White Guy Gives Tap Dancing Lessons To Audience Familiar With The Nicholas Brothers

David Weigel, "Randsplaining: Rand Paul went to Howard University to find voters Republicans neglect. It wasn’t great, but he did better than most." April 10

BUT first, Alex Seitz-Wald:

Give Rand Paul some credit for attempting to do what several decades of elections have shown is a tall order: Get African-Americans to vote Republican.

Golly, no thanks. Not even if that had actually been what he was trying to do. It doesn't take near as much courage to speak Power to Truth. Especially when you know there's a considerable reward for doing so, and nobody's gonna make you eat your bullshit.

Incidentally, I'll give the man credit. After he makes his "Party of Lincoln" speech across Dixie in 2015.

But let's get to the real fictional adventures of Rand Paul:

It was all going fine

Maybe now would be a good time to define some terms.

until Rand Paul got stuck on a name.

Paul's problem was not a temporary memory lapse we all can relate to. It was, and is, selective amnesia, of a sort none of us should accept. And it had been on display for twenty minutes at this point.

He’d survived the inevitable civic demonstration, when Brian Menifee, a mechanical engineering senior, tried to unfurl a red and black and green banner reading “Howard University Doesn’t Support White Supremacy.”

The "inevitable" civic demonstration, says the guy who tried to downplay that whole Frederick Douglass Republican thing at CPAC.

Menifee, wearing dreadlocks and a He-Man and the Masters of the Universe T-shirt, was yanked out of the room by security as the senator looked on and the audience applauded.

Maybe they just didn't like the shirt.

“How many of you—if I’d said, who do you think the founders of the NAACP are,” asked Paul, “do you think they were Democrats or Republicans, would everybody here know they were all Republicans?” 

More shouting, more laughter. Yes! Every Howard student is required to “satisfy an African-American course requirement.” Of course they knew this.

Jeez Louise. Mutatis mutants, I could have satisfied Howard's African-American Cluster Requirement, and I don't recall anyone ever bothering to mention which political party W.E.B. Dubois belonged to. Maybe no one needs to tell a group of Howard students which political party Negroes in the first decades of the 20th century belonged to, assuming it was "any", assuming they were able to register to vote. Maybe they know the history a little better than the guy who came to school 'em. Maybe he could have expected that.

And, by the way, it's not like the nascent anti-Jim Crow movement was a joint effort of a few brave African-American educators and the entire Republican party.

The tension cooled, but it never fully thawed. Rand Paul possesses a monk’s confidence in his ability to convert skeptics with his words.

And a Pope's confidence in his own inerrancy.

He makes alliances more easily than some Republicans, finding the libertarian common ground with Democrats on drones, drug policy, or the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

Well, as Charlie says, maybe for the first five minutes he does. Otherwise, bosh. He's opposed to the domestic use of drones to "spy" on big agricultural and mining operations; this resonates with Democrats who don't read anything but headlines. His "drug policy" ("Return the issue to the states," which, now that I think of it, is his policy on everything) isn't simply carefully-parsed non-Libertarianism but full bull goose loony. And th' fuck needs his voice on Afghanistan? The whole country gave up on that years ago. President Rand Paul will be to Defense spending what President Ronald Reagan was to Deficit spending.

“When I think of how political enemies often twist and distort my positions,” he said, “I think [of T.S.] Eliot’s words: ‘When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, how should I presume?’ And here I am today at Howard, a historically black college. Here I am, a guy who once presumed to discuss a section of the Civil Rights Act.” 

In 2010, Paul had made a spirited, libertarian critique of the Act's implementation, was swiftly accused of racism, and forever changed the way he talks about these things.

Yeah, he (and others) now portrays himself as the heroic Libertarian-critiquer who was unfairly accused of racism for daring to discuss the Civil Rights Act.

On Wednesday morning, he was talking past the audience. To a viewer at home—a Fox News viewer, maybe—it was enough that Paul was there and a bonus that he got heckled.

Did we mention the He-Man t-shirt?

BTW, I love it when Weigel simply wishes away the unpleasant faction ("Vast Majority") of his own party.

“Republicans do, indeed, still believe many rights remain with the people and states respectively,” said Paul. “When some people hear that, they tune us out and say: He’s just using code words for the state’s right to discriminate, for the state’s right to segregate and abuse. But that’s simply not true. Many Republicans do believe that decentralization of power is the best policy, that government is more efficient, more just, and more personal when it is smaller and more local.”

There's nothing quite like determining which policy leads to greater justice without ever considering the question of justice. A monk's confidence, I guess.

Republicans don’t understand why this message fails to grip black voters. It didn’t grip the crowd at Howard. Heckler aside,

Him again. I swear, Weigel wrote an entire column about the Frederick Douglass Republican Incident and gave less attention to "the heckler".

the room sat silent as Paul expounded on the Democrats’ pre-1964 record on race, from one obscure bigot to another. No one applauded until Paul got to some actual policy. “I am working with Democratic senators to make sure that kids who make bad decisions such as nonviolent possession of drugs are not imprisoned for lengthy sentences,” said Paul. “I am working to make sure that first time offenders are put into counseling and not imprisoned with hardened criminals.”

Why does everything this guy says sound like it's based on a sound principle he wants credit for while angling not to be held accountable? The great majority of drug arrests are state and local--those folks Rand wants to give complete decision-making power to, as a "solution"--and most people snagged by the Feds are involved in trafficking. To be sure, some may be "kids who make bad decisions", but if that's really the case the utterly draconian Federal laws already give judges an out. I've got nothing against compromise, as a concept, but if you're a United States Senator and a Libertarian, the real problem isn't locking up innocents. It's locking people away for five to ten years for non-violent offenses. Maybe you could at least make some effort in that direction?

Paul was on to something, but it didn’t last. “Some argue with evidence that our drug laws are biased—that they are the new Jim Crow,” he said. “But to simply be against them for that reason misses a larger point. They are unfair to everyone.”

Well, no, no they ain't. Major drug cartels are, generally speaking, really ugly, violent, criminal enterprises. Letting a few "kids" off isn't going to change that. We need the Feds to have a toolbox to fight them until such time as we decriminalize small-scale drug use, possession, and production, and take the profit out of it.

By the way, where'd the history lecture go? While the War on Drugs is probably the shining example of the benefits of Bipartisanship in contemporary America, which party is the real home of Zero Tolerance, Lawn Order, and Unfettered Private Drug Testing?

And here Paul, who wields hyperbole like a pro to campaign against spy drones, was telling people to stop invoking Jim Crow. Paul told one student who fretted about Republican voter ID bills that he “demean[ed] the horror” of poll tests.

Oh, that's where the history lecture went. Funny how demanding your papers before you can vote doesn't bother Mr. Freedom.

But this was savvy. When he left the campus, past the students still holding the “White Supremacy” banner and conducting interviews, Paul remained the Republican most likely to reform mandatory minimums. He remained the most prominent Republican supporter of drug law reform. He wouldn’t apologize for the Republican Party, or for libertarianism, or for that 2010 interview about the Civil Rights Act. “Should we limit speech from people we find abhorrent?” he said then. “Should we limit racists from speaking?” Now, he was offering African-Americans some accommodation, from time to time.

Okay, so never say Never. But call Bullshit at every opportunity. It's one thing to get away with the Filibuster game for a single news cycle. It's quite another to get away with it for two and a half years (or four) on the campaign trail. Not everyone is going to blow Rand Paul for Freedomz! Sooner or later he has to talk for more than five minutes. Just like, sooner or later, the Teabaggers revealed themselves as crackpot religious maniacs, and mainstream Republicans. Despite what hip young contrarian reporters tried to tell us.

"Needs More Rationality" Says Noted Climate-Change Denier

George Eff Will, "The Republican 'Reformation'". March 22

SO let's take a moment to look at, and laugh at, the current Republican makeover, before it's forgotten. It's the ninth major one since 1964, by my count, which puts it only two down to Joan Rivers (the Goldwater "Reformation", the Nixon "Reformation", the People Who Are Desperate Enough To Cling To Dick "I Am Not A Crook" Nixon "Reformation" (heeeere's your host, Father John McLaughlin), the Reagan /Backwoods Superstition "Permanent Coalition", the Klintoon Kock-sniffers Klub, the Carrier Landing Appreciation Society, the Support the Troops/They Give Purple Hearts for Paper Cuts Craze, and, of course, Teabagging). So that's four in the past decade, or just a bit more, suggesting that "Conservatism" is catching up with the pace of modern life, the same way modern life is catching up with "Conservatism's" hurtling insanity.

Obviously, there are better places to chuckle over this stuff than a George Eff Will Joint. For one thing, it's a lot funnier coming from Rinse Primus, or David Brooks, or Weigel, guys who are young and/or venal enough to take it seriously. Or pretend to, which, in "Conservative" circles, amounts to the same thing.

On the other hand, none of that really matters; the GOP has remained the Party of Goldwater since 1964. It's still the party of business avarice on the Western states model, the party of opposing gubment spending and gubment interference while soaking up much more than its share of its fellow citizens' tax dollars. It's still the party of class and racial animosity, still the party of big-ticket Defense spending and international paranoia. It's still the party of God, Guns, and More God and Guns. As the issues have changed the stated reasons for the positions have changed, but the positions themselves haven't budged.

[T]inkering with the party’s political process is no substitute for improving the party’s political substance. No nominating process featuring an array of candidates as weak and eccentric as the Republicans’ 2012 field would have produced a much better result. So the party must begin whatever 2016 process it devises by fielding better candidates...

That, by the way, is the last paragraph, not the first.

Because of the grotesquely swollen place the presidency now occupies in the nation’s governance and consciousness, we are never not preoccupied with presidential campaigning. The Constitution’s Framers would be appalled.

Thank God there's still one man left who can speak for them.

The nation reveres the Framers but long ago abandoned the presidential selection process they considered so important that they made it one of the four national institutions created by the Constitution.

Doncha just love this sort of argument? As though the every word in the Constitution was unanimously agreed upon, just like the King James Version? The method of selection of the Executive was as fraught and contentious as the nature of the Executive itself. The Electoral College appeared, disappeared, and returned; a special compromise committee took up the question and essentially split the difference, pleasing no one; at the eleventh hour the matter was decided, based on separate proposals from Roger Sherman and Hugh Williamson. By the way, if America reveres the Framers so, I'd like to see how many of its citizens could pick either of those two out of a lineup.

As far as the Framers being appalled at how low we've sunk at this point, well, the good news is that they didn't really have to wait. The system never worked the way it was envisioned. It's the subject of the 12th amendment, ratified in 1804. Of the 660 words in Article II, Section 1, 368 are now superseded. It's only political lethargy and self-interest that's kept the Electoral College around our necks at all.

Now, responding to the fact that the 2012 nomination process was ruinously protracted, the Republican National Committee (RNC) suggests reforms that might, like many improvements, make matters worse. This is because of a prior “improvement” — campaign finance reform.

I'm old enough that any time a Republican brings up "unintended consequences" these days I just sit back and admire the ability to keep a straight face.

The RNC report does not challenge the role of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada in beginning the delegate selection. Perhaps it is not worth the trouble to challenge these states’ anachronistic entitlement; like all entitlements, it is fiercely defended by the beneficiaries. But a reform process that begins by accepting this crucial component of the status quo substantially limits possibilities. By the time these four states have had their say, the field of candidates often has been considerably — and excessively — winnowed, and the outcome is, if not settled, given a trajectory that is difficult to alter.

Yeah, it's always disappointing when a clamor of politicians behaves less that bravely. That said, what exactly is the problem here? Iowa is overrepresented, to be sure; it's also full of religious nuts, which means it resembles the party as a whole. Mitt Romney won the 2012 primaries going right through that path. He was what passed for the rational candidate. George Bush won in 2000. 2008 is when you had problems, and frankly, George, they're you're fucking problems. The fact that Michele Bachmann can become a Serious Candidate in Iowa, or Rick Santorum win it, or Newt Gingrich win South Carolina seems less a problem with who gets to go early than with the sort of loon your party lovingly incubates.

The Early Winnowed List in 2012 consists of Tim Pawlenty and Jon Huntsman. Neither was going to be the nominee regardless. If y'all imagine you were deprived of Mitch Daniels, Miracle Candidate because he couldn't make it through the early primaries, well 1) he wasn't ever gonna run anyway and, 2) you couldn't have started in Indiana, and landscaped the rest of the race so it all ran downhill, and had the man win. He's a terrific liar, but an egomaniacal one; those Romney flips, flops, and flys were beyond him. Plus he's like four foot eleven.

In 2008, when the disaster in the primaries mirrored the disaster of the GOP, you lost Duncan Hunter and Rudy Giuliani early. That was a net positive.

Supporters of Sen. Rand Paul, or of any other candidate thoroughly unenthralled by the policies and procedures that have resulted in Republicans losing the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, are understandably suspicious of any proposed changes that might tilt the nomination process against the least known and less-lavishly funded candidates. They are especially apt to squint disapprovingly at the RNC’s suggestion of regional primaries.

'Course they could just get out the vote. Just kiddin'.

The party, however, must balance two imperatives. One is the need to enlarge the number of voters participating in the process. Hence the suggestion that primaries should replace all nominating caucuses and conventions — events where ideologically motivated activists and insurgent candidates can more easily predominate.

Maybe you could warm up by making the party more inclusive first. Just kiddin'.

Seems to me I recall howls of urban-legend-motivated red-meat Republicans that members of the Democrat party were voting in Republican primaries last time. But, fuck, you're gonna have to deal with nuts, whichever way you turn.

The party’s second imperative is to preserve opportunities for less-known and financially challenged candidates to break through. This is where government restrictions on campaign contributions restrict the range of candidates from which voters can choose.

Oh, do go on.

Existing restrictions on large contributions to candidates are commonly called “post-Watergate” reforms. This is more accurate as a matter of chronology than causality. Democrats began advocating contribution, as well as spending, limits years before Watergate concluded in 1974. They were appalled that large contributions from a few wealthy liberals made possible Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 antiwar insurgency against President Lyndon Johnson and propelled George McGovern’s doomed nomination in 1972.

Anybody seen Dita Beard lately?

Suppose political contributing were deregulated, which would deregulate political speech, the dissemination of which is the principal use of campaign contributions. This would make it easier to design a more compressed nominating process, with a reduced role for the first four states, which also would allow marginal candidates a financial opportunity to fight their way into the top tier of candidates.

Oh, I get it. Without campaign finance restrictions, every billionaire nutcase can fund his own Michele Bachmann. Which the more well-funded campaigns would be powerless to respond to.

I know, I know. Tough to find common ground when the problem is the bulk of your party is flat-out certifiable, when the rest of the country has started to wise up to it, and you've nowhere to go because you've been fluffing the nut jobs since 1964. Maybe you should just start preparing now to do nothing. You know, like always. No worries.

I Think You've Just About Got It Worked Out

Frank Donatelli, "What This Party Needs Is More Advice From Leftover Reagan Confidence Men". December 4

David Brooks, "One More Budget Battle And We're Back On Top". December 3

Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, "2016. What Else Is There To Write About?" December 4

REPUBLICAN Rebirth? More Like a Renaissance!™

Let's begin with the piece on Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio's "makeovers", which it took the combination of Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei to completely fill in. That's the sort of firepower Perry wished he could'a sailed into Edo Bay with.

Marco Rubio doesn’t want to be the “Hispanic candidate.” Paul Ryan doesn’t want to be the “austerity guy.”

And Daniel Craig doesn't wanna be typecast as Bond. So we have Cowboys vs. Aliens.

What a remarkable thing that, after fifty years of tone-deafness, Republicans figured out with just one little election that their message wasn't reaching everybody. And the solution, of course, is to try a different lipstick.

While Congress dawdled this summer, Rubio, 41, assigned his policy experts to figure out ways to help make the middle class wealthier — and add a dose of substance to the charismatic presidential hopeful’s résumé. Reaching out to academics and think tanks to build Rubio’s network, the senator and his staff developed a two-year reinvention project and an “upward mobility agenda,” including programs like early childhood education, school choice and incentives for entrepreneurs. Those are some of the proposals he’ll test-drive at the Kemp Foundation dinner, where he’ll receive the group’s second leadership award. The first winner: Paul Ryan.

Miss Congeniality: I dunno. Probably some white guy.

I'm sorry, but aren't "academics and think tanks" at the bottom of the present Republican message? And isn't "Support the elimination of taxes on the wealthy and we'll make you middle class, honest" pretty much it already?

As for "school choice", well, I've been watching domestic politics too long to imagine that shit will somehow stop floating, but do take a look at Indiana's Superintendent of Public Instruction election a month ago, fellas. This is not Taxes, this is not Abortion, or Incontinent Military Spending, issues you are convinced will live forever. You've promised the moon and a white picket fence over school "reform", and now there's enough of it around that people are beginning to notice the lack of miracles. Think "Mission Accomplished".

If he makes the sale in countless such appearances over the next two years, he’ll begin a formal presidential campaign shortly after the midterm elections of November 2014, Rubio sources tell us.

Wow. There's just no substitute for insider information.

Ryan, 42, will kick off his own drive to redefine the party — and himself — as the pre-dinner keynote speaker before 300-plus conservative faithful on the same stage, detailing his thinking on how people of all classes can rise up economically and improve socially. Top Republicans tell us Ryan tried to push his ideas for a more creative “war on poverty” during the presidential campaign but was muzzled by nervous Nellies at Mitt Romney’s Boston headquarters who didn’t see an immediate political payoff. So Ryan seethed when the “47 percent” tape emerged, convinced that the impact was worse because the campaign had no record on issues relating to inclusion or poverty, exacerbating the out-of-touch image that the hidden camera cemented.

You say "out-of-touch image", voters say "the condensed soul of the Republican party."

And, excuse me, but Paul Ryan sprung full-grown from Mitt Romney's spacious cranium this summer? He's been pelting the country with "ideas" for the last two years. He's suddenly noticed poverty?

Paul Ryan's toast, unless "still being taken seriously by Politico" becomes the major issue in 2016. Backwards-hat-wearin', flexin' motherfucker should have been smart enough to turn down Mitt Romney, if he isn't smart enough to do anything else. And he isn't.

But then, Ryan's still the House go-to guy on all things fiscally screwy, so he gets to bask in the headlines (something all these Republican intellectuals would be screaming bloody murder about if they really wanted to reform the party) for another couple years. Maybe he'll even take advice from Brooks:

But the big demand would be this: That on March 15, 2013, both parties would introduce leader-endorsed tax and entitlement reform bills in Congress that would bring the debt down to 60 percent of G.D.P. by 2024 and 40 percent by 2037, as scored by the Congressional Budget Office. Those bills would work their way through the normal legislative process, as the Constitution intended. If a Grand Bargain is not reached by Dec. 15, 2013, then there would be automatic defense and entitlement cuts and automatic tax increases.

That's right. David Brooks wants us to govern by a fucking series of unworkable, unrealistic, and, frankly, clinically delusional Financial Cliff bargains. And he believes this will turn the national debate to the Republican's turf.

(Brooks, you'll recall, got burned by the Teabaggers in 2009, after declaring his heartfelt belief of the moment that the party needed to reform itself. So this time he's betting it all on Red, apparently. Foolproof system.)

Can we just mention something? Either go fucking soul search for twenty minutes, at least, or just admit you're never changing anything except your cosmetics. Why don't we convince Boehner to start showing up blue? Your problem--and it's been your problem since Reagan--is that the things you insist are solutions to national problems are shit. And they're proven to be shit. They don't fucking work. They're designed as slogans, not solutions, but somewhere along the line you all started to drink your own snake oil. Turning the national debate towards the Republicans is like turning the key light onto Lindsey Lohan at 5 AM.

Meanwhile, former Reagan functionary Frank Donatelli has some insights, and if "former Reagan functionary" is at the top of your resume, you know you've got something:

One much-discussed approach is totally counterproductive. A few conservatives continue to pursue unfettered purity in their candidates. They blame defeat on the GOP’s “moderation” and contend that Mitt Romney was an insufficiently conservative alternative. The reasoning is that “millions” of conservatives stayed home on Election Day. If the prospect of President Obama’s reelection couldn’t bring these “millions” out to vote, one wonders what would. I remember people telling me with a straight face that Ronald Reagan wasn’t conservative enough when he was running for president.

Who told you that, Frank? We need a name. Claire Chennault? Anna Chennault? George Lincoln Rockwell?

Pursuing everyone on the farthest end of the political spectrum is futile and only results in losing more independent voters. It is significant that despite overall disappointing results, the GOP won independent voters this time.

And it's nearly as significant that you still fucking lost.

On the other side are some, mostly non-Republicans, who claim that the GOP’s social conservative positions are “turning off” moderate voters and suggest Republicans abandon traditional value voters. The problem here is that the socially liberal, economically conservative Republicans barely exist in reality. The most prominent proponent of this approach, Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, was the only incumbent senator to lose his race last month. Social conservatives are a key part of the Republican coalition and among our most loyal supporters. It would be foolish in the extreme to walk away from such an important part of the GOP base .

True, "foolish and extreme" is what I think of, too.

By the way, Quarter-term Senator Scott Brown lost to a liberal in liberal Massachusetts. I know your people are out of it, but there can't be many who think they need to run someone more conservative to reclaim The Old Colony. Meanwhile, risible social "conservatives" lost in conservative Indiana and Missouri. But they weren't incumbents, just winners of Republican primaries, so it doesn't count?

The problem is not that social conservatives are an important part of the GOP, but rather that they are not enough alone to form a voting majority in the new America. Nor apparently are there enough social conservatives and economic conservatives to stitch together 270 electoral votes. The GOP cannot become a majority by reading people out of our party. We become a majority by adding new converts.

And one reason you're unable to do so is that most everyone else hates the fucking social "conservatives". Who, by the way, are the same people who're screaming for "more 'conservative'" candidates next time.

Fortunately, the targets available are obvious. First are Hispanics. Michael Barone compares them with the Italian immigrants of the last century and there is much truth in that comparison.

There's a shade of truth in that, at least. It's maybe the penumbra of truth. Colored by experience, perhaps. Not quite as black and white as with some other voting blocs, we might say. Quit listening to Michael Barone, we could add.

Both are family oriented and, yes, socially conservative. Italian-Americans were heavily discriminated against and chose Democrats and government help at first, but eventually sought opportunity over security and are now an important part of the GOP coalition.

Hey, Hispanics: If you make enough money, in forty or fifty years we'll treat you like family!  (Please vote like the Pope tells ya in the meantime.)

Second are women, especially single women. At a time in America when half of marriages end in divorce and an increasing number of children are born out of wedlock, women are rightly concerned about economic security. After all, they can suffer the most immediate consequences.

Maybe you can have the vital "social 'conservative'" wing pray for 'em.

I dare say Obama or liberals have no earthly idea what to do for these women – except for expanded welfare programs.

As opposed to no welfare programs.

And by the way, fuck you. "Obama or liberals" may have a lot to answer for, but it doesn't begin to touch your own little cosmetic problem with The Girls. Try the Earned Income Tax Credit. Try Headstart, the School Lunch Program, the expansion of the School Lunch Program, Medicaid, Title IX, Title X, or the national focus on domestic violence. All liberal, all Democratic programs. When last we left women to the Republican-rightist coalition they were little more than chattel.

It's the same motherfuckin' thing with you people every time. How do we keep our stranglehold on the white racist vote, and still appeal to non-whites?  How do we convince the 99% that the 1% Knows Best? What shade of lipstick will make this pig prom queen?

Keep it up.

And This Time We Mean It

ONCE More with Feeling: it is, without question, the election of Ronald Wilson "Gipper" Reagan which marks the beginning of the decline of the American Empire, though it had been busy shooting off its toes for the previous three-and-one-half decades. It's the election of Reagan, or more precisely, the mass-market mythologizing of him which began with the assassination attempt a couple months into his presidency, and took wing when the absurd claims about his scam economic program happened to coincide with an uptick in the business cycle (if by "coincide" one means "precede by two years") which marks the point at which a functional voting majority of Americans decided to pull the lever for Pure Horseshit That Makes Us Feel Better About Ourselves over trying to correct some of the dumbass moves we'd made after WWII made us a military superpower.

Reagan was the candidate of 1) Jim Crow Wasn't Really All That Bad, And Should Have Been Allowed To Die Out Naturally, Subject to States' Rights; 2) We Weren't Allowed To Win in Vietnam; 3) Environmentalism is Just Another Name for Godless Communism; 4) Ours is a "Judeo-Christian" Nation, and its twin corollaries, 4a) Jesus says no abortion, and 4b) the modern State of Israel is, in fact, our magical mystical 51st state. That is, the up-to-the-minute trends in right-wing dipshittery, coupled with the usual collection of antifluoridationist nuts and Gilded Age capitalist rapine. And bonus hippie punching. Delivered affably.

Tell me, really, that this isn't essentially the Republican platform  of 2012, and all the years in between. Whazzat? I left out No Taxes and National Debt? Yes, because those are to the Republican party what bikini-clad nubiles are to the producers of domestic beer. Got nothin' to do with the product, but they do draw in the rubes. Taxes? Republicans don't pay taxes. Debt? Who raised the debt more than Reagan? Bush II?

So someone tell me why anyone would believe, fall for, or pay any attention whatsoever to Republican make-over talk? What could possibly come of it?

Sure, there's been sufficient amusement in Bobby Jindal or Marco Rubio complaining that post-defeat Mitt is unfortunately making the Republican party sound like Republicans. There's wizened mage Ted Cruz claiming Romney "French-kissed" Obama (is he unaware of the True "Conservative" talent that Romney defeated in the primaries?), and Mike Huckabee blaming Republicans for stabbing poor Todd Akin in the back, in defiance of all polling numbers.

Or this, which is the stupidest thing ever published in English.

But the real problem, if you ask me, hasn't been the ~10% of the electorate Reaganism managed to add to the "Conservative" coalition. It's so-called moderates, or centrists, who seem convinced that these people make so much noise they have to be on to something.

Consider Anne Applebaum.

After quickly dismissing, by cabbie proxy the idea of Republicans should consider the Hispanic voter (and sneering at Karl Rove's "voter suppression" line as an unfortunate appropriation of a standard liberal fantasy), Applebaum urges Republicans to return to their imaginary roots (apparently, dating to that imaginary amalgam of the 1950s and the 1880s they seem to inhabit): sensible Immigration reform (!), Public Healthcare (!!), higher gasoline taxes (!!!), conservation and budgetary austerity! (The last she's required to borrow from the Tories. But, really, if you already live there, is it stealing to lift a toothbrush? Or a couple of place settings?)

Do I hear scoffing? Well, 1) John McCain, Mr. Conservative himself, co-wrote the McCain-Kennedy Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, a piece of pre-campaign compromise he'd be repudiating less than a year later, when he needed actual Republicans to vote for him; 2) Ezra Klein, Mr. Conservative himself, has pointed out the the Heritage Foundation touted the individual mandate back in 1989; and 3) Charles "Merkwürdigeliebe" Krauthammer, Mr. Conservation himself, is for higher gas taxes (to offset eliminating income taxes, but leave us not mar a beautiful dream).

With this historical template in place, with this solid foundation of True "Conservative" values as a jumping-off point, one wonders how the Republican party so suddenly veered off the road into such frankly gauche displays of common yahooiganism. One tries to figure out why Mitt Romney, Mr. Patrician himself, found it necessary to stoop to such things (before righting himself, of course) like a common job applicant.

And one wonders what Republican party Anne Applebaum, born the year Barry Goldwater took over the party, has been looking at the last half century.

Your Alternate Bobby Jindal Translator

"WE must be all-inclusive; we must convince 100% of Americans to agree with the precise same ideas Mitt Romney defends so inelegantly."

Personally, I like Jindal as 2012's answer to 2008's Mitch Daniels, the guy who Republican insiders know will never become the nominee, and thus can come out and speak some semi-unpalatable truth ("social issues on the back burner!") designed to convince Beltway insiders (yet again!) that the Rockefeller-ish Republicans have some room to maneuver, at least electorally. With--and this is equally important--absolutely no intention to really do so, and no chance they could if they did.

I do hope the Reader appreciates as much as I Jindal's pledge that his party wants to make it possible for all Americans to join the middle class. 

By the way, thanks to David Weigel for breaking away from the fast-breaking Benghazi news long enough to cover Romney's comments. But:

Romney understood, and understands, that these people want to believe that poor voters are being exploited by Democrats and forced to vote themselves more benefits. It's a theory that undergirds a lot of conservative election analysis. Let's not just write off Romney as some gormless dweeb.

1) Is it not time to admit that "conservative election analysis" is not much of a cover? And 2) isn't "gormless dweeb", like, a contradiction in terms? Though it might actually describe Romney.