Issues & Insights

Debate 2: The Party from Lovetron Practices Interplanetary Funkmanship

Older folks remember Darryl Dawkins (aka Chocolate Thunder): a massive, free-spirited NBA megastar known for backboard-shattering dunks – and for claiming to be an alien from the planet Lovetron, where he practiced “Interplanetary Funkmanship.”  

No one quite knew what “Interplanetary Funkmanship” was. But it possibly related to stuffing candy bars on the bench, having little-to-no work ethic, and therefore taking large portions of games off in-between booming slams with nicknames such as “Yo Mama,” “In Your Face Disgrace,” and of course, “Sexophonic Turbo Delight.”

In retrospect, the late Thunder would have made a perfect Democratic voter. And in fact, 20 presidential contenders spent much of the last two nights making like the Party from Lovetron with platforms drawing on apparent Funkmanship principles.

Before we elaborate, let’s get past Thursday night’s obligatory horse race elements:  

  • Big winner Kamala Harris stopped the show – literally – shushing her shouting competitors with: “America doesn’t want to witness a food fight, they want to know how we are going to put food on their table.” Hit pay dirt on tax cuts and families’ agony over emergency room costs. And boasted the evening’s “webgem” with an impassioned immigration soliloquy and bring-down-the-house reference to the “microphone that the president of the United States holds in her hand.”
  • Youthful Mayor Pete Buttigieg nevertheless came across as thoughtful, measured and mature, and expertly defused potential trouble over South Bend’s current brouhaha over a white-cop-on-black-suspect shooting with heaping helpings of humble pie.
  • Meanwhile, frontrunner Joe Biden was cornered by moderators. Kneecapped by House backbencher Eric Swalwell (capitalizing on Biden’s years-ago “pass the torch” quote). And knifed on past segregationist bromances and busing opposition by Jamaican-American Harris. (Admitting Biden isn’t a “racist,” and thereby surfacing the ugly slur against him, was an especially deft twist of the blade.) Barack’s wingman held his own on pure debating points, but Biden’s defensive, downright tetchy and yes, sleepy demeanor contrasted with his usual happy warrior persona. Grumpy Old Man of the field is not a good look.

Still, the biggest loser of both evenings: the entire slate. Which to any thinking person seemed freshly beamed down from Dawkin’s pink-, rose- and teal-hued celestial domain.

Take health care.  Per Dem Socialist Bernie Sanders: “Every other major country on Earth … somehow has figured out a way to provide health care to every man, woman, and child.” Oh yeah? On Earth, we actually know single-payer systems specialize in rationingdelaying and denying care to men, women and children.  

“Under our plan people get to go to any doctor they want, any hospital they want.”  Right. Even under Obamacare, doctor shortages are already exploding.  And one of Lovetron’s own warned Wednesday night that Medicare for All’s low reimbursements could close every hospital in America.  Even the Dems’ two “moderates” consider free health care a “right. Full stop.” And would subsidize care for illegals.

Bringing us to immigration. A Lovetronian chorus denounced President Trump in stentorian tones for separating children at the border and “putting them in cages.” Yet terra firma-grounded voters understand that border officials are overwhelmed due to Democrats’ cynical refusal to adjust asylum policies or fund true border security. That ending deportation for breaking immigration laws alone is a siren call to more Oscar and Valeria Ramirezes to die trying to sneak into the US – as the other-worlders weep crocodile tears.

And that you can’t crowd Central American presidents into a room and fix centuries of corruptocracy by oligarchs, gangs and cartels overnight – or afford to import their poverty and disorder.

What else do voters not basing political decision-making on Interplanetary Funkmanship know?  

  • There’s not nearly enough evidence that climate change is “an existential crisis” to justify upending America’s hard-won energy security, ditching plane travel, retrofitting every building nationwide or wasting money on inefficient, intermittent, and land-hogging and despoiling wind and solar.
  •  Most households actually did benefit from GOP tax cuts, and President Trump’s economic program has revived job and wage growth.
  • Rushing to make nice with Iranian mullahs who cheat on nuclear deals, foment disorder globally and brazenly shoot down a $130-million American drones isn’t the best idea.  Trump, for all his Sturm und Drang, has fundamentally reset relationships with friends and foe alike for the better.
  • It’s plain weird for politicians to prioritize taxpayer-paid abortions for transgender women – or is it men? – over strengthening marriage and the family, and for a public official in a relationship condemned by every faith in history to lecture us on who may talk about religion and what they may say.
  • And a Party fighting voter ID tooth and nail, flipping Congressional seats weeks after elections as operatives “harvest” votes, and gorging on Hollywood and tech moguls’ multimillion-dollar spending has no place wagging its ET finger about political corruption.

But hey – the Lovetron Party did surface one fascinatingly funky idea:  resident metaphysicist and erstwhile cabaret singer Marianne Williamson suggested to the President that she would “harness love for political purposes. I will meet you on that field. And, sir, love will win.”

Lovetron’s Democrats had better hope Ms. Williamson is right about love winning.  Because their other out-of-this-world ideas certainly won’t.

Bob Maistros is a messaging and communications strategist and crisis specialist. He was chief writer for the Reagan-Bush ’84 campaign, a former Senate subcommittee counsel. He can be reached at bob@rpmexecutive.com.


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3 comments

  • List of Democrat brilliant policy ideals to be implemented upon assuming power by D’rat command & control pander-monkeys —

    *total government control of your health care (all)
    *open borders/sanctuary country (all)
    *Green New Deal (all?)
    *Reparations for Blacks (every one)
    *Reparations for Gays (Comrade Warren)
    *Trump impeachment for crimes which did not exist (all)
    *Supreme Court packing (Gillibrand, Buttigieg and probably most)
    *free college tuition/forgive college debt (Sanders, Warren and probably most)
    *government guaranteed make-work phony jobs (
    *Puerto Rican bailout then statehood
    *gun grab (all)
    *late term & beyond abortion (just find one against)
    *guaranteed universal income — $1K/mnth. to everyone (Yang)
    *dramatic increase in “earned income credit” give-away
    *ban mining and oil&gas production on federal lands
    *end electoral college (all?)
    *redistribute your wealth to others (basic Democrat tenet)
    *same day no-looky-see voter registration
    *every criminal, even those on death row, gets to vote (Sanders)
    *war on plastic & fossil fuels (all)
    *a third gender designation on federal identification cards
    *decriminalize pot and your drug of choice
    *remove Iranian sanctions rejoin Obama’s Iranian Nuclear Deal Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) (all)
    *rejoin Paris Climate Accords and reparations to ”third-world countries” for our rapacious energy production/use (all)
    *force you to do business with and hire their deviants of choice (all)
    *embrace Muslim radicals/boycott Israel
    *bowing to anti-Semite & racial charlatan Al Sharpton required (every damned one of ’em)
    *soak the rich/higher taxes across the board (all)
    *Social Security & Medicare for illegal aliens
    *end debate/limit free speech
    *pander to, placate and enrich government employee unions
    *ban “right to work” laws and force unionization on opposed workers, force dues to be spent on D’rat politicians
    *end ban on gay men w/ history of recent gay sex donating blood (I forget which genius)
    *radical change to agriculture to small farms from lg. agribusiness because commies have had such great luck with agriculture (Sanders)
    *the federal government would give each voter $600 to donate to their favorite candidates (Gillibrand)
    *”War Tax” imposed upon non-serving high income families (O’Rourke)
    *waves of new regulations & exec. orders of gov. control (all)
    *radical leftist appointments to courts & bureaucracy (all)
    *promises to cure cancer (Biden)
    *”baby bonds” paid by government (the New Jersey nitwit)
    *spearhead the alteration of U.S. from capitalist to socialist (name one that isn’t)

  • Clicked on the article just because of the Darryl Dawkins reference in the headline. I was a big fan during his career.

  • Bravo. A nice dissection of the insane debate. The “What else do voters not basing political decision-making on Interplanetary Funkmanship know? ” list is right on target.
    The huge problem is that only half the country finds these candidates, and their ideas, insane. The other half is all excited for this. And will vote one of these anti-traditional America candidates in. Jen Psaki, BHO’s State dept spokx, has posted an article today praising the candidates, while explaining that, thank you, we can now do without the straight, pale, men. Leftism. It’s like a brain disorder.

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