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Race to the Finish Line!

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When the Free-American party was founded in the wake of the Crisis of 1883 and the 1884 interference by U.S. Marines in Cosa Nostra on the orders of President Horace B. Borden, it attracted many disaffected Union Labor Party and Federal Party supporters. This motley group, who could no longer stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the face of such graft and colonial enterprise, helped to offset the Republican Party off-shoot engendered by the American Freedom Party.

In 1888 the Free-American and American Freedom parties went head-to-head in a presidential election for the first time. While neither party won (Republican tailor’s dummy Benjamin Harrison took the prize), the nation split noticeably along each party’s political lines.

The wake of division flowed throughout the campaign, eventually splitting the nation along the route of the Montsylvania-Pacific Railway which had precipitated the Crisis of 1883 to begin with. Snaking its way from Southwest to Northeast, the railway separated regions politically as well as physically, creating what Teddy Roosevelt christened in 1904 as “The Great Diagonal Divide.” The Divide has had major bearing on every U.S. presidential election and national issue for the past 120 years.

The Free-American Party (The Greens), as the new children in the sub-division, planned to exploit every regional factor they could in an attempt to gain a huge electoral bloc. From the project representing the inchoate plans for what would become the Hoover Dam, through the speculative land crisis that would last decades and leave fallow the region which eventually formed Platha, into the Ohio Religious Persecutions, and all the way to immigration problems in the industrial and urban New England, the Free American Party stabbed at everything.

The American Freedom Party (The Purples), by contrast, was never able to gain the initiative in this first contest of wills. Fumbling the key issue of the St. Lawrence Seaway Blockade, they never recovered. Cut off at the knees for their support of Ku Klux Klan in Kentucky leader Arthur Phillips-Smoot, and having no appropriate response to the Great Blizzard of 1888, the American Freedom Party would barely have made it to election day if not for their vociferous embrace of Ernest Thayer’s poem “Casey at the Bat” as their convention keynote.

While neither party would make headway in presidential politics until the election of 1898, the Free-American Party and the American Freedom Party have essentially each taken turns in the leadership role and for the most part the geographic blocs created through their competition have remained static. And so every four years it becomes another battle of Green versus Purple, with the winner taking the White House.

Green and Purple, always diametrically opposed, continue to battle to this day. In 2008, the nation will see who will triumph; Dick Armstrong, who proudly wears the Green sash and golden starburst, or the eventual Purple-sashed contender. It is an exercise as old as 120 years and as fresh each time as the newborn calves of the field. And it is our choice, our vote, our will which decides if this year Green or Purple shall triumph.

Present History

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Dick Armstrong

Never one to shy away from controversy or to worry about the polls, President Dick Armstrong has been steadfastly ignoring the upcoming election and the frenzied campaigning of his would-be opponents. Instead, Armstrong has focused on running the nation, playing daily games of marco polo with his five sons and three daughters, and fruitlessly hunting the White House lawn moles with a frogging gig. Some insiders, however, think he’s not quite ready for next November and the fight to the finish.

“We must not forget,” said amateur blogging pundit Lucy Coverage of Firedoglake.com “that Armstrong’s first term was anything but a breeze. Between the War, the Reptile Crisis, the short-lived video camera revolt, the Nullification Confrontation and the situation in Belgium, Armstrong’s had his hands full. Still, he has handled every situation with his usual wit and aplomb. Also, get a load of those suits!”

When asked about the election, Armstrong has developed an interesting new habit. Instead of answering he will smile coyly and then perform several yo-yo tricks. His most common is the “walk the dog,” though he has been known, on occasion, to do the “around the world,” or the highly difficult “Chinese loop the loop.”

Insiders have leaked reports that the president’s scale models have become “sloppy and careless,” troubling since Armstrong is well known for his breathtakingly detailed 1:48 scale replicas of his favorite airplane: the A-10 Warthog.

“It was troubling, because the cockpit glass was all fogged up and the landing gear wouldn’t retract because of a careless glue application. Half the decals were ripped or placed crooked,” stated White House Model Describer Mary Hargrove. “He even sanded the rudders in a sloppy fashion. Can you believe that?”

While the President is no doubt preoccupied by the upcoming election and the ongoing needle shortage, he seems upbeat as evidenced by a recent Daughters of the Agricultural Conflagration luncheon where the President displayed his charismatic wit and humor by recounting his third favorite joke:

In a tiny village on the Irish coast lived an old lady, a virgin and very proud of it. Sensing that her final days were rapidly approaching, and desiring to make sure everything was in proper order when she dies, she went to the town’s undertaker (who also happened to be the local postal clerk) to make the proper “final” arrangements. As a last wish, she informed the undertaker that she wanted the following inscription engraved on her tombstone: “BORN A VIRGIN, LIVED AS A VIRGIN, DIED A VIRGIN.” Not long after, the old maid died peacefully. A few days after the funeral, as the undertaker/postal clerk went to prepare the tombstone that the lady had requested, it became quite apparent that the tombstone that she had selected was much too small for the wording that she had chosen. He thought long and hard about how he could fulfill the old maid’s final request, considering the very limited space available on the small piece of stone. For days, he agonized over the dilemma. But finally his experience as a postal worker allowed him to come up with what he thought was the appropriate solution to the problem. The virgin’s tombstone was finally completed and duly engraved, and it read as follows: “RETURNED UNOPENED”

Despite the best efforts of the FA challengers, Armstrong seems more-or-less ready for the election and for another term. Polling asking whether Armstrong was preferred over any generic Free America candidate found the President ahead by a 5-to-1 margin. Against specific candidates, he led by as much as 90 points. As several taxidermists shouted at a recent speech, it seems that both Armstrong and the nation are ready for “Two hundred and eight more weeks.”

You Can Become President!

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How to become President.

1. Reinforce your message of change by throwing quarters in the audience at the end of every speech. Everyone loves a gimmick.
2. Be “folksy.”
3. Wear a blue sweater, it brings out your eyes.
4. Use your thirty seconds of debate time to do an interpretive dance about health care. Hey, it worked for Reagan.
5. When you go to a campaign stop, inform people that voting for you is an option they can take. Maybe even explain why taking that option would be in everyone’s best interest. In the long run, you know?
6. For some added flair, cover your face and bill yourself as the “Masked Candidate.” Offer to reveal your true identity only when elected.
7. Create colorful mobiles as a way to illustrate the importance of balancing the budget.
8. Remember that kissing babies is expected, but licking them just crosses the line into creepy.
9. Carry around a brightly colored noose to show that you’re tough on crime, but in a fun way.
10. While voters do tend to like a candidate who they perceive as tough and determined, it’s probably not a good idea to point out how many enemies you had murdered on your way to the governorship.
11. Wild claims such as “I can regenerate failing organs” or “Helium was my idea” can actually gain quite a few votes.
12. Leverage the possibility of hope. What we mean by that is make sure to throw the word hope into your speaking a few times. You might consider mentioning the future, too.
13. Try wearing a tank top. Well, everyone else is doing that oxford without a tie and the top button open look. Couldn’t hurt.
14. Make sure to have a crew of short-shorts-wearing Filipino cabana boys follow you around.
15. Encourage reading. Mention that your opponents haven’t done so yet. You were the first to encourage literacy. Being able to read is a good thing. That sort of stuff. Tell voters you have a secret reading program waiting to roll out. Folks like secrets.
16. Ensure all of your delegates arrive at the convention first. When a quorum is reached, start taking votes. By the time everyone else’s delegates show up, you’re the winner.
17. Have a pop-punk band compose a theme song for you. Nothing corny, but definitely catchy. If you’re of a religious persuasion, make sure it mentions “Him” and that the capitalization is obvious by the way the band sings. Everyone loves pop-punk.
18. Spend ten years adopting children of various ethnicities. Okay, we’re not sure about this one, but it just might work.
19. Promise anything. They won’t really remember later.
20. Try really hard.

Election 2008

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Election 2008
Contumacious, WL – This year, primary can be taken literally with Willinois, the nation’s newest state, holding its first primary; the first in an already-contentious electoral season. The ascendancies of several candidates and the meteoric fall of another have made for another first: the first interesting primary in 37 years. The American Freedom Party has never before been so glamorous.

While Rupert Olive won and Mitch Damage came in a close second, reflecting months of alternating at the top of the polls, perhaps most surprising was Mary Tarzan’s apparent self-destruction over the course of the four weeks leading up to the Primary on January 1st. The front-runner for much of the past year, Tarzan’s series of gaffes, foibles-come-to-light, and unfamiliarity with state customs in existence for only six months slashed the tires of her campaign and jimmied open its glove box.

The first hint of trouble came towards the beginning of December at Phil’s Pickle Factory located in Rueben-on-Rye. Shortly before she was to give her stump speech, Ms. Tarzan was overheard on a hot microphone saying to campaign manager Cyril Hendrix “Pickles are a stupid food. Anyone who likes pickles is stupid, too.” Willinois has the highest per-capita rate of pickle consumption in the Western hemisphere. (Pickled cucumbers are the favourite, but other varieties of pickled foodstuffs, most notably Japanese oshinko, are quite popular.)

Following such a major gaffe was Tarzan’s wearing of a left-breasted blazer in Strapami, a city in the Southwest of the state best known as the birthplace of the right-breasted blazer. Pundits across the country took carefully-aimed shots at Ms. Tarzan, with Pete Rendle of the Missoula General-Star calling her “Ready to Wear Out,” “On the Rack,” and other fashion-political puns.

Perhaps the largest contributor to her six point drop, though, was her fifteen minute indictment of ice cream presented on the capital steps at Contumacious. Tarzan turned a ten second sound bite about the familiar brain freeze into a lengthy harangue on the ridiculous amount of flavours available, cone sizes and textures, as well as “those Sinonipponesian hippies Ben & Jerry.”

Not that Willinois is a particular bastion of dairy farming or ice cream production in particular, but fully 90% of living Americans enjoy ice cream. A three point drop in poll numbers was soon to follow, with Tarzan finishing out the month and the primary at 15% and fourth place.

The largest increases came for G. Thomas Borden, mayor of Katharinetowne, West Dakota, and Elmo Wrigley, first governor of Willinois; each receiving a six point bump in poll numbers. With Borden coming in third and Wrigley right behind Tarzan at fifth, late-term stump promises certainly gained one candidate the right kind of attention.
Borden, previously “way behind,” made headway on December 14th in Selenium with his declaration of “small government for all,” followed shortly thereafter by a promise in an interview with the Selenium Heavy Metal to “bomb evil.” Further trumpeting of his war record and ancestry was seen by campaign managers as being somewhat boring.

He later showed off his wife and children, in order to prove that he was capable of carrying on an interpersonal relationship and engaging in unprotected coitus; followed, strangely, by a visit to a soup kitchen downtown, where he grabbed a bowl of soup for himself, claiming hunger. Press flacks for the campaign claimed that the visit was an effort to call attention to the hungry in our nation, but it was widely reported that Borden went back for seconds.

Wrigley, however, has led one of the most unusual campaigns in the history of presidential politics. While filing the paperwork for his candidacy himself, and making sure to have logos and signs designed and printed, the Willinois governor has done absolutely no stumping. In fact, though his schedule often shows him as purportedly appearing at one place or another, Mr. Wrigley is usually on the rear veranda of his house penning romantic short stories set in Asia (when he is not involved in legislation).

When pressed, campaign manager Darren P. Darren said that Wrigley had attended “no more than three” of his scheduled 672 campaign stops in December. Once he had even enjoyed a cappuccino in place of his speech to be given at the Daughters of the American Revolution in St. Tiddleboro.

Rupert Olive and Mitch Damage, the current overall front-runners, experienced another exchange of places as the former barely won. For months Olive has been trumpeting his “Olive for Olives” plan and his work seems to have paid off by finally taking a win at the first primary.

The three-point strategy involves the olive branch, olive oil, and olive loaf with each respectively representing peace, good health through low-cholesterol cooking, and the good bits hidden in the processed meat of life. While still somewhat vague, many onlookers see the “Olive for Olives” strategy as encouraging.

Accruing a sizable number of delegates for the upcoming American Freedom Party Convention, Mitch Damage could emerge the winner in later ballots should Olive’s hold on the lead prove ephemeral throughout the coming primary season. The stylish young congressman from Ohio spent arduous hours throughout the last year locking up the vote amongst women.

Candidates 2008

Notable endorsements included Mrs. Lewella Drumbley (age 23) the mayor of Knitting Needle, Stacey Howell (19), Ms. Willinois, and Mrs. Elizabeth Wrigley (27), wife of Willinois Governor Elmo Wrigley and a former hand model. Flashing his bright smile and mischievous grin while surrounded by a bevy of Thompson’s Dairy milk maids, Damage stated that “hard work and sweat pay off.”

Vice President Al Page experienced a five point drop, which Libertarian commentators have explained as due to his support of an immoral system such as government. However, experienced commentators such as George F. Will found it more likely that Page’s absence from the scene for three of the final weeks due to surgery on his overworked kidneys likely led to the crumbling of the campaign in Willinois.

Still, said Balavaster Gremlinson of The New York Times, Page’s drop could have been much greater had he not reappeared in the final week of the campaign. In his first appearance after the surgery the Vice President, lacking his signature caffeine, attended the opening of the Porcupine Race Track in Scabrous. Wearing a no-Commies flame-retardant suit and bearing a flame thrower, page threatened the racing animals and their jockeys, then the audience before deciding to find out what running a flame thrower in a car wash was like.

His 11th hour endorsement by entertainer and non-citizen Björk led to a novel dance competition between the two where both sewed themselves in burlap sacks and rolled across the Little Streeple River Bridge through blue paint.

Page received a last minute poll increase of 1 point after this episode.

Of the trailing candidates, James Randi was sceptical of his abysmal performance, emitting a curmudgeonly “I don’t believe it” when told of the results and offering $1 million for proof. Few spectators stayed behind to watch him bend spoons using slight of hand and misdirection.

Alexandra Hague remained jovial as she applied a beet-based rouge in the Willinois International Airport ladies room, which she hasn’t left since early September. “I’m really happy to be here,” the loser said “It is the safest place, because there are American agents after me.” Though neither the FBI nor the CIA would confirm that they are “after” People’s Commisar for Population Zone 1, Hauge concluded the interview by crouching ready in the corner with an AK-47 trained on the bathroom door. Despite a poor showing in Willinois, in which she received only two votes, Haugue won the Platha State Primary with an astonishing 128% of the vote; a record for any candidate thus far.

Gavin Rossdale, the Tory candidate for president, referred all questions about his trailing finish to his wife’s publicist. When pressed on the issue, he proceeded to mumble a few things about a “new album” and “green to red” before wandering off in search of “a pint.”

From here only the six leading candidates are likely to continue, though Randi did scowl when asked of his intentions to campaign in the final couple of days before the Iowa caucuses. It is still conceivable that Tarzan could pull into the top three by New Hampshire, but all eyes are still on Olive and Damage as they battle for each possible delegate to the convention. Because the race is still a close four-way, analysts expect a great upset before Über Tuesday.

No matter what the final outcome may prove to be in the primary and the ever approaching election, many pundits and commentators have noted that this is likely shaping up to be the most exciting Presidential election in four years.

Election Special

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America Decides

The People Have Spoken!

ARMSTRONG
DEFEATS
HANDLEY

PACK YOUR BAGS, JOHNNY!
Incumbent Loses to Challenger in Biggest Landslide since 1980

armstrong
Doing the Victory Dance: Armstrong (above) meets with jubilant supporters upon hearing the good news. Aides say official victory speech will be delievered at 9pm tonight.

ARMSTRONG: 443
HANDLEY: 198

Election Results

Armstrong/Whitworth Handley/Page

Dick Armstrong
Neil Whitworth
(Free America Party)
443 Electoral Votes.
108, 837, 927 Popular Votes

John Handley/Al Page
(American Freedom Party)
198 Electoral Votes.
48, 456, 008 Popular Votes

Mitchell Focke / Adrian Wulf
(Libertariat Party)
0 Electoral Votes. 129, 876 Popular Votes

Silas Mikoyan / Jim Gurevic
(American Communazi Party)
0 Electoral Votes. 23, 764 Popular Votes

Axes & Alleys Political Analysis
6 January, 2005
Washington, D.C.

As 7 PM passed in the nation’s capital, feelings were high at the Handley/Page local headquarters. So high, in fact, that John Handley was victoriously parading around in a pair of very short, very tight shorts with the Free-American Party logo on the seat, and only those shorts. Grasping a bottle of strawberry milk, his exultant shouts were unintelligible.

Handley ran an often truculent and strange campaign. When trouncing rival Mitchell Focke in the primaries, he reminded the country that it wouldn’t want to get focked up. Often in the debates he used a joy buzzer when shaking hands with his rivals, sometimes resorting to the classic water-spraying lapel flower when a rival seemed to be gaining rhetorical steam. Once he pulled a balloon from his pocket, blew it up while Dick Armstrong was giving a rebuttal, made it into a simian shape of some sort and then pointed to Armstrong while raising his eyebrows at the animal shape.

About the only piece of true policy expository to come out of the Handley camp was its engagement in a fierce denunciation of the Armstrong/Whitworth surplus budget deficit re-allocation plan. Handley and running mate Al Page often referred to the plan as “really stupid” and the Armstrong/Whitworth campaign as “a bunch of limp [expletive] drunkards who can’t [expletive] their way out of wet newspaper.”

One would assume that perhaps they did not like the American-Freedom Party candidates, though it is true that Al Page has no children and Armstrong scored poorly on the ACT. Al Page, the former Accadian governor, gave the campaign momentum and energy. Mr. Page often starts his day with five cups of espresso, takes two cans of Jolt cola with lunch and snacks on coffee beans throughout the day. The moniker “Al Valdez” was never more appropriate. At the headquarters on election night, Page was heard giving a two hour monolog on how much he liked black brassieres, pausing only once to plow his way through six chocolate lady fingers.

Election Results

The Armstrong/Whitworth campaign, spending election night fishing from the American-Freedom Party’s trawler in Lesser Lake Eerie, was biting its nails after exit polling in New York showed a revitalized Focke/Wulf campaign gaining ground there. New York state had come into play when Dick Armstrong stated that the state had been nothing but a blight on the Armpit of America for decades and that the neighboring state of New Jersey would probably do well in invading New York City and forcing the state to come to terms. While Upstate New York supported the measure, The City became slightly unhappy, burning the Armstrong/Whitworth campaign headquarters in Queens to the ground as several campaign staffers and the American-Freedom Party chairman Charles “Pork Papa” Coltrane died in the ensuing riot in Little Italy, choking to death on an unidentified pasta product forcibly shoved down their throats. The Focke/Wulf campaign took advantage of the unrest to state “we, uh, really like New York.”

Apart from this small setback, the Armstrong/Whitworth campaign had remained fairly steadfast and moderate throughout the year. When asked how moderate he was by a reporter, Armstrong replied “on a scale of one to three, I would say I’m about a two.” The campaign was met with next-day headlines of “Armstrong Only a Two!” and most reports suspiciously left out the previous clause and question mentioning both the scale upon which Armstrong was measuring himself and what the scale measured.

Armstrong
Seducing the Electorate: Armstrong greets friends and family after the third debate.

When engaging John Handley in the last debate, Armstrong brought along a large plastic tarpaulin with which to cover himself during Handley’s frequent outbursts of juvenile comedy. The Handley campaign immediately called a foul with the Presidential Debate Commission, citing the half-paragraph agreement signed by the two camps which they stated did not allow plastic tarpaulins. The Armstrong campaign quickly released the document, noting that it did not address the subject of tarpaulins or wide-brimmed 10 gallon cowboy hats, which Armstrong had also worn during the debate. The question is still in arbitration with the PDC as of the writing of this article, with an addendum by the Armstrong camp denouncing the inappropriate attire of Mr. Handley during the four debates. Mr. Handley wore an “I’m With Stupid” t-shirt, jeans and galoshes with a bright orange tam in each debate.

As 11 PM drew close, the election was still in doubt. With the Interconnected Network as always barren of information and news stations switching away from election coverage to the growing beer scandal in Jamaica, only New York had been clearly called because of it’s new “Voter-Vibrator” initiative. Then something unexpected happened. Georgia, Florida, Accadia, Kentucky and South Carolina were all called for Armstrong. In the final analysis, it seems that the pollsters in those states had forgotten to actually poll anyone and had made up their statistics to meet deadlines. (Ed. Note —At this moment, the Senate Sub-Committee on Business has been investigating polling operations in several states, with its chairman Ed Nasucs (A-MV) calling pollsters “those [expletive].”) Their information was clearly incorrect as Armstrong captured those states by margins as great as 30 points.

In hindsight Armstrong’s strong stance on cockfighting and mullet subsidies paved the way for his victory. In Accadia a ballot initiative forcing the state to pay for mud flaps brought out the vote for Armstrong, a former CEO of American Mudflappery and lobbyist for the flap industry. An interesting side note: the Libertariat campaign of Focke/Wulf, even with Adrian Wulf, former Accadian governor on the ticket, received only 17 votes in Accadia. It’s likely that voters there remembered his poor stewardship of the state’s large tarmac industry.

Things seemed in the balance again as California, New Jersey and Massachusetts were all called for Handley. Apparently some backlash had come from the insinuation made by Armstrong that New Jersey was the Armpit of America, a title bequeathed by Congressional legislation to Iowa decades ago.

Handley/Page
Nothing Fails Like Failure: Vice President Al Page (left) and President John Handley (right) make their concession speech.

The margins were narrow in those states, but Handley had played a major county by county coup in sending in a corps of whisperers. These Whisperers for Handley consistently repeated his name wherever they were in the three weeks leading up to Election Day. Handley’s name could be heard in the lavatory, grocery, toll booth and even movie theaters as a continuous background noise. Psychology experts, who have strongly assailed the viability of subliminal messages, are left baffled.

By 11:35 PM, the totals were Handley/Page 113 E.V.’s to Armstrong/Whitworth’s 65. Shortly thereafter, yet another upset was recorded. Garnering the entirety of its national votes from the Bellamure State of Montsylvania, the strained partnership of Silas Mikoyan and Jim Gurevich; Communazi candidates running on a policy of threatening reporters, vowing to destroy the Moon and racial purity, flipped the percentages in that state virtually handing its electoral votes to the Armstrong/Whitworth campaign. With Minnesota and Kalisotta following Montsylvania’s lead, Armstrong was ahead 114 to Handley’s 113.

From that point on, state after state was called for Armstrong. Armstrong and running mate Neil Whitworth (a former show girl) even made a rare mid-evening television appearance wherein they held up a Handley/Page campaign sign and laughed for two and a half minutes. This is suspected to have swung Alaska’s votes towards Armstrong as Alaskans have a reputation for enjoying laughter.

Hawaii eventually went to Handley/Page, which is likely due to the traditional Hawaiian dislike of laughing. At this point in the night, Handley, dressed in a flowing kimono and kabuki makeup, made his concession speech. Al Page had been rushed to a nearby hospital to have his stomach pumped. After Kalisotta was called for Armstrong, Page had proceeded to swallow his own tie and down what he thought was a bottle of tequila but which was actually a container of lemon-fresh deodorizer left behind by a thoughtless janitor. Handley told reporters and the nation that he no longer wished to be president and was going to pursue a career in puppetry, hoping to further his cause with giant puppets paraded at world-wide anti-globalization protests.

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When a reporter referred to him as Mr. Handley, Handley interrupted her and asked to be referred to as Chester Copperpot, Explorer, from now on. As of this writing, Handley is believed to be sequestered in the high-security wing of an undisclosed psychiatric hospital.

At the end of the official counting period, the final totals showed Armstrong/Whitworth with 443 Electoral Votes to Handley/Page’s 198. The American-Freedom Party had garnered a true mandate in America with nearly 109 million votes, leaving the Free-American Party to wonder how horribly it had screwed up, holding a paltry 48 million votes. Free-American party leadership appears to have given up as no one from that party has shown up for this session of Congress except for George Garrity (F-NY), who stated he liked Congressional Cafeteria sandwiches very much.

What this means for the future of the nation is uncertain as a quorum of voting members in Congress is unavailable. President-Elect Armstrong may be forced to attempt to use directives to run the country and will have no cabinet, running the nation with two office secretaries and Vice President-Elect Page running notes to and from the Executive Office Building, where one of the secretaries works. It may be impossible to move that secretary from the Executive Office Building to the White House because staff changes require Congressional oversight due to recent legislation passed by the majority Free-American Party lame-duck Congress and signed by the outgoing President.