Need a laugh? Try Cain and Cantor

AS SOME OF you may have noticed, I often regress into delirium and take a serious look at a serious issue. But in surveying the comments by the Republican pols, it is getting harder to keep a straight face. They dodge all questions by saying it is critical to focus on creating jobs. And then they come at you with notions about same-sex marriage, class warfare, Mormonism, abortion and voter fraud.

Are they kidding, or what? For me, it is now like watching one silly squirrel chasing another squirrel up and down the tree in our back yard. For humans, their antics are fun to watch.

We now have Person of Interest #3 or #4 Herman Cain insisting that black Americans have been "brainwashed" to vote for Democrats. An African American himself, he has cast himself as the valid authority on mass brainwashing of minorities. By whom were they brain-washed? He blames Democrats, which is hardly newsworthy since the Republican candidates spend most of their time these days blaming Democrats when they aren't blaming each other for something.

I would tell them that as I recall, the Democrats were responsible for Medicare, Social Secrurity, voting rights and a number of other programs that benefitted the alleged brainwashed blacks in America. But if I did, I suspect Cain would accuse me of ordering the wrong brand of pizza.

I doubt that Mitt Romney would want to take the brainwashing tack inasmuch as it would open old family wounds. When Dad George, himself a presidential candidate, returned from a visit to Viet Nam in 1967, he was repentant in explaining to a radio interviewer why he was no longer a hawk. He said he had been the victim (by the military) of the "greatest brainwashing that anybody can get." Time magazine expressed its astonishment over Romney's explanation, describing it as "inept." Small wonder that Mitt has stuck to less inconsiderate comments like "corporations are people" even though I think that it, too, is a bit inept.

Then we come - again! - to jolly Eric Cantor, who should be pitied rather than censured for trying to be so profoundly above the battle . The Virginia Republican, who is forever in the midst of the battle, says the Wall Street demonstrations are increasingly troubling to him. . He told the the folks at the 2011 Voter Values Summit the past week that the protests by the "mobs" were an example of "class warfare" that is increasingly troubling to him because they are "pitting Americans against Americans."

I would consider him an expert on class "pitting" since the GOP-controlled House of Representatives, of which Cantor is the majority leader, has devoted a lot of its time doing just. But here I go again, getting serious when I thought we were in this for the laughs.

Seen any upbeat movies lately? Otherwise, we'll just have to squeeze s few more laughs out of the squirrelly Republican political class before they start falling out of the trees.