It’s the summer of 2016. The setting is a tropical island. A vacuous blonde walks into view.
KELLY: Hi, I’m Megyn Kelly, and welcome to Republican Survivor. Sixteen candidates for the Republican Presidential nomination have been winnowed down to two. Instead of a brokered convention, the nominee will be chosen by a jury of candidates who were eliminated in previous challenges.
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KELLY: Since the actual reading of the votes will take about ten seconds, we’ll fill time with clips from the past season. First, let me introduce our finalists, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. (Applause.) And here comes the jury. (Each ex-candidate walks in to applause.) Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Chris Christie... (Carson stands off to the side, staring into space with a creepy smile.) Scott Walker, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, John Kasich, Jim Gilmore, Carly Fiorina, Jeb! Bush.
(Jeb! walks in to no applause.)
JEB!: Oh, please clap.
Sound of one person clapping.
KELLY: ...Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham, and Bobby Jindal. (She counts.) Wait, we’re missing one. Is Kasich here? I can never tell.
KASICH: Right here.
KELLY: Are you sure?
Carson meanders in.
CARSON: Just...went...home...for...some...fresh...clothes.
KELLY: One of the memorable moments from this season was the Flint water drinking challenge.
Roll clip: The candidates are drinking bottles of brown, putrid-looking water. They fall over one by one, except for Rubio, who continues to guzzle.
RUBIO: I’m a hydro-powered robot! And let’s dispense with this fiction that Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing —
Graham manages to sit up.
GRAHAM: Hydro-powered? The Romney Rule clearly says that cyborgs can only be Republican candidates if they run on fossil fuels.
CRUZ: Hydro-robots are not natural born citizens!
Everyone looks at Cruz.
CRUZ: What?
Return to the present.
FIORINA: Did you see that video? It showed Republican candidates lying on a metal table, while Planned Parenthood talked abut harvesting their brains!
KELLY: I’m pretty sure they’re still looking. Speaking of water, who could forget the fair-and-balanced challenge, where candidates had to keep their TV’s above water.
Roll clip. The candidates are horribly clad in Speedos, except for Santorum, who’s in a rubber wetsuit with a sweater vest. Each is balanced on one foot on a small buoy floating in the ocean, and holding up a Fox-blaring TV with one hand. Christie starts to wobble, and it looks like he’s going to fall off. Instead he sucker-punches Paul.
PAUL: Help me, Aqua Buddha!
Paul falls into Huckabee, and all the candidates crash into each other like bowling pins and fall over, except for Christie, who raises his fist in victory.
Return to the present.
KELLY: Next, with demographics changing, we’ve added a new challenge category this year: Hispandering!
Roll clip. The candidates face an unimpressed-looking group of Hispanic people.
RUBIO: I introduced an immigration reform bill that I didn’t vote for!
CRUZ: I’m a Cuban refugee from Canada!
JEB!: Yo puedo leer palabras en Espanol en mi teleprompter como idiota!
TRUMP: You’re all a bunch of drug-addicted criminals who should be kept out with a wall that Mexico pays for!
KELLY (Voice-over): We’re still not sure how Donald Trump won that challenge. Then there was the Choice Challenge, where the object is to see who can put the most restrictions on abortion.
Roll clip. Huckabee is stuffing a terrified woman into a straightjacket.
HUCKABEE: And after you get the vaginal, anal, and cerebral ultrasounds, there’s a 60-day waiting period, during which you must recite “I am a slut” 1000 times per day!
KELLY (Voice-over): And of course the Second Amendment challenge.
Roll clip. At first nothing is discernible except smoke and the sound of gunfire. Then the candidates limp out, each clutching multiple guns and looking like Wile E. Coyote after a particularly inspired Roadrunner ploy.
Return to the present.
KELLY: And finally, there was the Mooning Challenge, which we’re not allowed to show on television due to the danger of permanent injury to viewers, but it narrowed the field down to our two finalists.
Trump and Cruz beam at the camera, which develops a crack.
KELLY: Now let’s read the votes! (She reaches into the ballot box and begins pulling out ballots.) The first vote is for….Bobby Jindal?! Who the heck would vote for Bobby Jindal?
Jindal shrugs.
KELLY: Okay, moving on, the next vote is for….Jim Gilmore. And the next one is for….Rick Perry. You all just voted for yourselves, didn’t you?
WALKER: Hello? We’re Republicans.
(….Several hours later...)
KELLY: The candidates have all agreed on a compromise nominee: Zombie Reagan! And you’ve all agreed to support the nominee. Right?
(Trump gives the camera an Oh-No-You-Didn’t look………...)
On to Top Comments!
From hulibow:
This by blue aardvark in First Amendment's diary about being kind to each other.
“If you can’t argue fiercely with someone in Thread A, and recommend them heartily in Thread B, you have not yet mastered Kos-Fu.”
From ericlewis0:
A funny one from memofromturner in my post about Alabama Gov. Bentley's alleged mistress resigning as his advisor.
Thanks, Team TC xoxo/e
From your humble (if antisocial) diarist:
In Barbara Morrill’s diary Trump, Kasich and Cruz tear up that loyalty pledge they all signed, CwV kicks off the thread, Railfan gives an inspired description, and it just keeps going from there.
Top mojo, courtesy of mik:
Picture quilt, courtesy of jotter: