It started with CNN’s Jim Acosta’s self-important preening grandstanding in the guise of a question to the Trump administration’s senior wonk, Steven Miller. (Sarah Hoyt, Andrew Klavan, Spengler, and I all disassembled Acosta in PJM in the last few days.)

Well, as Glenn says, one of the real strengths Trump has shown is his ability to goad the allegedly sane, sensible, responsible Permanent Coastal Privilege Party into revealing that it is actually none of those things.

In response to Trump’s West Virginia rally, Stuart Rothenberg tweeted that West Virginia residents are basically too stupid to matter:

Lots of people in West Virginia can't support themselves or speak English. — Stuart Rothenberg (@StuPolitics) August 3, 2017

He was called on it by many people, among them the excellent Salena Zito:

Respectfully as someone who comes from the region that is incredibly bigoted — people from West Virginia are incredible hard-working folks https://t.co/ICpDhJIDGd — SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 4, 2017

To which he responded with “but some of my best friends are semi-literate backwoods morons.”

Of course they are hard-working. They mean well. Just close-minded, provincial, angry & easily misled. My wife's dad was a coal miner in PA. https://t.co/9q5JJ3fq90 — Stuart Rothenberg (@StuPolitics) August 4, 2017

He then essayed the “Ha ha it was a joke!” response favored by people who have at least one foot in their mouth but are still too self-important to actually apologize.

What happened to your sense of humor? It's Twitter, not a doctoral dissertation. Did you watch the crowd? https://t.co/wTFRW2JmQf — Stuart Rothenberg (@StuPolitics) August 4, 2017

In response to someone tweeting that they didn’t like Steven Miller being paid by taxpayers, Lawrence Tribe of Harvard Law managed the capper: He said Miller shouldn’t be paid because he was not a human being.

Now, Tribe eventually deleted that tweet (which is why I’m stealing a screenshot from Instapundit) but I can find nothing that looks at all like an apology. I’m guessing that’s because he doesn’t see anything wrong with what he said.

I think that pretty well lays it out, though — the Permanent Coastal Privilege Party figures all these Trump voters are ignorant unemployed hicks, and not even really human. They actually do intend to prevent those people from having a voice in American politics. And now that we’re hearing those people aren’t really human, how far are we from them proposing a final solution?