My Campaign Advice For Mitt Romney

Dear Mr. Romney,

My name is Brad Pike, and although I don’t have a political science degree or, to be honest, any experience with politics, I believe my outsider status renders me more open to the kind of innovative idea generation necessary to transform a hot mess of Mormon gaffocalypse into an American God Emperor. And best of all, unlike every other campaign manager, I offer my services for zero dollars. Well, not for free exactly; nothing’s free, especially in America, and my price may be a bit steep.

It’s your sons. I want your sons, Mr. Romney. If my strategy leads to your election as President of the United States, I want to legally own them, body and soul: Tagg, Matt, Josh, Ben, and especially Craig will be mine to dress in whatever outfits I choose. They will paint my apartment, play Loaded Questions with me, and they will never see their families ever again, not even on Facebook.

Let’s start with your first catastrophic campaign error, which was acknowledging Obama’s existence. Oh dear, the mind reels at the thought of how many voters you’ve already alienated by admitting they have an alternative, but what’s done is done, I suppose. So our key objective, moving forward, will be to convince as many voters as possible that Obama isn’t real, that he is, in fact, a figment of their imagination, a collective delusion like alien abductions or homeopathic medicine, attributing the hallucinations to subliminal hypnosis by the liberal media in combination with vegan food laced with psychoactive chemicals.

During debates, act as if it’s just another speaking engagement. Answer all questions, whether they’re directed at you or not. When Obama speaks, be sure to speak over him because no cares what he has to say because he doesn’t matter because he’s not real. If the moderator references Obama, roll your eyes and say something dismissive like, “You want me to respond to Obama? Obama? What’s next? You want the Loch Ness Monster to state his position on health care reform? You want me to respond to Captain Planet’s environmental policies? Where does this vortex of delusion and madness end, sir?” The audience will erupt into applause, and the moderator will balk, try to articulate another question, only to be dragged away screaming by mental health professionals hired by our campaign. “We don’t tolerate schizophrenia in my America,” you’ll declare. “And we certainly don’t entertain their deranged fantasies. ROMNEY 2012!”

Concerning your choice of running mate, we’re looking to energize the youth vote, to steal them away from that imaginary person to whom we shall not give credence by naming. Paul Ryan won’t get the job done, so just drop him now. My choice for vice president: Edward Cullen. He’s young, handsome, popular with youth and women, and he’s even Mormon, or at least, I’m pretty sure he’s Mormon.

And let me be clear here: I did not say Robert Pattinson. I said Edward Cullen, and I meant Edward Cullen. Call Robby Pat Pat, get him in the pale makeup, the yellow contacts, the spiky hair, and whisk him to a podium where he can talk about the economy and social issues in the bland emo rhetoric to which he’s accustomed. He’ll say, “Marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman, and only after marriage is it appropriate for the man to hump the woman unconscious. Only after! At which point, they conceive a telepathic abomination, and the man gnaws open the woman’s chest cavity and plucks forth the atrocity from a bloody mess of pasta guts. The man does not, however, kiss or butt sex another man! That is disgusting! I will now take questions.”

Now, before I discuss the Rat Phase of our campaign strategy, I should probably establish that I’m aware of the exorbitant financial investment involved with a scientific undertaking of this magnitude, but Mr. Romney, I want you to ingest the following information with an open mind before dismissing it as balderdash/claptrap/twaddle.

I’m proposing we fund scientists to genetically engineer a designer species of rat with ROMNEY written in black fur along their backs; a tattoo of sorts, not injected into their skin, but coded into their DNA. We will then breed the rats, breed them by the millions in secret facilities under the Mojave Desert and then ship the rats to every major American city — New York, Chicago, Dallas, etc. We’ll unleash them like a furry brown tidal wave, sweeping through streets, sewers, subways, and people’s homes, your brand swarming, copulating, devouring, and spreading with the same ferocious speed characterized by the Black Plague. Say what you want about rodents — they’re dirty, disease ridden, potentially rabid — but they’re ubiquitous in a way your nameless opponent can never be because his “ethics” preclude viral marketing that may or may not actually included viruses.

I hope this rough campaign blueprint has been helpful to you, Mr. Romney, and I want you to know I have many more ideas, most of them also involving genetic engineering, some involving cryptozoology, one of them involving an animatronic version of you who appears near the end of The Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland. I can’t wait for your glorious presidency to begin, but more than that, I can’t wait to put lady wigs on your sons and make them kiss.