HALLI CASSER-JAYNE - bio
the wizards of odd
 Posted, November 30, 2007     12:01 am est

Watching the Republican CNN/YouTube Debate was like watching a Baz Luhrmann version of The Wizard of Oz.

It began: Duncan Hunter lived in the midst of that great prairie of the modern west, California, with his eccentric Uncle Ron Paul Henry and his Auntie anti-immigration Tancredo Em, and the rest of those wizards of oddness running for the Republican nomination.

What a cast of characters!

There’s Mitt Romney, the Tin Man, give the guy a can of oil, please, so he can move his head! Romney doesn’t need an axe; he’s so wooden he’s his own wood pile. “If I only had a heart!”

And what’s with John McCain, who is starting to startlingly resemble Ray Bolger’s scarecrow…what has happened to your brain, “you billowing bale of bovine fodder?” (The wizard’s words, not mine)

Fred. D. Thompson had that deer in the headlights look on his face he’s been wearing too much these days. I could just see him uttering: “Toto, I have a feeling I’m not in Hollywood anymore.”

Then there’s The Wizard of God, Mike Huckabee. He answers to a higher authority, so no joke here.

And, dum de dum, rounding out the wayward bunch, that casting director’s dream, Rudy “The Lion” Giuliani, roaring ad nauseum: "9/11, 9/11, 9/11!" Is he ever going to get past it … what a coward!  “If I were the King of the forest…”

Honestly, it makes me want to click my heels together and say, “is there anyone home, is there anyone home?”

Seriously, is this as good as the Republican Party can do? Are these its best and its brightest? The candidates twittered like a bunch of mumbling Munchkins over guns, immigration, the Bible, the Confederate Flag when a twister has landed on our American housing market and people are being tossed in the streets like apples from trees in the Haunted Forest.

What a bunch of hot air balloon buffoons!

I don’t know that what the Democrats offer is so much better. And since it would be too easy to make Wizard of Oz jokes for the Democratic parties’ candidates, I’ll pass. But at least the Dems are trying to address legitimate issues and not take the public down some yellow brick road. (OK, I couldn’t resist just one.)