About a year ago, on another blog, I wrote a piece about how I believed New Gingrich would be the most likely and most dangerous potential Republican Nominee for the 2012 American presidential race.  I argued that he has a proven track record of interest in becoming president as well as some very alarming megalomaniacal tendencies.  For example, he divorced his first wife because, and I quote Newt himself:  “She isn’t young enough or pretty enough to be the President’s wife.”  But I digress.  My point is not to pick apart Newt, but rather to destroy your hope (and my own) about a newly rising player on the political scene.

A few months after I wrote that article Newt declared his candidacy and now a year later he is tied for first place in the polls with Ron Paul.  Yeah, I just said that.  And this part is something I definitely did not see happenning.  Initially it’s kind of exciting that Americans are recognizing the only candidate who is honest about what he says he stands for and who has always been consistent, whether you agree with him or not.  But it’s disconcerting at the same time for two reasons.

The first reason that I find this disconcerting is that  Ron Paul is not owned or for sale.  As such the bankers or the Military Industrial cranks will kill him if he’s elected.  He’s not going to do their bidding and when he becomes an obstruction he will be disposed of.  It has happened before in American politics and it will happen again.  Mark my words.

The second reason is more general.  There are, again, some frightening parallels to what happenned in Germany in the early 1930s to what is happening right now.  In the German case the liberal and fiscally irresponsible Weimar coalition government broke the bank for Germany and in 1930 a hard hitting conservative, Heinrich Brüning, was elected chancellor.  His austerity measures dealt the deathblow to German society, doubling unemployment rates and making people very, very angry.  Desperate and enraged they turned to Hitler.

The point to take away from this is that it was a conservative who was the direct precursor to Hitler, not a liberal as most people think, although the liberals’ fiscal irresponsibility is arguably much more to blame than the conservatives’ austerity.

Will we elect a Hitler in 2012?  I don’t think so, but we might in 2016.  My worry is that the global economy is presently in a state of suspension before a collapse, a Wile E. Coyote moment.  And the powers of evil in the world might just let a very nice and honest doctor be the fall guy for what is about to happen.

Where then would American society turn its anger?  I don’t know.  But we have some very difficult decisions to make right now.  Gingrich and Romney are your classic establishment candidates, Gingrich being crazier and more militant and Romney being more fully owned by the banking institutions that have been robbing us blind, threatening Armageddon if they don’t get bailouts, for their irresponsibility, or intentional malice as might also be argued in some cases i.e the Goldman/Paulson/AIG/bailout scam.  Bachman and Santorum are hate candidates still chasing the specter of brown skinned turban wearing boogie-men… and gays, as though sex or mairrage is in some way the business of the Federal government.  And Perry is unelectable because Obama will debate circles around the stuttering, back-stepping idiot.  The media likes Romney, but Iowa will sweep him away like they did with the media’s pet Giuliani in 08.

The question we are left with is does New Gingrich get the Republican Nomination which will mean he will probably lose the election to Obama unable to rally the youth or does Ron Paul get the nomination and rally the youth, the libertarians, and everybody who is pissed off about foreign wars and high taxes to a victory?  More succinctly: The question is who is going to be the fall guy for the inevitable economic disaster in 2012 as the Euro zone falls and the now popping Chinese Real-Estate Bubble drops the Middle Kingdom to a very hard landing.

If I had to make a guess I would say that because the GOP is the savvier party, and I don’t think they want to reign over the coming economic disaster, Newt will get the nomination and lose to Obama.  Then in 2016 he’ll be back to run again and win with some seriously militant ideas.

Tragically, Ron Paul might actually be able to get the nomination and thus carry the election.  I say tragically not because I don’t want him to be president, I do (with some compunctions) because he is the only candidate who respects the rights of individuals, but rather I say it would be tragic because of the strategic result of that decision.  If Ron Paul were to become president it would set the stage for a terrifying repeat of what happened with Heinrich Brüning in the early 1930s.  What sort of Right-Wing Big-Government psychopath we might be angry and desperate enough to elect come 2016 after a term of Ron Paul’s austerity I have no idea, I fear someone worse than Newt, far worse.  I shudder to think it.

Despite that logic, I’ll probably vote for Ron Paul anyway.  At least it will show that we have the power to choose for ourselves.  If we forget we are strong, are we?