Republicans Have Only Themselves To Blame [Hey, lookee! I'm a retread zotee!!]

On Saturday night, at precisely 9:19 and 30 seconds, my iPhone, my iPad, my computer and, for all I know, my toaster were informed that Herman Cain had endorsed Newt Gingrich. The ping-ping of the devices suggested that something momentous had happened--alerts from both The Post and the New York Times--but in fact it was just additional evidence that the Republican Party has become a circus: One clown endorsed another.

It’s hard to know who is the more ridiculous figure — the grandiloquent, bombastic and compulsively dishonest Gingrich, or the beguilingly ignorant Cain, a man who has never held elective office and who was reduced to speechlessness when asked a question about Libya. Nonetheless, Gingrich, his Alfred E. Neuman grin on his face, accepted the endorsement and then went on with his nihilistic campaign for the White House. This has been an exceedingly silly political season....

This rampant anti-intellectualism is worrisome. The world is a complex place, but to deal with it, the GOP presented a parade of hopefuls who proposed nostrums or, in the case of Michele Bachmann, peddled false rumors about vaccinations... [T]he embrace of Sarah Palin by the GOP establishment has got to be noted. The lady has the gift of demagoguery and the required anti-elitism, but she knows next to nothing about almost anything--and revels in her ignorance....

The Republican establishment that has now risen up to smite the bratty Gingrich has only itself to blame. For too long it has been mute in the face of a belligerent anti-intellectualism, pretending that knowledge and experience do not matter and that Washington is a condition and not a mere city. The endorsement of Gingrich by Cain was not a bulletin. It was a feeble blip on a scope. The GOP is brain-dead.

If the GOP coalesces around today’s front runner with less than 10% of the delegate count in, then Cohen is right and Republicans have only themselves to blame.

But that is not my point.

If Cohen’s disgusting vitriol and character assassination, apparently in the name of being clever or intellectual while at the same time lacking in any kind of intellectual honesty, is the nature of mainstream media attacks on GOP candidates today, just wait till they go nuclear on the candidate.

And I completely guarantee that if Mitt Romney is the candidate, the pass that they have given him thus far will expire and they will take the gloves off. Mitt Romney will be portrayed as the whiter than whitebread, 1% of the 1%, who is only interested in putting money in his and his cronies pockets at the expense of the poor and middle class. Because the left wants to pretend to inclusivism and tolerance, they have not really made an issue of his Mormonism yet. But if he gets the nomination, the American electorate will get a non-stop education in Mormonism from Joseph Smith’s con-man history, faked “scriptures”, the abuse of marrying underage girls, the Mountain Meadows massacre, blood atonement, the history of racism in the church, to Kolob, to Jesus as Satan’s brother, to questions about the polygamy practiced by Mitt’s ancestors. And the famous “boxers or briefs” question put to Bill Clinton years ago will be trivial in its impropriety compared to the onslaught of inquiries regarding Mitt’s underwear.

It will not matter if any of their challenges are based in truth or not. Then perhaps, if Mitt is the nominee, it will simply be a kind of just compensation for the utterly mendacious, scorched-earth campaign he has run against Newt since Iowa.

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