For Real! I am not making this up. Since Mitt Romney's humiliating defeat in November's Presidential election, the GOP's image has suffered precipitously and the party has sunk into a funk of an existential crisis.
Perhaps no other single news item is as emblematic of their current dilemma than this casualty of the 2012 campaign, the announcement that GOP political pundit and Romney campaign 'lieutenant' Bay Buchanan is abandoning political punditry for a career in real estate.
But Bay Buchanan, a top Mitt Romney lieutenant who's been involved in politics ever since serving as treasurer of Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign, saw last November's loss as a signal to get out of presidential politics.
"It was so tough. It was brutal," she said of the loss to President Obama. "I think it's the toughest because we really expected to win it," added Buchanan, a former Treasurer of the United States who also ran her brother Pat's three campaigns for president.
Of all the deluded Republican campaign workers, candidates, pollsters, etc., she was perhaps one of the most deluded in believing that Romney would win, and the shock of the loss caused her to embark on a new career two days after the election.
"I thought to myself in November, I have another career in me," Buchanan said. So two days after the election, she started an online real estate course and now has her sales license and a firm: McEnearney Associates Inc. in McLean, Va.
Ironically, she is leaving because of the 'negativity', which she herself generated. She combatively made her points on the talk shows, like in
this appearance on Meet the Press where she challenged Joe Scarborough's conservative bona fides, and David Gregory actually challenged her schtick as 'Republican talking points' and insisted she admit Romney had sky high unfavorables.
Here's Bay brawling with Scarborough.
Here she is twisting herself in knots defending Romney's position on abortion:
And here's Steveningen's diary where she tried to defend Romney's non-support of LGBT visitation rights.
While Buchanan plans to keep her nose in political issues and will continue to give speeches, her famously combative TV debating days are over for now. "It's so negative and TV is more difficult than ever in the sense that it's really not an honest debate anymore," she said.
You would think that someone who spent their life in politics, is a former Treasurer of the United States, would be well connected enough that they would find some other related endeavor, like say, a think tank. But real estate?
A lifer in politics, Buchanan said her background will help sell and negotiate real estate deals. "Being somebody that they kind of know will be a real positive and, as you know, I'm just a charming person," she said. And, she added, "compared to what I did in the past, this is an easy sell."
And just like that, in a matter of weeks, she has not only a shiny new real estate license (in three places!) but a real estate company as well. So all you slackers out there who say the economy is bad and can't find a job, just look at Buchanan!
BUCHANAN: This is a man who has spent a life in serving others. That is the basis of what he believes, and he has given.
Perhaps someone who believed that a man who spent his life enriching himself actually spent his life 'serving others', is better off staying off the TV. She was a great source of amusement though and will be missed in that regard.