The return of the nerds

The final Republican debate before Tuesday' s New Hampshire vote forced the TV viewer to endure an old movie in which John Wayne arrived just in time  to restore order against a villainous assault.   In the two hours of pitched battle defining  good and evil, the candidates reaffirmed their heroic  arrival in the Granite State.

In a mere two hours,  they again manned up against President Obama, unmasking him as a do-nothing incompetent, then returned to their porous  narrative of the critical need to cut taxes,  and  (2) destroy ISIS with pinpoint  air attacks that would kill terrorists hiding in the kitchen without  harming the innocent folks in the dining room.

Another candidate, Carly Fiorina, was missing in action, having failed to make the cut.  Too bad. It would have been  a perfect modern version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  

Although none of the on-stage combatants had ever worn a  military uniform - at least Dubya had found a pilot's get-up  to  authenticate his daring  landing on a  carrier -  the machos sought earnestly to  convince us, by, God, that they knew what they were talking about. Chris Christie, for example,  insisted that we know he was  once a prosecutor and Gov.Kasich, anchored in his first-draft campaign mode , boasted that he was once a congressman who could balance federal and state budgets.  Ted Cruz, explained carpet bombing and Marco Rubio, an "establishment candidate", merely sputtered as the GOP's newly-crowned young valedictorian.

There is an absolute in political warfare that divides  the populace into four parts: (1)those who are passionately committed to one side; (2) those who are passionately committed to the other side; (3) those who thrash about in the middle and (4)the great mass who, through Election Day,  never heard of it.

P.S. For all of the GOP wannabes hootin' and hollering' ,  their model President Reagan's   executive orders have more than doubled Obama's.