I know, you think Republicans aren't funny. Well, sure, not in the conventional way. How many good conservative comics can you think of? Sure, P.J. O'Rourke has gotten a few chortles out now and then, though he's pretty tame compared to the party today. And there were inexplicable crowds who thought Andy "Dice Clay" Silverstein was funny when he said, "Achhhhhhhmed". Ah, an ethnic slur as a substitute for humor... is that all they can come up with?
But no. They just do their humor differently. It's performance art.
They make fun of that quaint concept of "elections". It's quite funny, if you're in on it.
Sure, in school we were taught that on election day, people voted and the winners got the office. But Stalin taught that it's not who votes but who counts the votes that matter. Hence there's humor in how people who spew anti-Communism as a touchstone of religion and politics will take the latter's advice.
They told two really funny election jokes this year.
One was in South Carolina, a state where their control of the Senate seat wasn't really in question. Since nobody expected a real race, they made funny of it. Under the Help America Vote Republican Act, a lot of states bought touch-screen (DRE) voting machines. Louisiana did. But that state, famous for its squeaky-clean politics (not!), decided that the machines were too untrustworthy even for them. Now any David Letterman fan knows that the machines would make a great subject for his steamroller bit. But no. Instead of destroying the machines, Louisiana sold them to South Carolina.
Then the leaders of the state that brought us Strom Thurmond run their joke. They found the Last Possible Guy in the state to get elected, a nobody facing sex-crime charges, and found a way to put him on the ballot, even though he was indigent and couldn't really pay for it by himself. There was a real candidate for the Democratic nomination, Vic Rawl, a respectable man no doubt hoping to raise his statewide profile by losing a statewide race against the execrable Jim DeMint. But those hilarious Republicans counted the votes, and Alvin "not Al the singer" Greene got the nod. With DRE machines, there was no recount possible. Hahahaha! What a funny trick!
Another joke involves sports. Republicans love sports. Sure, lots of Democrats do too -- Kos was a founder of SB Nation, after all -- but Republicans take them more seriously. They like sports metaphors. "Three strikes" became penal policy. And a real sport is supposed to be scrupulously honest. Look at what they did to Pete Rose, after all, who probably never threw a game, but eventually gambled. No, you have to have integrity in sport, right? But there's one exception, a "sport" whose value is not in integrity but in its over-the-top scripting. A "sport" that is no longer called a sport but "sports entertainment". Yes, professional 'rasslin', that parody of the wrestling game.
So just to make sure that we understand that sports are a metaphor for life, who do the Republicans dig up as a candidate? Why, the head of World Wrestling Entertainment, the biggest 'rasslin' charade of all. Sure, Linda McMahon couldn't actually win in Connecticut. But that wasn't the point. The joke is better than that, just to remind us that the "game" is scripted, the outcome predetermined, and there's nothing we can do about it but to sit back and watch.
Yep, that's quite a sense of humor they have.