ATLANTA, GEORGIA—Back before there was Ted Cruz, before there was Young Marco Rubio, even before anger and bigotry gave even vulgar talking yams the gift of speech, there was Congressman Bob Barr of the Seventh Congressional District of Georgia. When historians of the future write of the Great Penis Hunt of the 1990s, Bob Barr will be reckoned to be its Kit Carson. Bob Barr wrote a book that argued for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton before anyone ever had heard of Monica Lewinsky. In fact, in 1994, when Newt Gingrich led the Republicans to their first majority in the House of Representatives since 1946, it became an article of faith among the Republican leaders in the House that they would impeach Clinton over something—over Whitewater, or Travelgate, or Filegate, or the Rose Law Firm Billing records—simply because they had the votes to do it.

It didn't matter that there was nothing to any of those faux scandals. It didn't matter that there was no chance that two-thirds of the Senate ever would convict Clinton and remove him from office. It didn't even matter that they got whacked in the 1998 midterms by an electorate that quite openly was telling them to knock it off. What matters is that they could do it, and along came Monica Lewinsky, and so they did it because they had the votes to do it.

It was the first time—but not the last, God knows—that the Republican Party mistook hubris for principle. It was the first time—but not the last, God knows—that the Republican Party mistook emotional mulishness for courage. It was the first time—but not the last, God knows—that the Republican Party draped raw power politics in the unconvincing camouflage of high principle. It also was the first manifestation of how the news-entertainment complex, political nihilism, and the authoritarian instinct of a disciplined political cadre could come together to deform our politics simply because it was possible to do it. When that happened, Bob Barr had been standing there all along. But not even Bob Barr can quite comprehend how this witches brew that he and his colleagues first concocted in 1998 could have made inevitable the rise of He, Trump.

But it did.

"I'm as amazed as everyone else following this campaign cycle at Trump," said Barr. "But we all have to do everything we can to make sure he's not the nominee."

Barr had come to a windy plaza in downtown Atlanta on Saturday to stand in support of Tailgunner Ted Cruz, one of the purer products of an even more radical Republican congressional majority than the one that impeached Bill Clinton over a series of blowjobs. The talk around the campaign on Saturday was of the long and impressively detailed New York Times report of how impotent the largely imaginary Republican "establishment" had been in confronting the reality of He, Trump, and how that bungling had managed to make collateral damage out of every other Republican candidate. For example, there was the hilarious anecdote concerning a phone call between Young Marco Rubio and Chris Christie after Big Chicken had dropped out.

Mr. Christie had attacked Mr. Rubio contemptuously in New Hampshire, calling him shallow and scripted, and humiliating him in a debate. Nevertheless, Mr. Rubio made a tentative overture to Mr. Christie after his withdrawal from the presidential race. He left the governor a voice mail message, seeking Mr. Christie's support and assuring him that he had a bright future in public service, according to people who have heard Mr. Christie's characterization of the message.

Holy hell. The Christie family telephone must be three-quarters of the way to the Azores by now.

The problem with the Times piece is that it doesn't take into account two obvious factors that the Republican Party itself resolutely fails to confront: first, that the prion disease that has afflicted the party since Ronald Reagan first fed it the monkeybrains in the 1980s has gotten worse, not better, and second, that the party's three-decade courtship of the wild and the vile in our politics sooner or later was bound to leave the party open to a renegade campaign that was better at energizing that element than the cumbersome party machinery was. Anyone who thinks the Trump phenomenon is a sui generis explosion of eccentricity has forgotten the incredible collection of rodeo clowns over which Mitt Romney triumphed in 2012. Anyone who thinks He, Trump is unique in his rhetoric and his appeal never has read through Gingrich's old Thesaurus For Ratfckers that helped fuel his rise to the Speakership. And anyone who thinks Trump's brand of noisy, arrant bullshit is in anyway unique never has listened to a Cruz's stump speech, like the one he unlimbered in the windy Atlanta morning, and which always contains the following passage that has no more connection to actual reality than do Trump's fantastical Mexican drug mules slipping through the New Hampshire woods.

This election is not about one branch of government. It's about two branches of government. We are one liberal justice away from a five justice left-wing majority the likes of which this country has never seen. We are one justice away from the Supreme Court taking away our fundamental religious liberty, one justice away from the Supreme Court ordering 10 Commandment monuments taken down all over this country, one justice away from the Supreme Court striking down every restriction on abortion and mandating abortion on demand all over this country. We are one justice away from the Supreme Court reading the Second Amendment out of the Bill of Rights and taking away our right to keep and bear arms. We are one justice away from the Supreme Court ordering veterans memorials to be taken down all over this country, and we are not far away from the Supreme Court ordering the chisels to come outto remove the crosses and stars of David from the tombstones of our fallen soldiers.

Of all of the crocks in a campaign full of them, this one paragraph is the most energetically bubbling of them all. Forget that the worst this hypothetical Weatherman majority likely could to America's gun lovers is to re-establish the regime that existed prior to the Heller decision in 2008. Forget also that there will be no Supreme Court majority for "abortion on demand" or anything like it as long as Anthony Kennedy is alive and dithering. There is no conceivable chance that the Supreme Court will order religious symbols to be chiseled off the tombstones at Arlington. (I would note that Cruz does not mention the crescents that adorn the markers of Muslim service members who have died for his liberty.) It takes a lot of gall for someone like Ted Cruz to imply that someone else is conning the American people.

At least Young Marco Rubio is playing it for laughs these days. Speaking to a substantial crowd in the football stadium of a luxurious Christian academy in Kennesaw, Young Marco is continuing to work on new material before the next big robotics trade show.

So here's the one tweet he put out, he put out a picture of me having makeup put on me at the debate, which is amazing me to me, that the guy with the worst spray tan in America is attacking me for putting on makeup. Donald Trump likes to sue people; he should sue whoever did that to his face.

(In truth, Rubio's latest line of attack—that Trump is a "con-man" whose professed business acumen is merely the relentless search for his next pack of suckers—is both an effective and accurate one. It would have been even more effective in, say, November. And, anyway, The New York Times just handed Ted Cruz and his campaign a giant cudgel with which to belabor Rubio on his previous attempt to reform the immigration system. We will discuss Senator Chuck Schumer's going hat in hand to Roger Ailes at another time. Oh, yes, we surely will.)

I don't know what's the best measure of how we've fallen as a democratic republic. The fact that Rubio has decided to answer He, Trump's 10th grade insults with 7th grade comebacks, or the I'm-a-clever-dick grin he flashes every time he gets off one of these lunch-lady zingers. But there was something familiar about this one. Then, I remembered. It was a scene from Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing.

You wanna boycott someone? You ought to start with the goddamn barber that fucked up your head.

Thus did the Party Of Lincoln meet Sweet Dick Willie.

Tuesday should surely be super.

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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