2008: The Year Of Crushed Hope

Let's see, boarding passes are printed, luggage is packed, dog's at the kennel, crazy neighbor knows to shoot trespassers on sight .... What else? Ah, right, the Year In Review column! It's the proudest tradition in American Journalism, when your Main Stream Media gatekeepers throw together a quick retrospective of whatever happened during the year, before we all take off for a long winter vacation -- no "Christmas" for us, thanks! We're the media, after all.

We shall not soon forget this year that's almost over, 2008. Not until early 2009, anyway, when the real horror begins.

So let's sit back while we can still afford computers, and chairs, and enjoy a comical collection of the year's biggest, lamest failures. From snarling rat-faced would-be terror-dictator Rudy Giuliani to snarling snowbilly doofus Sarah Palin, this was truly the year when (GOP) Hope was Crushed.

Fred Thompson: Oh lord, this guy. The Republicans' chances were so absurdly dismal in '08 that somebody (Bill Kristol is usually behind these dumbo ideas) decided the last best Hope of the Grand Old Party was this lazy-ass old Southern Plantation Gentleman with his Gucci slippers and Trophy Wife and negative IQ. Why? Because he was on the TeeVee, of course! Sadly, he wasn't on Hee-Haw or NASCAR, so GOP primary voters had never heard of him.

Lesson Learned: If you're going to save your ridiculous redneck part of your rich-people party with an actor from the television, some fancy law program with big words is probably not the place to find your savior.

Mitt Romney: Sure, he's vain and elitist and the liberal ex-governor of Taxachusetts and, probably, an android. Sure, he speaks French and used to have about $250 million, before his failed campaign and the stock market collapse took most of his money. But Mitt's greatest sin was his religion, Mormonism. He could not prove to these people, these GOP primary voters, that he was a for-real Jesus Freak, because he belonged to this scary religion ... possibly the same scary religion practiced by old what's his name, Osama bin Laden!

Lesson Learned: If you're going to run a Mormon candidate and win the Evangelicals, do your Mormon-financed anti-gay marriage campaign first.

Rudy Giuliani: Speaking of gays, this smug crook actually lived with a bunch of homosexual men, in New York, recently! He also liked to dress up like various ladies and sing show tunes. Also, this is the dumb jerk who built his emergency headquarters IN THE WORLD TRADE CENTER, which had already been bombed by terrorists. And while America was grieving the 9/11 dead, Rudy was canoodling with his mistress on the NYPD's tab! Rudy made the New York police chauffeur this woman around Manhattan and up to the Hamptons, as rancid smoke poured out of Ground Zero! He divorced one of his wives on the teevee news! His own children wouldn't endorse his candidacy.

Lesson Learned: There are some things not even Republicans will tolerate.

Sarah Palin: Is she really gone? The Guardian Angel of Comedy looked down upon America last summer and said, "Yea, verily, you people are screwed. If any nation ever needed two months of non-stop laughs, it is you people, you sad losers." And lo, Sarah Palin appeared. We will never see her kind again. How dumb is Sarah Palin? She makes Fred Thompson look smart, that's how dumb!

But anybody can be dumb -- most people are, in fact. Palin's superpower was her insane ambition and boundless thievery. This is a person who charged Alaskan taxpayers a per diem so she could sleep at her own house! When the wealthy old GOP donors cut off her $300,000 shopping spree, she made her own staff pay for her luxury clothes, on their personal credit cards!

Lesson Learned: None. She'll be back, probably as the 2012 candidate for whatever dingbat fringe party will have her on the ticket. She is absolutely convinced she'll be president of something, eventually.

Ken Layne is an East Coast Republican scholar who regularly attends Georgetown cocktail parties with other Moderate Conservative Rich People who are actually competent, which is why they all work for the Obama Administration, now. He is Executive Editor of Wonkette, a foreign policy quarterly.