Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

The 19th century political caricaturist and editorial cartoonist Thomas Nast (1840-1902) is famous for identifying Republicans as elephants and Democrats as donkeys. He also created the Tammany tiger, and Santa Claus as we know him today.

Mr. Nast was a handsome and clever fellow, a Bavarian immigrant, to whom we all owe a great deal, but I have long thought that more animals need to be added to America’s political menagerie, none of them as wholesome and savory as elephants and donkeys. Lampreys are eel-like fish, sort of vertebrate leeches or underwater vampires, that attach themselves to larger fish with their circular, tooth-lined mouths, hitching a free ride, punching a hole through the legitimate fish’s flesh, and feeding on its blood. They look and feel (I am informed) slimy and disgusting. The freedom movement needs a cartoonist (I can think of one or two) capable of rendering a cartoon lamprey in all of its horrifying malevolence.

What party would be represented by a lamprey? Well, it has gone by several names, and it’s filled with familiar and despicable figures. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, described as “to the left of all Republicans, except Susan Collins, and … Democrat Senator Joe Manchin” is a lamprey, riding along on the Republican party, parasitically sucking its lifeblood, never contributing anything to advance its progress. She voted with Obama a stunning 72.3% of the time. I could say Murkowski is a “never-Trumper”, but she was a lamprey long before the Donald ever came along. My wife Cathy, first made aware of Murkowski’s malevolent role in American politics, exclaimed, “Alaskans! What the hell is wrong with you?”

Another well-known lamprey is Willard “Mitt” Romney, who viciously opposes all of Trump’s undertakings, foreign and domestic, and whose father George was a leader of the cabal in 1964 who betrayed fellow-Republican Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and helped Democrats and the media stab him in the back, electing that murderous gangster Lyndon Baines Johnson. George Romney would have called Barry a “deplorable” if the term had been current back then, for the same reasons the political elites despise President Trump today. They believe only they are fit to determine how to live your life. The delusion seems to be hereditary.

Senator Susan Collins is debating with herself at this very moment whether she wants to be a decent human being or a lamprey. Will she stand in the way of the best President we’ve ever had doing his duty, as the Constitution allows and requires? She (and we) may know by the time this is published.

It sometimes seems that Senator Lindsey Graham is bucking for a place within the Lamprey Party. The man is, most charitably, inconsistent. At other times Lindsey seems quite principled and even heroic, especially considering that he was a “close friend” of the late, unlamented John McCain, as putrid a villain as I have ever seen in American history, hiding behind a war record he had to bribe his fellow prisoners-of-war to uphold. At the same time, the other McCains, Cindy (widow) and Meghan (daughter) have endorsed that stumble-tongued shambling retard Joseph Biden and appear to feel no embarrassment.They eventually will, if I have anything to say about it. No mercy for lampreys.

The list goes on and on: Jeff Flake, the most accurately-named character in contemporary politics, Colin Powell the heroic general who led fearlessly from the rear, John Bolton, king of the disgruntled ex-employees, Jim Mattis, James Comey, John Kasich, George Pataki, Bill Weld, and the Minister of Insecurity himself, George Conway. Look up “Anti-Trump Republicans” for a list of Lamprey Party members in Wikipedia. Each one of the hundreds of cretins on the list thinks he (or she) would have been a better President than the Donald and bitterly resents not getting the chance. It is the mentality of Presidential assassins.

Not a word what any of these presumptuous feebs would have done about Covid-19, Chinese communist aggression, the rioting, the economy, minority incomes, pharmacy prices, or peace in the Middle East. The Orange Man must be cast oh the ash-heap of history because he likes McDonald’s cheeseburgers and doesn’t hold his pinky finger out when he drinks Diet Coke. My first political activism was marching against the war in Vietnam and I am tearfully grateful I have lived to see these times. I hope to live long enough to see Americans return to the Moon and set foot on Mars.

Except for the lampreys and the Democrats, where we go 1 we go all.