New York Crank announces he is running for the Republican presidential nomination

A recent artist's drawing of The New York Crank. Signed and numbered copies will

be given to the first fifty members of the One Percent who contribute $50 million or

more to the Crank's campaign. However, all cash contributions from grateful PACs

 will be accepted and appreciated, plus you get a free night in the Lincoln Bedroom.

NEW YORK: The New York Crank, a curmudgeonly old fogey who for a long time has cleverly passed himself off as some kind of a liberal-left, internationally progressive, socially-permissive, economically-Keynsian, democratic-socialist-leaning, redundancy-loving Democrat has announced that he will run for nomination as the Republican candidate for President of the United States.

“I am finally coming out and declaring what I really am,” he said in his announcement speech. “I am a Tea Party Wing Republican. And I would welcome a generous campaign contribution from the Koch Brothers. But I’m not greedy like some Republican candidates I could name. Half a billion dollars would be plenty for me.”

The Crank promised that if nominated and then elected as President, he would put the interests of his largest campaign donors “miles ahead” of the perceived interests of the masses of voters.

“You have to remember,” said the Crank, “that although few people realize it yet, the interests of the nation are the interests of the largest campaign donors. The people who are making and keeping the most money are the same ones who are raising the average income and average net worth of the American people. It’s  simple Ayn Randian economics, or as I like to all it, RSM — Real Simple Math.”

Asked to justify his point of view he explained, “If you have one person making a dollar a week, and one person making a million dollars a week, their average income is half a million bucks and fifty cents a week. Now I ask you, what hard-working Joe The Plumber-type patriotic American wouldn’t want to have an average income as high as that? And who’s going to tell me that high average incomes aren’t good for America? It's elementary dribble-out, spritz around economics. And also, I think, the Law of Averages.”

Asked why he had chosen this moment to announce his candidacy, the Crank said he felt he had to do so at this time because, “There are already more Republican candidates than you can count on the fingers of both hands. I didn’t want to wait until Republican voters run out of toes, too.”

The Crank said he was willing and eager to participate in televised Republican debates, but admitted that the chances of getting an invitation to do so are slim. One possible reason for that, he explained, is that, “I will not become a victim of Big Government paperwork and bureaucracy and petition-signing and all that legalistic Big Government crap. I will simply ask people during the primaries to demand the right to write in my name. New…York…Crank. What part of that can’t you spell? Oh wait, I have Tea Party supporters.”