Random Thoughts: Iowa Caucuses Division

My friend Tommy Cummings says that the plural of caucus should be cauci.

A panel of political scientists, historians, and journalists gathered at Columbia University concluded in a report issued today that, "no matter who wins the Republican caucuses in Iowa today, the eventual GOP nominee will redefine the phrase 'batshit crazy.'" In its strongly-worded conclusion, the panel noted that there has not been such evidence of mass mental illness in modern times since the last time millions tuned in to watch “Celebrity Apprentice.”

Though I thought he would be a really weak GOP candidate, which would be good news, I can't help but enjoy Rick Perry's name being barely mentioned tonight. Such an ignorant, smug, selfish, arrogant incompetent jerk deserves a very long comeuppance. And that goes for the morons in his Texas political operation too.

Earlier today, Andy Borowitz predicted there would be a 100 percent chance that the winner in Iowa tonight would be white.

Both Perry and Bachman claimed that God told them to run for president and both are in the back of the pack tonight in the hugely evangelical Iowa Republican caucuses. They are only ahead of John Huntsman and a chia pet that entered the race late. Guess this means that an endorsement from God is as worthless as one from a newspaper.

So the Republicans in Iowa can't chose between a candidate who wants to outlaw birth control, one that thinks the Civil Rights Movement was a bad idea, and one who is so fond of taking strong positions that he has more than one on every important issue. The only Stooge left out is Curly.

Mitt Romney laid on the cornball lyrics from "America The Beautiful" and sensed he was losing the crowd and tried to fire them up by quoting "Smoke on the Water."

It's amazing how watching Mitt Romney speak makes me feel less sincere. Chris Matthews had the funniest line of the night when he compared Romney to one of the animatronic dummies from Disneyland's "Hall of the Presidents."

Ron Paul will be having breakfast with his strategists this morning. It turns out that he likes his coffee and his cream separate but equal.

I love this stat: Rick Perry spent $3 million in Iowa and won a grand total of two delegates. The ongoing budget disaster that has been Texas under Perry now makes perfect sense.

By the way, the economic recession is easing up just enough that the GOP freak show and circular firing squad has just about guaranteed an Obama reelection.

We're having a late middle-aged New Year's eating at home, watching TV for the countdown and having a few symbolic sips for champagne before nodding off. We're going to party like we're 99.

Michael Phillips is the author or co-author of the following books:

“White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity and Religion in Dallas, Texas, 1841-2001” (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006).

“The House Will Come to Order: How the Texas Speaker Became a Power in State and National Politics.” Co-Written with Patrick Cox. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010).

Walter Buenger and Arnoldo de León, eds., “Beyond Texas Through Time: Breaking Away From Past Interpretations” (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2011).

Bruce A. Glasrud and Cary D. Wintz, eds., “The Harlem Renaissance in the West: The New Negroes’ Western Experience” (New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2011).

Richardson Dilworth, ed. “Cities in American Political History” (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2011).

He will also be co-author of the forthcoming “The Radical Origins of the Texas Right” (edited by David Cullen and Kyle Wilkison) due to be published in 2012 by Texas A&M University Press; and “American Dreams and Reality: A Retelling of the American Story,” to be published the same year by Abigail Press.

He is currently collaborating, with longtime journalist Betsy Friauf, on a history of Bishop College, an African American institution originally established in Marshall, Texas, that relocated to Dallas by the 1960s before suffering bankruptcy in the 1980s. The two plan to create a website and author a book, “’God Carved in Night’: Afro-Texan Culture, Political Activism And the Rise and Fall Of Bishop College” based on this project.