The Republican Crackup Continues

They were crazy before the terrorist attacks in Paris. Since then, it’s like crazy on speed and steroids. And it seems to me that, at the moment, the entire Right is sorting itself into pro- and anti-Trump factions. You’re either fer the Donald, or you’re a RINO.

A comment on Hot Air sums it up:

At this point, I can’t think of a single thing that Trump could say that would keep me from voting for him. I want him to triple down on the PC police and stick it up their rears. The PC crap must be rejected NOW! And Trump is the one to start that process. PC is the antithesis of free speech which is the foundation of freedom. Who besides Trump, and especially if he is POTUS can do it? If he can do nothing more than to kill PC and the GOPe, I will be happy as a pig in slop and he will have done more than any politician in the past 100 yrs. The more PC incorrect he speaks, the better because it shows who has the balz and who are the hos of the GOPe and the CoC.

You remember Hot Air, the site founded by Little Lulu Malkin and written these days by Allahpundit, Ed Morrissey, Mary Katharine Ham and a few others. It used to be where the wingnuts went to get their hate speech talking points straight. Now Allahpundit is trying to explain to the plebes that no, there really weren’t thousands of Muslims in Jersey City celebrating in the streets on 9/11/01, as Trump claims he saw. But judging by the comments, most of the readers are not falling into line.  The heirs of Little Lulu are now RINOs and squishes, according to several commenters.

Trump is like the best wedge issue ever.

Some wealthy Republicans, alarmed that their once-reliable toady machine is running out of control, are spending millions to discredit The Donald. The problem is that what “discredits” Trump is exactly the stuff the mouth-breathers love about him. Steve M:

Oh, brilliant: You’re going to tell angry Republican voters that Trump really can’t deport all the undocumented immigrants and register all the Muslims, policies those angry voters desperately crave? While you’re at it, why not tell some pre-schoolers that there’s no Santa Claus? That’ll go over equally well.

This is one more reason we ought to raise taxes on the rich: because when it comes to spending money on politics, the rich have no damn sense. We need to save them from themselves.

Meanwhile, the “Third Way” crew is clinging to their sinking raft of “both sides are just as bad.” Charles Pierce on the Sunday Morning Bobblehead shows:

After a pretty good bipartisan dose of the old boogedy-boogedy, Dickerson brought out the panel, and we heard this from Ruth Marcus, scourge of teenaged potty-mouths everywhere.

“This was a very ugly week for Republicans in terms of their response on refugees and I think it was something that was exacerbated by the failure of President Obama to explain to people that we weren’t crazy to be nervous but to understand their nervousness and to explain it away.”

… Holy Third Way No Labels! If that isn’t the perfect distillation of the vaporlock caused by Beltway conventional wisdom, I don’t know what is. (It’s even worse than the hairball Fournier coughed up on the same subject, over at the Overlook Hotel, where my man Chuck Todd always has been the caretaker.) Apparently, it either has escaped Ruth’s notice, or she thinks it’s impolite to mention, that the Republican party is completely out of its mind, and that its current front-runner, the Libidinous Visitor, is one step away from invading Ethiopia. How in Broder’s name is the president in anyway responsible for the xenophobic rantings of a party gone mad? I know the president has mad Kenyan telepathic skillz, but what precisely would Ruth have him say? “Only worry a little, Americans. We are extremely unlikely to be overrun by exploding Syrian toddlers”? Jesus, these people …

Speaking of toddlers, do you realize that so far this year more Americans have been shot to death by toddlers than have been killed by jihadis?

Nate Silver reassures us that Trump can’t become POTUS.

Right now, he has 25 to 30 percent of the vote in polls among the roughly 25 percent of Americans who identify as Republican. (That’s something like 6 to 8 percent of the electorate overall, or about the same share of people who think the Apollo moon landings were faked.) As the rest of the field consolidates around him, Trump will need to gain additional support to win the nomination. That might not be easy, since some Trump actions that appeal to a faction of the Republican electorate may alienate the rest of it. Trump’s favorability ratings are middling among Republicans (and awful among the broader electorate).

News media are confounded by The Donald. They have long politely overlooked conventional lies, such as claims that cutting taxes will reduce the federal budget or that Democrats hate Jesus. Now they’re covering a national candidate who is spewing lies at unprecedented rates (except perhaps by Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, both of whom seem to be fading).  If someone bravely corrects The Donald and explains that what he is saying is demonstrably, verifiably, I’ve got it right here in black and white not true, he just repeats his lie even more loudly.

And people like the Hot Air commenter eat it up, because he is showing them the universe as they want it to be. They’re not going to give that up easily.