Why are so many of the GOP heterosexual male leaders such wimpy looking men? Sarah Palin knows why.

[David Zephyr]

Why is it that the male leaders of America's Republican Party who are clinging to that old dis-proven stereotype of manliness are hardly the paragons of that stereotype themselves?

Look I'm a gay guy, and I know that we guys, gay or straight, can not be painted with a broad brush. As one of my straight male friends told me once, some of the most butch guys he'd ever seen were gay men. Fortunately, all of those old old stereotypes regarding the quality of manliness just seem to fail, don't they? My dad, who wasn't a sportsman, a soldier, a hunter or a roughneck, was still all guy through and through.

You know, I used to feel somewhat sorry for straight guys when I was growing up because there were all these unspoken do's and don'ts that they had to conform to. Times have really changed now. Young straight guys can hang with gay guys and gals and never worry for a second that someone might get a wrong impression. What a change I've seen in my lifetime.

And yet, there's still a shrinking crowd of straight men who are clinging to those old stereotypes of manliness...and they are still epitomized in our public arena by Republican men who are in leadership positions within their party.

The great irony to this gay guy is that none of them exude that manliness stereotype themselves. At all.

I mean, in all seriousness, Mitt Romney is a prissy man. He's what my tobacco-spittin' uncle would call a "fancy pants" guy.

Let's face it: Mike Huckabee just screams "pathetic weakling" every time I look at him. And speaking of Huckabee, you know when I was growing up, from my gay youngster perspective, I noticed that most red-blooded straight boys wanted to play with trucks, play army, play football and rough and tumble. I don't remember any wanting to "play preacher" and dress up in suits and comb their hair all pretty and pretend they were preaching to old women with a stained glass window behind them. I dunno. Maybe your neighborhood was different, but no one ever "played preacher" in my neighborhood. We didn't have that game. I wonder if Mike Huckabee, Ralph Reed, Toni Perkins, Pat Robertson and Gary Bauer "played preacher" when they were young? Did they ask the other boys who were playing firemen to play preacher with them?

What what the hell do I know? Probably not a damned thing, but it just seems to this old homosexual with a life-long experience pondering these nutty things that wimpy heterosexual men most always tend to be chicken-hawks -- you know, the guys who dodge military service themselves, but love to talk big about going to war, "nuking" the enemy, and who have no problem with sending other people's kids to die in their wars. You know, truly wimpy, soft and pasty men like Richard Cheney, Trent Lott, Bill Frist, Lamar Alexander, Ari Fleisher, Glen Beck, and, well there's just too many of them to even name.

Is it just me, or do you also notice that none of the men I've named hardly match up to that manliness ideal that their matinee idol, Ronald Reagan had? I have to admit that Ronald Reagan really had that shtick down good. He was the Marlborough man even when he wasn't trying to be. But today's Republican national male leadership are missing that 'manliness characteristic' that they worship so much and try to emulate so much.

I think that this is precisely why Sarah Palin is so popular with the disappearing GOP base: she hunts and kills animals from the friggin' sky, she skins her kill and cooks it all on the griddle. She gives interviews while turkeys are beheaded behind her in plain sight. All enough to make that wussy John Boener hide his bronzer back inside his prissy little briefcase, huh?

Yes, sir. Sarah Palin is more like Ronald Reagan than all the rest of those weak, pasty and fancy-pants Republican men, and I think they know it. She shows them up for what they are: wimps!

Move over, Rudy, Mike, Lamar and Mitt! The protector of your beloved, yet archaic male stereotype of Republican manliness is none other than that going-rogue-woman from Alaska. And she's going to kick all of your wimpy asses in 2012.