Charles Pierce (Esquire): "The Republican party, root and branch, is now completely barking mad."

[highplainsdem]

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/mitt-romney-florida-campaign-6648231

I am supposed to write now about how Willard Romney, the only presidential candidate in history to run as his own animatronic double, got his swerve on, his mojo back, and his engorged pen... no, wait, let me start again. I am supposed to write about how Willard Romney, a man with the charisma of grass seed and the political principles of a moray eel, became a newly formidable candidate after his thumping by Newt Gingrich among the holy-rolling swamp-runners in South Carolina. I read in yesterday's New York Times that, after failing the ultimate test of his Gooberhood, Willard fled to one of his several Fortresses of Solitude, only to emerge in Florida as a lean, mean pompodoured war beast:

-snip-

The next two weeks are going to be the test. Not so much of the relative strengths or the relative electability or (God help us) the relative merits of the remaining four Republican candidates for president but, rather, of exactly how much we as a country intend to be fooled by clumsy dumbshow, and of exactly how firmly our elite media will dedicate itself once again to the task of draping togas over gibbering grifters, obvious charlatans, and transparent mountebanks. There has been made an heroic effort all year to ignore the two most obvious stories of the campaign: a) the deforming power of corporate money in our politics, especially in the wake of the Citizens United decision, and b) that, as evidenced by the field of candidates it coughed up to oppose a still very vulnerable incumbent president, the Republican party, root and branch, is now completely barking mad.

Consider the various "frontrunners" we've gone through. Michele Bachmann was a frontrunner after the Iowa Straw Poll because she proved herself to be the best one at off-loading elderly white people from buses. (This qualifies her to be marketing director of a reservation casino, but not much else). Herman Cain was a frontrunner for a while because everybody chose not to notice what a crackpot he is. The idea that the haunts of ancient sexytime brought him down, and not the fact that his "bold ideas" would've turned this country into Albania with baseball, is indication enough of how shabbily rigged the puppet show is this time around. Sometime in the middle of last fall, it became impolite to point out that the Republican party was offering to the nation the most obviously unqualified, nakedly prevaricating, and altogether stumble-brained clown college since the last Ringling Brother died.

-snip-

Instead, we got stories questioning how Rick Perry might "turn it around," and the people writing them had to work really hard to pretend that, "Learn freaking English, cowboy." wasn't the most obvious answer. We got endless speculation about what The Base was thinking, without any acknowledgement that The Base was the whole damn problem. If it were not, then Willard Romney wouldn't have had to spend the last two years making himself look so ridiculous. Meanwhile, those two most basic stories were lost amid a cacophony of absurd talking points and luxuriously financed bullshit on the airwaves. Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina came and went, and were declared inconclusive because Gingrich was able to race-bait a campaign to a victory in that particular tactic's home office, and now Florida is going to be hailed as a breakthrough because the obvious nominee has toughened himself up with a new posse drawn from the Bloods of the Heritage Foundation and the Crips of the American Enterprise Institute. Gang truce!

-snip-

[TwilightGardener]

1. This is an awesome article. LOL at Cain's "ancient sexytime".

[TheWraith]

2. "Now"?

You mean they weren't before?

[whathehell]

3. Hillarious!..n/t

[ewagner]

4. Said it in December and I'll say it again

The clown car isn't the candidates...it's the tea-party doctrine they must embrace.

My fondest hope that somewhere in a dark, smoke-filled room some brilliant Republican strategist has this all mapped out perfectly. 2012 will be a crushing defeat for the Republican Party and in failing, they will purge themselves (and the nation) of the plague of tea-party madness that a few wealthy ego-maniacs have unleashed on the country.

Maybe I'm just dreaming.

[Ikonoklast]

14. They can't. The Religious Right wing, the Teabaggers and the Paulistas would split off

and effectively take one-third of the Republican vote with them.

They have made a deal with the increasingly politically insane, and that coalition is going to be their downfall, as they can't keep them happy, nor turn them out without becoming a minority party forever.

[malaise]

5. Delish!!

Eat one another ReTHUGS
I'm lovin' it.

[tanyev]

6. "the Bloods of the Heritage Foundation and the Crips of the American Enterprise Institute"

If they do a dance rumble, there'd better be video.

[highplainsdem]

7. kick

[hifiguy]

8. Pierce's blog is essential reading

Vicious, funny and brutally accurate all at the same time.

[highplainsdem]

9. Agreed.

[MH1]

15. Yep.

One of my most favorite writers.

[Rex]

10. A little late to the party.

The GOP never new sanity or reason and if they did, it got waterboarded and flown out of country to be tortured some more.

[gratuitous]

11. If the popular media weren't covering these nincompoops so relentlessly and uncritically

I'd venture to say that fully 80% of the electorate wouldn't know one from the other. The fact that T Rump is still getting serious air time is tip-off enough that the media have completely tanked the Republican slobberfest. A year or so from now, we'll be treated to the "Oh, we knew there wasn't a serious candidate in the bunch! I don't know how we kept from bursting into giggling fits anytime one of those idiots flapped his or her gums" post hoc rationalizations of the media chuckleheads.

But in real time? When there is the serious business of selecting candidates for president is actually happening? We get Chuck Todd and David Gregory earnestly pontificating in "what it all means" with informed buffoonery from Fox.

[redqueen]

12. Brilliant.

K&R

[rbrnmw]

13. It's a race between Moonbeams and Magic Underwear

And the fact that the press seems to think that it would be a close race with either against Obama is laughable