It’s a shame the so-called “Grand Ole Party” lends only superficial lip service to the moral high ground.
The roaming of presidential candidate Buddy Roemer across this moral desert led him to campus Wednesday for a town hall meeting to discuss his stealthy creep for the Republican nomination.
Unfortunately, the attendance to see the former Louisiana governor and congressman was representative of his notoriety relative to mainstream conservative candidates.
There were a paltry 30 in attendance — including Roemer, his wife and the press.
Perhaps this has to do with the pathetic dearth of advertising from his hosts — the College Republicans — but it’s certainly symbolic of his struggle for the Republican nomination thus far.
For now, Roemer is a one-issue candidate preaching the gospel of campaign reform.
He’s doing so at great cost to his own campaign.
“I don’t know any son-of-a-bitch that will stand up to special interests. The group is bought,” Roemer said of the current field of mainstream Republicans. “You want to go with one of them and you have a bought commodity.”
Roemer’s crusade has been crippling, as he will only accept $100 donations, leaving him on a different plane than the popular candidates.
It’s a admirable ploy, but a miserable disadvantage.
For a little context, The Washington Post reported Roemer had raised $126,000 in the third quarter, which is up 500 percent from the previous quarter. Now consider Rick Perry, who gobbled up $17 million in a scant 49 days.
But Roemer is chipper about his chances while buoyed by claims that his national name recognition is only 5 percent while polling near 3 percent.
It’s an interesting claim that’s impossible to back up, as Roemer isn’t even listed in most mainstream polls and his campaign aide simply suggests I Google it.
However, there is some anecdotal evidence that the Democrat-turned-Republican may be receiving some recognition after appearances on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” as well as on a number of MSNBC programs.
“I think your future and the country’s future has been corrupted by corporate interests,” Roemer said. “Big companies have never made more profits and the people at the top of the barrel have never been better off.”
This sounds oddly familiar with another contemporary crusade: Occupy Wall Street.
When you think about it, there is no better Occupist candidate than Roemer, who utterly detests corporate mingling in politics and is willing to sabotage his own campaign to back it up.
In a race full of charismatic kooks and dried-up moderate conservatives, Roemer’s logic could win him quite a following if he is allowed on the debate stage.
Consider Michele Bachmann, who was first anointed before being found out as a pray-the-gay-away whack job. Mitt Romney was the next sure bet before boring his base even further to the right. Then, Rick Perry was the party’s new savior before the party — along with the rest of us — got a nauseating sense of deja vu.
Now a man with the political credentials of a pizza salesman is the best and brightest the party has to offer.
The Republican Party is clearly dissatisfied with the petulant pitches from the current fare, and after an hour of listening to Roemer, I’m convinced he at least deserves a minute in the sun aside his fellow candidates.
His politics will ring with most conservatives. He’s a strong federalist, pro-life with respect to endangered mothers, energy independent, strong on Iran, a flat-tax reform proponent, and he only wears clothes made in the USA. That pretty much wraps up the South.
He would also appeal to those drifting somewhere left of the conservative base by espousing big-business regulation and political detachment, getting intelligent design out of science classes and calling himself an “environmentalist.”
He appeals primarily to logic, and backs it up with some fairly snazzy quotes like, “Do you believe this bullshit or it is just your mouth talking?”
So, after an hour, I didn’t necessarily agree with every point he made, but I feel he has a genuine point in the need for campaign reform.
And as the infiltration of corporate interest in politics gains more traction in the national consciousness, at the very least Roemer deserves a chance to make his point to the masses.
At the very least, he’d be more entertaining than Newt, and who knows, he might actually change some minds.
 
Xerxes A. Wilson is a 22-year-old mass communication senior from Lucedale, Miss. Follow him on Twitter @Ber_Xerxes.
 
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Contact Xerxes A. Wilson at [email protected]