“Gonna melt it down to add 999 miles to the border fence,” was the answer given by GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain, when asked about his Statue of Liberty plan at the most recent Republican debate, or as anti-tax activist Grover Norquist calls it, “the Freak Show.” Mr. Cain expanded on his statue rhetoric when given a chance to respond for 30 seconds, after being chided by the 9th most popular candidate, Governor Rick Perry. “Ain’t nuthin’ American about inviting masses and tribes of starving poor people right through our front door. Huh! ‘Give me your huddled masses’ sound more like handing you off a pile of dog poo or a Godfather’s pizza. I never got nuthin’ for free in my life so why should they!”
Would-be candidate Michelle Bachmann, while agreeing that the Statue of Liberty was a beacon for immigrants like leaving your door unlocked is a beacon for burglars, couldn’t resist sticking it to the former pizza seller when she challenged him about his “getting nuthin’ for free” claim. She said, “ I happen to know that your ancestors got a free boat ride from Africa a couple of hundred years ago, and were charged nothing for their upkeep at the various cotton plantations in the South where they were allowed to lay about and dabble in agriculture for generations,” she said. Bachmann added that when Paul Revere delivered the Liberty Bell to Gettysburg at the conclusion of Spanish-American War, President Lincoln, a Republican, had said absolutely nothing about slavery, proving that it didn’t exist.
When Perry was called upon to reveal his plan to relieve America’s unemployment problem, the six term Texas governor ticked off his ten point proposal on his fingers saying, “jobs” ten times in a row. He then fleshed out his plan. “It really isn’t that hard to comprehend, he said, cocking his head to one side in a move reminiscent of a certain former president, “jobs are so plentiful in Texas that everyone has at least three of them, and we’re building more Taco Bells and Burger Kings every day to keep them coming.” And then, ignoring Anderson Cooper’s time -cut -off hand signal, Perry plunged ahead explaining his flat tax proposal. “No one on this stage has a tax flatter than my flat tax. I call it the “flat out” tax. I say flat out, that the richest Americans have been screwed over for years and it’s time for working people and the poor to pick up the tab for once. And that includes any Kenyan who squats in the Oval Office pretending to be president, who shall remain nameless. Wink, wink.” (Governor Perry’s spokesman later defended the candidate’s saying, “wink, wink” rather than … you know… actually winking, because that would have had voters confusing him with Sarah Palin when he’s actually trying to convince them that he’s the reincarnation of Saint Ronald).
Mitt Romney, whose last presidential bid failed to gain traction, was the next to speak. “First off I’d like to get past the ongoing claim that I’m a flip-flopper, who will say whatever I think the audience wants to hear. Does anyone have a request for what they want to hear? (ba-dump-bump) Just kidding, folks…. seriously, I’m here all week and I’m in this race to win, despite my Mormon faith which has been branded a cult. To which I say, Christians, show me your underwear and I’ll show you mine. We’ll see who has magic symbols on their briefs and who doesn’t. Or not. Maybe Mormonism is a cult after all, who can say one way or another in a world where corporations are people, my friends. I don’t disagree with my opponents about tax issues in this country, but neither can I support what they’re saying until I find out which plan is most popular in the polls. Until then I’ll stand on my record of creating a basically socialist healthcare plan in Massachusetts which I have thoroughly disowned despite its obvious success. Believe me, I’m as unhappy as anyone that President Obama copied the plan that I didn’t come up with. And on these positions I am rock solid.
Last to speak was Ron Paul, who spent his first five minutes complaining about having to always be last and being the butt of jokes about his false eyebrows falling off at several of the debates. “At the core of Libertarianism is the belief that government is something we don’t need until we do. Like a fire extinguisher but not nearly as efficient. Think of a fire extinguisher that gets bigger and bigger until there’s no building big enough to put it in. And then someone yells, ‘fire’ and everyone says that someone else should have kept the size down because now the extinguisher is too big to carry to the fire. But that would have required regulating the size which is the last thing we need to argue about and which is why you never see me in public with a fire extinguisher. Of any kind. We should get out of Iraq and Afghanistan and make them buy our fire extinguishers. It’s the least they could do after forcing us to invade them and drop sacks of money on them from the air for all these years. Has anyone seen my eyebrows? My last set walked off stage stuck to the bottom of Rick Perry’s boot.