A Field of No Dreams

("Field of Dashed Dreams")

In the Iowa fields as Rick Perry spoke the smell of manure must have been incredibly pungent.

It is no longer enough anymore to be merely a run of the mill conservative to be considered a true Republican. You have to out-crazy Bachmann if you want to walk (carefully, to avoid the poo) in this field. I feel half- badly for Governor Romney who doesn't stand a chance to be nearly as outrageous as his rivals. Romney does faux-crazy, and it comes off looking, well, faux

This is a field where government comes to die, where it no longer is deemed capable of addressing our concerns and helping to remedy them, but serves best by not serving at all. It is a place that denigrates the President, his party, and the ability of government to lift us out of this mess, and clean us off. In the view of Mr. Perry and those like him, government is to be minimized and brought as close to extinction as possible. And this is his vision of how to lead.

The truth is that it is not all government, only bad government, that is the problem. The truth is that the past administration, which fought 2 unfunded wars, provided ill conceived tax cuts, gave pharmaceutical companies massive handouts and deregulated controls over financial institutions, is bad. The truth is that the present Republican party, focused not on rebuilding our country but merely on destroying a President,is bad. The truth is that it is not government itself, but the Republican party that has been the root cause of the last decade of decline.

In Iowa, Mr. Perry stood in the middle of a field of no dreams. And it stunk in more ways than one.