Tornado Alley (PROG)

[arizona1]

Charles Pierce: The clown car parks itself at the Reagan Library tonight

Let's see if I have the Morning Line straight here. Tonight, in a shrine to a man who thought catsup was a vegetable, who blamed trees for air pollution, and who believed he had been there for the liberation of Buchenwald when actually he had been liberating martinis at the Brown Derby at the time, we will have the following people contesting each other for the presidential nomination of one of the only two political parties that we have allowed ourselves to have.

You have to take this seriously because, as I said, through law and custom, we've arranged things so that we only have two political parties from which to choose. (As I said last time around, I know Jill Stein. I like Jill Stein. Jill Stein does not lead an actual political party.) So one of these people will have a 50-50 shot at becoming the next leader of the free world. The smart money is saying that this is a big night for Jeb (!), who has to show that he can "stand up" to Donald Trump, who is a thoroughly ridiculous man who gave a thoroughly ridiculous speech from the deck of a battleship on Tuesday night. The problem is that Jeb (!) is a guy who waltzes through his political life as though he's on the first of three free introductory lessons at an Arthur Murray School of Dance. Every time he takes to a stage, I look down to see if there are little footprints painted on the floor. The other contestant said to need a strong performance on Wednesday night is Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin. In the last debate, Walker appeared to be heavily medicated. He has spent the weeks since then watching his poll numbers dissolve, so he's recently returned to his go-to move – openly promising to bring back the days of non-unionized employment and the Pinkertons, sailing us all happily up the river again to lay siege to the Homestead works together.

The problem for all of them is that running against a charlatan like the Libidinous Visitor requires a high talent for improvisation, because you truly cannot predict to what you might have to respond from one minute to the next. (One recalls the (perhaps) apocryphal memo from the 1972 Muskie campaign, cited by the late Hunter Thompson, "Under no circumstances should The Candidate be required to think on his feet.") Running against someone who is likely to say anything requires the ability to say almost anything in return without seeming to be as nutty as your opponent is. None of these people have that natural talent, nor have they shown in any way that their staffs are able to coach them up to the task. It will be interesting to see if anyone tries. My money's on Carly Fiorina, if that matters a damn, although if Chris Christie decides to out-bellow Trump, that would be entertaining, too.

As to the issues, well, you know where we're going there. Affordable Care Act, bad. Seal the borders! Climate change? What the hell is that, anyway? Jeb! will shill for his newfound faith in the supply-side hoodoo. (Does every member of the Bush family have to swear fealty to this nonsense? Is this a charge that Poppy laid upon all of his descendants back when he accepted the VP slot back in '80?) Walker will pine for the days of the breaker boys. Rubio and Aqua Buddha will grope for relevance and fall inches short of it. Cruz will conduct a tri-lingual exorcism to see if he can rid the hall of the spirits of Spitz Channell and Manucher Ghorbanifar. And all of them will condemn the Iran deal. Appeasement! Munich! Neville Chamberlain. And they will do so in a shrine dedicated to the one president who went out of his way to sell sophisticated weaponry to the Islamic Republic of Iran. This will occur to practically nobody in the hall, but we've got ourselves a show now, kids. We certainly have that.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a37982/all-republican-candidates-horrible/