I’m not a political man. I listen to NPR, I know the actual definition of socialism, and I know Count Chocula can’t run for office in the United States. That’s about as far as I go– but it’s not your fault, America. This country’s body politic is folksy, uninteresting and dangerously prescriptive, but those are not reasons in themselves to maintain philosophical distance from politics. No, politics just came along too late in my life to consistently hold a place of real value. I’m an adult male. I own lamps and a knife set, which is already a lot of responsibility. On top of that, there’s a lot of concerns on my daily agenda, such as:

*things to dip chicken in

*ants

*running and jumping

*reading about eels

*the ballistics of various cold cuts

*what feathers are made out of

And so on. There’s just not enough hours in the day. Politics offers me very little, personally speaking. FoxNews gives me aneurisms, sure, but so do all the people who only get their news from Jon Stewart. I don’t care about any cause nearly enough to vote for it, and the only people I hate are geese. You can’t make geese illegal. Obama could pass social health care by winning a steel cage match against a berserker panda and it would still have to be more attention-grabbing than memorizing all the different Lego sizes in order to keep me interested. The reason this is so important is, obviously, because the world was supposed to end, but then it didn’t. 21 May, 2011, at 5:59 PM EST, was when this was supposed to go down. It didn’t. Maybe God doesn’t live on the East Coast, I don’t know. And I’m kicking myself for not going to Goodwill, buying tons of old shoes, pants and shirts, and just leaving them in piles all over the place. There’s nothing I can do about that now. What I do know is that we still have a country to run here, and to be honest, the Rapture is exactly the kind of flash a good candidate should be able to bring to the table.

Think about it. For the first time since the Macarena, everyone in the US was interested in the same thing. We’re unified. We’re laughing with one voice here. This energy must be carried over. We need a candidate who will listen to the heartbeat of the American people, hear what they’re saying, see what they love, know what keeps them smiling and happy. I know just the group of Americans to do it too. You know who I mean. This candidate should appeal to the somewhat conservative moral and social sensibilities of Americans, and know how to pinch a penny. Someone not afraid to poke their nose into the wrong place, if they think they can learn something useful. Someone who knows what it is like to be pushed to the margins of society, someone whose people has a long history, especially in Europe, of being ostracized, stereotyped, scapegoated, even hunted. Someone who understands what it means to have one’s family, one’s faith, one’s very way of life constantly threatened, and to come out victorious and strong. Someone from an ancient and learned tradition.

I’m talking, of course, about a werewolf.

Now I know what you’re thinking: “Nick, you handsome idiot, neither party will nominate a werewolf.” That’s true. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are ready for real change, let alone man-beast metamorphosis. Which is why I’m founding a new political party: the RepubLycans.

Here’s why a werewolf would make a perfect US presidential candidate:

1.) A hit with young voters

Thanks to nearly a decade of indolent literature, most Americans younger than thirty are perfectly aware of werewolves. A lot of this same demographic thinks cheeseburgers are vegetables and that the Batman symbol should be on a calculator. A note to any politician who wants to get elected: their vote counts exactly the same as those assholes who always make you talk about your policies. If you were a teenager, would you vote for a politician because you had a photo op or if they answered your question in a town hall meeting? Okay, now what if the answer to that question was ripping a lamb in half, and what if that photo was of you high-fiving a werewolf in a business suit? Thought so.

2.) Werewolf-specific political banter

Oftentimes, politicians who are light on their feet can dodge questions or give quips that divert actual blame or interrogation of a key point. One of the most valuable things a politician can do is talk about hot-button issues without ever taking a stance on them. Check out some of these sample questions and answers, and see how a good conservative werewolf would score huge points in any debate:

Q: “Can a werewolf and a human have sexual intercourse?”

A: “Not before marriage.”

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Q: “Do you support the Second Amendment?”

A: “It’s only silver bullets that I have a problem with.”

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Q: “How would you stimulate the economy and recover American jobs?”

A: “Some presidents may like having their ear scratched by China, but not me.”

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Q: “How do you respond to those who say your campaign is making many lofty, rhetorical promises that will be difficult to follow through on in reality?”

A: “Where I come from, we have a saying: either you can sit around and howl at the moon, or you can run at a dead sprint through the black of night, hop the fence at Farmer Dodson’s cattle ranch, slake your blood lust on the quivering, sanguine bovine mass writhing in your jaw, and rip out its still-beating heart for your immortality ritual.”

3.) The wolf card

You know what I’m talking about.

4.) A werewolf will scare the elderly shitless

Once an American turns fifty or so, they go through their own bizarre transformation. Everything become a paranoid threat to whatever opaque ideals of theirs haven’t been crushed by a lifetime of ignorance and cognitive dissonance. This is a very large part of the voting public: the fear vote. They will vote for whatever irrational excuse for policy passes muster in that waning mental Candyland they call a brain. they will vote to preserve their way of life. They will vote this way because after a lifetime of benefiting from change and progress, those things that once were exciting and new are now deeply confusing, alienating and threatening to them. This is why you give them a conservative candidate. A RepubLycan candidate can ease all of their moral, fiscal and social worries, but with one important addition: there will no longer be any reason to find another evil to fear.

Because the steely glint in the RepubLycan’s eye in the camera lens is more visceral than any idiotic fear they can concoct in their own heads. The message in those eyes is clear: “I am the candidate who will fulfill all of your pointless and far-fetched expectations– and if you don’t vote for me, I will eat your labradoodle.”