slid the taskmaster into the Prez role and nominated the empty head for Veep. If Quayle had shown some show-biz razzle-dazzle, and GHWB had been able to evade one gaffe (no new taxes) with the agility RR brought to a multitude (arms for hostages, expanding the deficit, refusing to abandon lies and fantasies no matter how often the record and his own administration corrected him), Bush-Quayle might have been a two-term presidency. BQ2.
But maybe not. In a puppet play, the puppet has to be the one out front, or it's not much of a show.
Bush-Cheney was a successful recreation of the Reagan-Bush franchise. You know, many of us were kinda surprised when George Bush won the Repubnom. This guy? Not-Jeb? Bonzo incarnate? W the drinker, W the dodger, the cokehead, the nosepicker, the Bush in Arbusto, the handholder of Saudi royalty? There was nobody smarter, more experienced, more able?
We missed the point, we missed the point entirely. For the good of the act, the second banana had to get top billing. Abbot was nothing without Costello, as well as Costello zip sans Abbot.
If they had consulted (and drugged) me, I think I could have won the Repugs a third term up top. I was sure that at some point Cheney was going to step down "for health reasons." His replacement would be chosen completely with the next ticket in mind.
It could be a pretty boy, who'd take the top-puppet spot in 2008 and leave decisions to a new veep puppeteer; or it could be a senior puppetmaster, who would segue from one veepness to another, with his hand sliding up the ass of a new pretty boy of their choosing.
It might well be that the Repudenda didn't want the office that much last time. They saw the chickens heading home, and strategically abandoned the roost. Some obligations to the Old Guard were paid off and some patriotic cred simulated by naming McCain. If this is so, that brings us so deep into the ifs that I don't know if they knew exactly what they were getting when they promoted Sarah Palin from ticket-taker to co-star.
Regardless, the Repuds are stuck with or saddled by Mooselina now. Palin is their Reagan. All the qualities that made it impossible for me to believe that Reagan would win a second term or W win* his first - willful ignorance, cupidity, vapid patriotism, eggshell depth, Teflon(R) integrity - these are positives.
The devil's game now is who will be Sarah's Bush (GHW, not W). White, male, ties to the industrial-military complex, spook past, scary, devoted to unbridled capitalism and the Imperial Presidency. My first guess was John Poindexter, but he's five years older than Cheney. No history I can find of heart attack or other bad health, tho. Richard Perle? He's Cheney's age, no disclosed ill health. He's been on both sides of invading Iraq, but that might be an advantage given recent events. But is he scary enough? Can he make a baby cry just by entering the same room?
The candidate may well be bubbling up as I type, somebody too scary for me to even conceive of, a true color out of space. Be very afraid.