Yes, that’s right.  If you are politically moderate or left-of-center, I want you to march to your county elections department and register as a Republican, so you can vote in the 2012 presidential primary.  This is doubly important if you live in one of the early primary states that have closed primaries:  Delaware, Florida, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Maryland, New York and Oklahoma.  All of these states will hold their Republican primaries before the end of April, by which time the nominee will likely be determined.

Normally I would not call for such drastic action.  But it is obvious that Barack Obama is in serious danger of being the one-term president that makes Mitch McConnell’s jowls drool. Given our toxic political climate and anti-incumbent sentiment, any Republican, no matter how outrageous his or her positions, has a good chance to win the White House next year.

I think Rick Perry could win.  I even think Michelle Bachmann could win.  Ron Paul, well, maybe not, but who knows?  You only need to watch one Republican debate to see how much zombie anger is out there, just waiting to inhabit the body of the right candidate.

It is a mistake to think Obama is assured to prevail against the hardest of the hard-right.  Moderates and liberals need to plan for any eventuality.  This means we need to cast our primary votes for the Republican who is likely to do the least damage if eventually elected.

So who do I vote for, you ask?  Glad you asked.  I know how hard it is to vote for a Republican when you haven’t done so in thirty-odd years.  But I’m here to help.  Luckily for us, I have just put the finishing touches on my latest invention, The Wackometer™ (shown at right).

Before we go on: please do not call the device a WACKO-meter.  This is a precision instrument.  It rhymes with thermometer.  Thank you.

To use the device, I simply plug it into the USB port of my laptop (sorry, Apple people, there is no iPad app yet) and start typing in a candidate’s statements.  The Wackometer analyzes the statements for bizarre and extreme content and reports the result in units of kilocrazies (during testing, I found that a crazy was not a large enough unit of measure).

Here are the results I obtained for the current crop of Republican candidates.  Remember, when your primary arrives, you should vote for the candidate (of those remaining) who has the lowest Wackometer reading.

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Michelle Bachmann

On her website, Bachmann says Obama “bows to kings, bends to dictators, bumbles with reset buttons, and babies radical Islamists.”  She claims that health care reform will result in “panels of unelected bureaucrats who will determine your level of care.”  (Sort of like your insurance company does now.)  She opposes requiring girls to get vaccinated for HPV before they enter sixth-grade: “To have innocent little twelve-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat out wrong.”  She had sympathy for a woman who “told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter.”

I typed all of this into The Wackometer and got a reading of 124 kilocrazies for Bachmann.

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Herman Cain

One Herman Cain applause line: “People who oppose Obama are said to be racists – so I guess I’m a racist.”  But maybe not, as he also says, “I don’t think calling [Obama] a Kenyan is racist.”  Taking a swipe at Romney’s Mormon faith, Cain points out, “It doesn’t bother me, but I know it is an issue with a lot of Southerners.”  A bit further south, Cain envisions a Great Wall of Mexico: “If they could build that wall centuries ago without bulldozers, we can secure the border today. It could be a combination of walls and high-tech equipment…  If accidents happen, that’s one thing.  But I think we can improve upon that ratio of three million people dying.”

The Wackometer said 82 kilocrazies.  I tapped the dial just to make sure it was working, and the needle jumped up to 105.  Take your pick.

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Newt Gingrich

Gingrich would carry a big stick: “We have failed for a decade to deal with North Korea, we have failed for a decade to deal with Iran.”  His economic plan “starts with eliminating the capital gains tax and the death tax [and] reducing the corporate tax to 12.5%”.  But he shows some love for the American worker: “The [Obama] administration is the most job-killing administration in American history, it has no peer.”  So, to help create American jobs, “We ought to have a legal guest worker program. We ought to outsource it, frankly, to American Express, Visa and MasterCard, so there’s no counterfeiting.”

The Wackometer needle moved wildly, especially as I typed how he told Fox News “how wrong it was for President Obama to have favored infanticide when he was a State Senator.” It finally pointed to 74 kilocrazies, better than some, worse than others.

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Jon Huntsman

Huntsman has strange ideas like, “Economic prosperity and quality education for our children are inexorably linked.”  Uh oh.  So will he pledge to never raise taxes?  “No pledges. I think it diminishes the political discussion.” Then he must want to cut entitlements. “If we can’t find cuts in the defense budget, we’re not looking carefully enough.”  But what about that Kenyan in the White House?  “I don’t think you need to run down someone’s reputation in order to run for the office of president.” Come on, Jon, you’re a Republican, give us some red meat!  “I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”

Unfortunately, The Wackometer is not calling him very crazy: he mustered only 12 kilocrazies. (In my tests, just typing the first five letters of “Republican” is enough to make the needle jump). This guy is not going to win, but he was a good calibration check for The Wackometer.

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Ron Paul

Now the Libertarian. “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve race relations or enhance freedom.  Instead, the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty.”  And Ron Paul loves liberty: “Our country’s founders cherished liberty, not democracy.” So much for minority rights. “[Gays] can do whatever they want, call it whatever they want, they shouldn’t expect to impose their relationship on somebody else.”  But happily, gays can smoke whatever they want:  “You wanna get rid of drug crime in this country? Fine, let’s just get rid of all the drug laws.”

The Wackometer measured 92 kilocrazies.  Surprising, because he seemed so “reasonable”.

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Rick Perry

Rick Perry loves America: “When [Texas] came into the nation in 1845, we were … a stand-alone nation.  And one of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want.  So we’re kind of thinking about that again.”  Right.  Texas has 38 electoral votes, more than Michigan and Pennsylvania combined.  Perry loves that too.

Perry is forgiving.  He forgives oil that happens to spill on America’s shores: “From time to time there are going to be things that occur that are acts of God that cannot be prevented.”

Perry’s God looks the other way for BP, saving His wrath for the appointed judges that control our lives: “[Americans] are fed up with unelected judges telling them when and where they can pray or observe the Ten Commandments.”

Perry also has this homosexuality thing figured out: “Even if someone is attracted to a person of the same sex, he or she still makes a choice to engage in sexual activity with someone of the same gender.”  So, if someone is attracted to a person of the opposite sex, does he or she make a choice to engage in sexual activity with someone of the other gender?  That sounds so naughty!  I’m so confused!  What a dilemma.

Lest you think Perry ain’t smart: “I am a firm believer in intelligent design as a matter of faith and intellect, and I believe it should be presented in schools alongside the theories of evolution.”  I believe The Wackometer read 108 kilocrazies, but I think my belief should be taught in school alongside the theory of gravity, and let parents decide.

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Mitt Romney

Romney asks, “What creates better patient outcomes… free enterprise and consumer-driven markets or government management and regulation?”  Obviously, free enterprise — after all, if your doctor kills you, you wouldn’t choose to go back to him.

As a Republican, Mitt is obliged to weigh in on sex: “I feel very deeply about the need to respect and tolerate people of different social or sexual orientation. But at the same time, I believe marriage should be preserved as an institution for one man and one woman.” So Mitt is AC but respects DC (very deeply).

Unlike Obama, Romney will take our most-wanted terrorists to task: “We have serious enemies and growing threats around the world. Unfortunately, we have an administration whose idea of a rogue state is Arizona.”  Tell that to Gabrielle Giffords.  “This is a global effort … to overcome this jihadist effort.  It’s more than Osama bin Laden.  But he is going to pay, and he will die.”  Sorry that Obama didn’t leave him for you, Mitt.  But go right ahead and take comfort in your thinking that President Obama, “always the skillful politician, will throw in compliments about America here and there.”  As he writes letters to the survivors of America’s war dead.

Mitt Romney is the kind of candidate who pours a stream of gasoline on the ground and then throws rose petals on it.  His Wackometer reading was 60 kilocrazies.

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Rick Santorum

Finally, Rick Santorum weighs in on sex abuse by Catholic priests: “While [there] is no excuse for this… it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.” As to the consequences of sexual abuse by rapists, Santorum has utmost concern for the victims: “To put them through another trauma of an abortion, I think is too much to ask.”

“We should lay out areas in which the evidence supports evolution and the areas in the evidence that does not.”  Such as… ?

“Watching President Obama apologize last week for America’s arrogance … before a French audience … helped convince me that he has a deep-seated antipathy toward American values and traditions.”  Rick wins the Conservative Trifecta: loves the Bible, hates Obama, mixed up about sex.  And, for good measure, disparages the French.

On the strength of these statements, Santorum pushed The Wackometer to 145 kilocrazies, almost to the OMG level.

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Good luck, one and all.  See you at the polls.