Being our semi-regular weekly survey of the state of Our National Dialogue which, as we know, is what Jan and Dean would have come up with, had they recorded "Derp Man's Curve."

Before we get to the doings on the Sunday Showz, we should evaluate the general context within which Our National Dialogue currently is being conducted. Namely, the abject terror of seeing a vulgar talking yam hijacking the political process. Since the formal attempts to stop him have descended into vaudeville—Rick Perry? You guys kill me—it is up to the press as the Watchdog Of Democracy to decide how best to keep Lady Liberty from being the next trophy wife on the shelf. Alas, none of the prominent diagnoses lead to a cure.

It is not entirely the fault of the media, no matter what The New York Times' latest media columnist thinks. Neither is it the fault of the president because he divided the country through the offense of Presidentin' While Black. Neither can we blame David Brooks, no matter how much fun it would be, because the case that the Ol' Perfesser (h/t Edroso) makes for that is pretty damn threadbare. If we'd just praised the custodial skills of the Tea Party, rather than concentrating on all those posters of the president with a bone through his nose—yeah, I mingled with them too, Glenn—and all those cries about taking our country back before this president had done a damn thing, then the Republican party would be waltzing to victory behind future president Marco Rubio by now. And if Reynolds thinks Trumpism is in any way a movement of an angered, but enlightened, bourgeoisie, then he doesn't love the poorly educated as much as the candidate does.

The problem is, was, and will be, until complete electoral calamity overtakes it, the fact that the only energizing force within the Republican Party is a radically extreme conservative movement that is becoming more mindless and more hysterical by the hour. Now, though, the hysteria concerns the monster of its own making, the creature of its own Id. People like Erickson, Reynolds, and Brooks were perfectly willing to make peace with the Bible-bangers, the anti-science crackpots, and the Black Helicopter Liberation Armies as long as they could use them to shuffle some more politicians into office who were guaranteed to shove more of the country's wealth upwards. The answer is not that the Republicans failed to deliver on their promises to the fringes. The answer is that they never should have made those lunatic promises at all. (For example, they should have jettisoned the supply-side snake oil sometime during the recession of 1982. Hell, Reagan did.) If you keep pounding unreality into your most enthusiastic supporters, decade after decade, then, sooner or later, they're going to demand an unreal candidate. Welcome to 2016.

(And, just to show you that bad ideas are not limited to one side of the big sack of crazy that is the presidential campaign this year, there is a guy writing in The Washington Post about the great political advantages the Democratic party could gain if only it tossed the privacy rights of 51 percent of the population overboard and alienated the part of the nation's demographic that pretty much guarantees a Democratic victory in any national election. If you're quoting nutbag Patrick Mahoney, the scourge of the Terri Schiavo hospice, then you've lost the argument. Genius! Just no, OK?)

So how are things being handled on the electric teevee machine? About how you'd expect. If they're not flagellating themselves over their role in unleashing He, Trump, they're trying to find ways to minimize the role of the institutional Republican party for having done so. This week's House Cup goes to broadcasting's Overlook Hotel, where my man Chuck Todd always has been the caretaker, for a lovely slice of a moment in which former Sarah Palin ventriloquist Steve Schmidt avoided the fundamental question with the same grace that Northern Iowa handled the Texas A&M pressure on Sunday night.

TODD: But, you know, Steve, the most expedient way to do this would be to rally around Ted Cruz. And that seems to be something that Washington Republicans can't bring themselves to do.

SCHMIDT: Look, Ted Cruz is exactly right, a vote at this point for John Kasich is in fact a vote for Donald Trump.

TODD: So, why isn't the cavalry rallying around Cruz?

SCHMIDT: If you look now, Donald Trump is well on his way to securing 1,237 delegates to be nominated on the first ballot. If Donald Trump gets to 1,237 delegates, he'll be nominated on the first ballot. If he does not, it goes to an open convention. Anything of course can happen. But if you look at the amount of new voters coming into the process this year, for them to be denied what they view as a small-D democratic process, and in fact, these parties, they are the vessels that we advance democracy in America, are not themselves democratic, small-D institutions. So I think the rules would play out, and there was a denial of it, dire consequences for the party and for the Senate majority.

See what happened there? Slick, wasn't it? My man Chuck Todd asked Schmidt why the anti-Trump Republicans weren't banding together to support the clear runner-up and Schmidt started babbling about small-d democratic processes wah-dee-doo-dah. The direct answer to the question…

So, why isn't the cavalry rallying around Cruz?

"Because Tailgunner Ted Cruz is a messianic and friendless theocrat whose policies are a mix of the Book of Revelation and The Fountainhead, and anyone who looks at him thinks of the skeevy uncle whom they tell their kids to avoid at Thanksgiving, and anyone who listens to him who isn't already lost in Jesus wouldn't trust him to park their car."

However, to say that would be to demonstrate how completely movement conservatism has caused the Republican Party to fck itself. And these are things we do not say.

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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