Believe it or not R.E. Vamp had difficulties sleeping last night.

I decided to put my insomnia to some good use and so fired up C-Span to try and cover this deranged contest despite being across an ocean. Their coverage is perhaps best described as “Uninspired” but it certainly seemed to do the job. Idiot callers served as time fillers, perhaps the stupidest saying that we ought to “Draft Al Gore into the race, a suggestion that made me lose what residual faith in human reason that remained.

The results for the Democrats Douglas has already dealt with. I shall add no more but to say that I am horrified and sickened and the prospect of her triumphing looms yet greater. It remains a tight contest and I hope deeply that she gets thrashed but, stronger than at any point since Iowa, I find that unlikely.

In short it was the least pleasant surprise of the year thus far, joint with me opening up my laptop to find the screen thoroughly fucked a few hours ago. Yeah, it’s been quite a crap day.

I, thankfully, got to sleep before the votes could be completely counted {a process which took far longer than I imagined it would} and before any of the Democratic speeches, besides one of them who’s name I forget. He was bloated and boring and as delusional as any outside the big three {and Edwards is lucky not to be included} who reckons that he is still in with a shot. I listened to his bluster absently while scouring polls with increasing desperation.

Edwards was not on for a while longer but instead that guy from Desperate Housewives, you know, the one who fucks the neurotic weird one with more surgery than face {who used to fuck Superman, which I imagine might not have been as fun} and has that wonderful down-to-earth attitude. Well, it turns out that he is pretty similar in real life and loves Edwards. I enjoyed hearing him, actually, so it was a pity that C-Span randomly cut him off half-way through to “Take a look at the locations” or whatever the fuck they were up to.

The Republicans, meanwhile, were far more fun.

First up was Giuliani, everyone’s favourite fascist. This neo-con intoxicated pleb knew that he had lost and lost hard and effectively told his crowd as much, saying that they should help him “In New York, help me in Florida…Help me in California!” with this last one receiving a massive cheer. Presumably they wanted to get out of the cold, or perhaps meet a Hispanic person.

He made repeated reference to the fact that he was about to “Get on a plane”, perhaps making some subtle subliminal reference to Top Gun that would whip up his idiot fan-base. Thankfully he left quickly so that I didn’t have to bear too much of his rhetoric. Like many that night he made himself sound reasonable until he suddenly went far too far and revealed himself.

Second was Romney, who is a loathsome little pustule that I truly despise. Oddly though, it was hard to muster up much hatred for him here. He was on stage surrounded by his family and started by thanking roughly two thousand people {I started to think that he was giving gratitude to everyone who had voted for him, by name} and then proceeded to heartily congratulate McCain and attempt, with very limited success, to cajole the crowd into clapping their foe.

It was never going to work, ever, with the Republican Party in its present state {or perhaps ever} but it was nice that he tried.

Watching Romney for an extended amount of time makes you realise two things:
1) He has a strangely hollow voice, which is befitting of his views.
2) He has an immense amount of charisma and charm, at times. So much that you can actually get fooled, until a phrase or two {his claim that all Americans were “Of faith” was at least, on this occasion, moderated with the proviso “Or something greater than themselves” but still stuck in my craw something dreadful} snap you out of it.

It is very hard indeed to hold onto his record, his rank opportunism and his clear disregard for the actual worth of rights and liberties. His desire to “Double Guantanamo” and simply revolting apologism for the Bush regime’s policy of torture were far from my mind when hearing him speak.

So, he’s scum, but skilled at hiding it.

After this it was time for Huckabee, who seemed astoundingly pleased for coming 3rd place. But then, this is a big-government theocrat running in a state holding the motto of “Live Free or Die” and at that one who had said that he would be perfectly happy for 4th place.

He gave a roaring, populist speech and comparing him to Romney was fascinating. They seem the closest in this race but yet the furthest away. Romney lacked substance while Huckabee seems to be dusted with merely a light dusting of bright charisma.

For some reason McCain did not go last, but penultimate. His speech was wonderful and hearing his voice made me realise that not just regions but generations have accents. His tone is one that will never return, I suspect, but one that harks decades back. You can almost hear the history dripping from it, it evokes Kennedy and the 1960s and all of that. It seems the last chance that those years can reach out and touch the present directly, perhaps at all.

McCain is widely considered a RINO, Republican In Name Only, but his backing of the Iraq War has underwhelmed this substantially. He mentioned it lightly in this speech, instead relishing the triumph. Well, not exactly relishing, his hands seemed unused to such force and enthusiasm behind his speeches, seeming to be an instance of futureshock. The baying of the crowd were not something that he bathed in, indeed if anything he seemed vaguely wary of the joy filling the room.

Then on to Paul.

Poor Ron Paul managed to make barely any impact upon the race, managing to get less than autocrat Giuliani and basically reaping the reward of someone who featured adverts attacking immigrants instead of talking about things he cares about instead of what he thinks the voters wish to hear.

His speech was the same as usual, using buzzphrases that get violent reactions to enthuse the room. He stated at the start that he was surprised to have gotten this far and to be able to receive massive cheers when attacking the Fed. The room responded violently and chanting “[Something] the Fed”.

I can not say for certain but I doubt it was “Hug”.

Ron Paul has a truly vigorous fanbase and seems just as surprised at this fact as are any of the establishment. He seemed delighted at their jubilation, at one stage waving his arms in the air to up their chants {a curious activity for a pack of libertarians to engage in, yet utterly thrilling} and at others just beaming eagerly. It seemed easy to forget that this was a gentleman who had come fifth, with 8% of the vote.

Also easy to slip from the mind were the accusations in the New Republic concerning articles in his paper which almost certainly did not write but could possibly have authorised or encouraged, that expressed striking and barely covert racism and out-right homophobia.

He could have addressed this, but instead stuck to what he is best at: lambasting big government, proclaiming a Heyekian message that there was no division between economic and social freedom and that he would protect both, attacking the relevance of the IRS, declaring the Income Tax only required due to the Iraq War and American troops being stationed abroad and something that he would eliminate along with the Central Bank. His loathing was reserved not for any minority, but for money printed as paper alone instead of being tied to to gold.

As unpromising material as this may sound, from his lips it was truly thrilling, causing the whole room to erupt riotously on a regular basis, leaving him grinning and cheering their cheers.

He dropped the ball here, he truly did. The message was taken to those that did not require a new candidate and the approach inefficient. But this is not over. Far from it.

I doubt that even the death of this old man could halt it now.