Maybe - just maybe - a centrist fight?

So Romney stomped two out of the three weapons-grade lunatics in New Hampshire. It was disappointing that Ron Paul did as well as he did, but it was a GOP vote, after all, and they still have a large number of mentally deficient voters, apparently, just not deficient enough to back Newt and he who must not be named.

Paul is not giving up, saying "We're nibbling at his heels." This is a superb example of Paul-speak, by the way. The image of several mangy little vermin, squeaking and tumbling around while they take small bites out of the feet of ... well, a large, well-groomed vermin, is one I cherish. In fact ... yes, I do seem to remember something along these lines! Can it be? Is Ron Paul a Jefferson Starship fan?!?

You know, Tyrannosaurus Rex was destroyed before
By a furry little ball that crawled along
The primeval jungle floor
And he stole the eggs of the dinosaur
CLOSE YOUR EYES & CREATE THE SOUND
OPEN YOUR HANDS & REBUILD THE GROUND
We are egg snatchers ...
Mau Mau, Kantner, Slick, and Covington

That last line could just as easily be, We are heel-nibblers!

What the NH outcome suggests is that this year's Presidential campaign might be between two people, Obama and Romney, who, regardless of what other schemes they might have, are not absolutely committed to the destruction of the constitution and the total elimination of the middle class. (Whew. Lotta commas in there.) The poor are screwed, regardless, but that's a given, and has been for decades.

What will be really interesting, of course, is not the GOP circus, but the Democratic medicine show. To what extent will the Occupy-your-frontal-lobes crowd try to stage a repeat of the 1968 convention protest? The Charlotte, NC, Police Department doesn't have the reputation that the Chicago Cops do (or did -- I actually don't know dick about the Chicago PD now, forty-four years later) for outright mayhem, and they don't have Rahm Emmanuel as a Mayor, either. So maybe the outright suppression of dissent will be more ... discreet ... than it was the last time we had a bunch of crazy, mixed-up kids challenging authority and imagining the future and being violently non-violent and all that. I was talking earlier about Starship and the Blows Against the Empire album; consider this:

You know I remember the 23rd of November
To the abyss of Chicago you can see the barbed wire -
pigs around a lot of nothin' ...
Hijack, Slick

Now, the Republicans hold their convention first, this year, in Tampa. If I were a boot-licking, heel-nibbling lackey of the power elite, on the Democratic side, here's what I'd try to pull off: I'd broker a secret agreement with the GOP to crack down hard on any kind of protests at each of our conventions, in order to distance ourselves from extremists on either side ... and then, after they'd done so, I'd renege on the deal, leaving them holding the bag and showing up on TV, world wide, bashing heads and pepper-spraying people, while the Dems invite the Occupiers in for a nice cup of tea and loudly call for investigations of brutality. I'll bet they're dumb enough to go for it.