{!hitembed ID=”hitembed_1″ width=”350″ height=”197″ align=”right” !}

Each time the stage mothers of the Republican Party push another child star out into the footlights, we find, yet again, that the children of Lake GOP are quite uniformly, below average.  Although this goes back to Reagan; the idea of casting affable meat puppets for the role of “President” to cynically sell the evergreen policies of the plutocracy to the unsuspecting rabble, the talent pool has gotten pretty laughably shallow.  And not for nothing.

Although Rand Paul’s attempts to whitesplain the Republican Party to Howard University students, an endeavor at which he failed hilariously, is the most recent example of a Republican “contender” revealing himself (or herself) as an unmitigated dunderhead,  it reveals a trend that I think will only accelerate over time.  Who, exactly, would be attracted to the party that, while shunning science and book learning in general, touts as heroes George W.Bush, Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan, James Inhofe, Steve King, Ted Cruz, Steve Stockman, Virginia Foxx, and on and on?

Well, it isn’t going to be the smarter primates, you may rest assured.  But at what point does years of assiduously courting the stupid for pragmatic if morally dubious electoral purposes finally cause a destructive “trickle up” of stupidity into the higher ranks?  Well, if the “Young Guns” like Paul, Rubio, Ryan, and Cruz are any indication, that ship has sailed.

Say what you will about Grandma McConnell, but you can’t call the old biddy dumb.  And Boehner may be oily and thoroughly corrupt, but give him some credit for at least not believing a word he says.  Not so with this new bunch; they’ve been smoking their own stash since they were fourteen (Grover Norquist came up with his tax pledge at the  precocious age of twelve), and they know no other reality than the one carefully constructed for them on Fox News and hate radio.

No wonder these guys don’t believe in evolution; in their own party it’s running backwards at full tilt.  Already, Boehner and McConnell seem like artifacts of another era, bound for that kooky museum off Central Park West.  Meanwhile, the stupidity gurgles forth like a busted pipeline, befouling Gucci loafers up and down K Street even as it showers late night comedians with manna from heaven.

While it remains possible that voter suppression, gerrymandering, and unlimited secret funds, coupled with a longer-term attack on education, might level the playing field for a while, the Republican Party is, as the otherwise dependably slow-witted “Bobby” Jindal put it, “the stupid party,” from which those capable of, say, completing a crossword puzzle or tying their own shoes will understandably flee.

Revealingly, the drearily rote epithets applied to such half-baked ideologues, that they are “wonks” of some sort, pathetically attempts to imply that within the Republican Party there even exists such a thing.  The fact that such rank incompetents became Republicans twenty or more years ago, when the party was considerably less, uh, cognitively challenged, speaks volumes about the future.

Trig Palin in 2044?  Wouldn’t surprise me.