I suppose it's a sign of, well, something, that wingnuts are just not pissing me off very much nowadays. I think this is because one could legitimately argue that as of late the most venerable and august Conservative Thinkers among us include Erick Erickson and Jonah Goldberg. That's not even me making a joke. The 2003 Right Blogosphere swallowed the GOP entire, and now it's farting out Trumps, or Cruzing out Trumps, and is now even too dumb and too gross to wipe up Santorum.
Here is my favorite thing so far about the GOP primaries: whenever you get even vaguely intelligible policy proposals out of a GOP candidate, it is entirely an accident caused by the candidate not knowing or caring about the issue in question.
Take higher education, please. Marco Rubio, a human being about as useful and purposeful and delightful as a human tit cruelly bereft of a nipple, has articulated what passes for policy expertise in this area. What he wants is for the federal government to give money to shysters who want to rip off veterans and taxpayers.
But on the Trump Side we have a stray nutty-bananas bigot academic from a thoroughly harmless, decent, and now-humiliated tiny liberal arts college; this cramped Grima-soul is eager to plump for Trump:
The small private college in Iowa last week was distancing itself from Sam Clovis, a tenured professor of economics who is currently on leave so he can be national co-chair of Donald Trump's presidential campaign. After Clovis was quoted defending the Trump campaign's proposal to bar Muslims from entering the United States, the link between Clovis and the college attracted attention.
A statement from the college said, "We find the view that a particular religion should be discriminated against to be repugnant to the values held at Morningside College. When he was on campus, Dr. Clovis was a staunch defender of the Constitution and a strong advocate for religious freedom. His recent comments appear to be at odds with his earlier views. We find his recent position to be outrageous and disappointing." (The college says it has one student who self-identifies as Muslim.)
There is a fantastic academic novel to be written here, maybe to be entitled Fuck You! I Own Many Casinos and Golf Courses, Lucky Jim, And Also Fucking Wonderful Yachts.
But this is the punchline: Clovis bravely defends Trump on the grounds that ethnic cleansing only means an ethnic knob polishing, but when it gets down to brass knuckles:
Trump is unlikely to join the campaign against accreditors, Clovis said. "I'm not sure tinkering with accreditation is where we want to go," he said, adding that his work at Morningside with its accreditor (the Higher Learning Commission) has left him thinking that the regional accreditors do important work.
Clovis is an idiot, but he is nevertheless an idiot with an actual job.
Trump's higher education policy proposals, as amorphous and silly as they are ever likely to be, are miles better than any of his GOP rivals. Sure, this is likely because he doesn't give a poo-plated golf-ball shit, the tacky dimwitted spookheaded inarticulate ill-kempt dishonorable pervert Wookie.
But Rubio is, with a straight face, making Deeply Serious Proposals to make it easier for crooks to rip off veterans and taxpayers.
Because he is Serious.