With apologies to Forrest Gump's mamma, presidential wannabes are like a box of chocolate. You never know what you're gonna get. And to take the analogy out a bit further, it is likely that Hollywood's most famous dummy knew more about the Constitution than some of the current Republican wannabes.
Front and center is Donald Trump, about whom the only serious thing is that a fair number of people are supporting him.
In case you missed it, Trump shot the moon yesterday in burnishing his credentials when MSNBC reporter Savannah Guthrie asked him whether there is a right to privacy in the Constitution.
Trump rolls the question around in his double comb-over head and then replies, "I guess there is. I guess there is," all the while suspecting that Guthrie's is some kind of a trick question.
Guthrie then piles on, albeit gently, and asks how this view squares with his newfound opposition to abortion, which he was for before he was against it since no Republican candidate is credible in the eyes of the GOP base unless they are against women. Anyhow, Trump replies in so many words that he doesn't see the connection between the right to privacy and abortion.
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A cornerstone of my "Why The American Dream Is Dead" post last month was that we have become ignorant of our own history, core values and virtues. While that is slightly forgivable if you are a lounge lizard, it is reprehensible if you are running for higher office and outrageous if that office is President of the United States.
Alas, Trump has plenty of company. There are Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, whose views of the Constitution are the stuff of Saturday Night Live skits, as well as two Tea Party crash-and-burners -- Sharron Angel and Christine O'Donnell.
In my favorite sound bite of the 2010 campaign, O'Donnell expressed shock during a debate with her Democratic opponent that the Constitution delineated the separation of church and state.
"Where in the Constitution is separation of church and state?" O'Donnell asked Chris Coons amid audible gasps and laughter from the crowd of law students and attorneys.
" . . . The First Amendment establishes a separation," Coons explained. At which point O’Donnell interrupted him to again ask "The First Amendment does? . . . So you're telling me that the separation of church and state, the phrase 'separation of church and state,' is in the First Amendment?"
Then again, perhaps Trump, Bachmann and Palin should be given some slack. After all, the Supreme Court has ruled that General Electric and its megacorporation ilk are people and have the constitutional rights that people have. You can look it up in the Constitution.
It's right there. Oh, I thought it was there. It's somewhere.
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