ANGRY FOOLS

"Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools" – Albert Einstein

What's up with GOP politicians this week? First, Maine's GOP candidate for governor, Paul LePage tells a reporter that President Obama can "go to hell". Then, New York's GOP candidate for governor, Carl Paladino, threatens a reporter saying, "You send another goon to my daughter's house and I'll take you out, buddy." Is this a new GOP strategy? Call out somebody for a brawl in the street? Perhaps pay-per-view might want to consider adding a new feature for its fight-thirsty audience.

For quite some time, Republicans have been boasting of their success in tapping into voter anger, and look to make huge gains in this fall's elections as a result of that anger. Undoubtedly, GOP politicians like LePage and Paladino feel that exhibiting the 'angry tough guy' image will buoy their chances for success at the polls in November. They may be right, but all that anger they're stoking won't create a single job, balance the budget, pay off the national debt or make our country any safer from our angry enemies than it is today. In fact, that anger makes us more susceptible to attack from our angry domestic terrorists, many of whom are being fomented by the angry GOP rhetoric. I ought to add Tea Party to that sentence, but that would be redundant because, as Newt Gingrich previously noted, "The Tea Party is the militant wing of the GOP."

Einstein was a keen observer of life's fundamental forces of nature, as well as the relationship those forces had with one another. He recognized which forces built up and which forces tore down. He understood that which was positive and that which was negative, and so he knew what he was talking about when equating the notion of anger to fools.

If anger is all the GOP has to offer, the only question left to answer is this: Who's the bigger fool, the angry GOP politician or the angry voter who votes for him?