Oh, this is too funny.
I live this piece by Charlie Pierce in Esquire:
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 pompadoured war beast:
It was a call to arms employing all the visible and invisible tactics of political warfare.
There's more:
Okay, so it does look like Willard is once again moving toward capturing a nomination that he never was going to lose in the first place, so that is worthy of examination. It may take a while, though.
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.
...
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.
The whole article is classic. Check it outin full.
I mean really, doesn't Chuck Todd pretty much always look like he's trying to do anything but admit to the obvious - that conservatives are insane - to the extent he appears to be in physical discomfort, continually trying to hold in a powerful fart?
The election of President Obama has certainly driven the GOP mad with Obama Derangement Syndrome. There is no question.