I want you to be the first to know I intend to run for some high political office in the near future.
(I know, I know. I have falsely claimed in the past that I was going to run for office and didn’t. And I said last August I had quit writing forever, due to popular demand. So, I lied. That is nothing new in either politics or fringe journalism. Get over it.)
I haven’t decided what the office will be — only that the office will be at the state or national level and will be very powerful. Voters will back me because I know the secret to solving all of our national problems.
Best of all, I will not run as either a Republican or a Democrat. Both of these historic political parties are too much of a mess for even a brilliant person like me to salvage.
Republicans have worked hard at turning their “Grand Old Party” into a “Less Than Adequate New Party.” They have been somewhat successful at promoting enough red herrings to distract voters — even those who have read more than door hangers — from real issues. Yet efforts to become the answer for the world of the 20s seem to be more about the 1920s.
Democrats have risen to the challenge by proving over and over they cannot organize a one-float parade. They continually focus on being a “big tent” party that embraces the views of both the common folk and the elite egg heads, while never noticing the tent has no center pole.
I will create a new political coalition called the TeePee Party. (Liberals will claim this name is racist and conservatives will see it as a reference to illegal public urination on golf courses. But, I digress.) TeePee will be short for the Thoughts and Prayers Party.
Every patriotic American should be able to get behind T&P as the only solutions to our national woes. Yet, while government leaders say thoughts and prayers solve every problem from gun violence to insurrections to hang nails, no bill has been introduced in either Washington or Indianapolis to turn the solution into enforceable law.
Imagine what our nation would be like if everyone were required by law to both think and pray — to think before they pray or pray before they think? And this law needs to have teeth with penalties for violators.
Someone who shares their thoughts in a coffee shop while forgetting to pray before they eat the donut would be fined. Those who bother the deity with a thoughtless, ill-conceived prayer or meditation would likewise pay for the transgression in either civil or religious court.
I predict both learned Republicans and prayerful Democrats will flock to my party.
Democrats likely will complain the new law violates First Amendment guarantees of religious freedom but Republicans will overlook the problem as long as prayers are Christian and the Second Amendment right to own and carry military-type weapons while praying is upheld.
Please support this new party with your donations to build a strong financial war chest. The party will accept cash, checks, electronic transfers, stocks, bonds, bit coin, unredeemed Green Stamps, gently worn MAGA hats and unopened cans of Billy Beer from Jimmy Carter’s 1980 campaign.
The time has come to end the culture wars. We cannot continue to sidestep our responsibility to solve the pressing problems that threaten the future of our nation. Thoughts and prayers are the proven solution already used extensively and successfully by a wide range of political leaders.
Let’s write it into the law.
Bud Herron is a retired editor and newspaper publisher who lives in Columbus. He served as publisher of The Republic from 1998 to 2007. Contact him at [email protected].
