EXPLAIN THIS POlicitAL cartoon to me, please!!!!!!! ='(?

Question

I need to write a brief explanation for this political cartoon:
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/puzzles_toons/images/02tt.gif

But I don't get it AT ALL. :(
Help!!!! Like, NOW!!! :(

ANY help will be appreciated.

Thank you so much everyone!

You're lifesavers. =]

Answer 1

It's a play on the old story about six blind men describing an elephant. The first blind man felt the elephant's trunk and said, "an elephant is like a snake." The second blind man felt the elephant's leg and said, "an elephant is like a tree," and so on. Each blind man had a different impression of what an elephant was like.

This cartoon shows each of the top GOP candidates as parts of the elephant (the symbol of the Republican Party), emphasizing how each would be a different kind of Republican, and how each would define his party differently if he were the nominee.

Answer 2

I love Tom Toles! He's a great cartoonist!

The elephant, as you probably know, is the symbol of the Republican Party. In this case, all the candidates are -part- of the elephant, because Republican voters are all split between them, and the ones who like one of them don't like the other one. The thing is, only one of them can get the nomination, and it's not clear the other parts (the other voters) will back that one.

'The elephant in the room' is a figure of speech. It's like there's this elephant in the room and everyone sees him but nobody says anything about him, nobody points him out. Perhaps because they don't expect to see an elephant there so they think it's a hallucination and if they just ignore it it'll go away. In this case the elephant in the room is the fact that the Republican Party is very fragmented right now, Some Republicans are really unhappy with President Bush and don't want to vote for a candidate who supports him. Some are very much against the war and want a candidate who promises to end it, but none of the major Republican candidates do. So Toles is saying there's trouble ahead for the party, even though nobody will admit it at this point.

Answer 3

I think it's saying that each of he republican Presidential candidates represents some of the party's views, but none is a true republican. And thus, combined they make one elephant.