Evil is even, truth is an odd number and death is a full stop.

--Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds

Ezra Klein does a great job demonstrating that Tailgunner Ted Cruz is more of a truthless reptile than even I thought he was, although young Ezra seems to tear up the language to avoid pointing out that the Tailgunner is a truthless reptile and, instead, contents himself with pointing out that Cruz's mock tirade against CNBC's debate moderators was wrong on the facts. It was stone bullshit, all the way down, and so has been every appalling squawk from these people about having been thrown to the wolves of Rick Santelli's television network.

I have come to the conclusion that it is very easy to be a Republican presidential candidate. First of all, to paraphrase J.R. Ewing, once you give up truth, the rest is a piece of cake. Second, and most important, you really only have to memorize one answer.

"Dr. Carson, how do you respond to the simple mathematics that prove that your tax plan was developed by marmosets?"

"Liberal media!"

"Senator Rubio, exactly how many loan sharks are looking for you down in Florida at the moment?"

"Liberal media!"

"Senator Cruz, where in the Constitution does it say we should have an air force?"

"Liberal media!"

"Ms. Fiorina, what's the capital of South Dakota?"

"Liberal media!"

"Governor Bush…ah, Jesus, man, can you wake the fck up?"

"Hmph, snort, ghack…liberal media!"

You get the picture. The Palinization of conservative rhetoric is now complete.

Here at the shebeen, we have been talking almost since our grand opening in 2011 about how the institutional Republican party is nothing more than a sham of a mockery of a façade of a shell of its former self. Now, it seems, the candidates may be forming a creepy little cabal aimed at taking even the debate process away from obvious anagram Reince Priebus, the emptiest suit in American politics.

"I think the bigger frustration you saw is that all those candidates onstage had prepared for a substantive debate. Everyone was ready to talk about trade policy and the debt and tax policies," Rubio said on Fox News. "And we're ready for that, everybody was. And then, you got questions that everyone got, which were clearly designed to get us to fight against each other or get us to say something embarrassing about us and then get us to react."

Again, bullshit, all the way down. Rubio was asked a very substantive question about the lunatic tongue-bath to the wealthy that he calls a tax plan. John Harwood cited the conservative Tax Foundation's assessment that his highly redistributive notion of where all the money should end up would balloon the deficit and be an unprecedented windfall for the likes of Norman Braman and (shh!) Sheldon Adelson. If Rubio was "embarrassed" by that question, he should have been.

But nobody is so unencumbered by facts, and nobody is so utterly unburdened by honesty, as the Tailgunner, who has proposed a debate moderated by the superstars of conservative talk-radio.

"How about a debate moderated by Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Rush Limbaugh? Now that would be a debate." Hannity replied with enthusiasm: "I'm in!"

By all means, senator. Let's do that.

I'm not sold on Limbaugh, who has a history of massive flop-sweat attacks whenever he appears on television, or anywhere else outside the cocoon of his studio. And Hannity, I think, still wants too much to be a player in mainstream conservative politics to be very entertaining. But Mark Levin? Abso-freaking-lutely. Mark Levin thinks Paul Ryan is a squish. Mark Levin wants the Constitution rewritten to eliminate the popular election of senators and so that states can nullify federal laws. Let Levin moderate a debate and he'll push these clowns so far to the right that they'll end up in Kazakhstan. I would buy a ticket to that debate. Hell, I'd rent a luxury suite. Do it, folks. A grateful nation will applaud you.

The Republican nominating process, which was a completely undisciplined wingnut buffet in 2012, now is spinning even further out of control. Every candidate is an independent operator now. Every candidate is a self-contained universe of erratically orbiting awful. There is only one answer to this problem, and you know what it is.

"LIBERAL MEDIA!"

And all say amen.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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