In some Best Western on the campaign trail in Red State America, the Republican Standard Bearer awakens.

“Psst,” he says, nudging his wife. “Psst. Cindy? Are you awake?”

“John, it’s 4:30 in the morning. Unless you took that pill and hour ago, there’s no way we can have sex and still be ready for the campaign bus. Remember the last time we tried this and you knocked the donuts off the table? It gave Candy Crowley the wrong idea.”

“No, no, not that,” John says in a huff.

“What is it?”

“Jesus, Cindy, pinch me. Can you believe this?”

“Believe what?”

“I have no right being in this thing. Those right-wing jihadists and their chucklehead cheerleader in the White House screwed things up so badly, I figured I’d be going down to a bigger defeat than Alf Landon against FDR in the middle of the Depression.”

“Why? Were you a staffer on Alf’s campaign?”

“Don’t be a smartass. But how in the hell am I in this thing? We’re losing safe seats in special elections suggesting an ax-handling of epic proportions, yet I am even in the polls with either that latte-drinking dilettante or Madam Defarge and the lounge lizard she married. How can this be when the country hates Republicans?”

“You hate them too, honey.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m a maverick, I get it. But I am still in the party of George Bush, and the only guy happy with him right now is Jimmy Carter because he is finally going to be off the hook. When a president steps on his own dick or her own boob, people will no longer mutter ‘this is the worst president since Jimmy Carter.’ They’ll mutter, ‘this is the worst President since George W. Bush.’ That pompous old coot Carter managed to live long enough to see someone actually raise the bar on presidential incompetence.”

“Aren’t you getting a little confused, like that Sunni, Shia thing Lieberman bailed you out of? Don’t you mean lower the bar?” Read More »