That phrase comes from a press conference with General Russell Honore back in 2005. It was a jab at the media for being mired in the past.

It's a jab that has stood the test of time. It's a phrase I'm going to use to apply to, first, the Democratic Party and then to its vanguard, the so-called mainstream media. And to the party's two so-called great families, the Clintons and the Obamas.

All: mired in, and stuck on, stupid.

It starts with the overwhelming self-generated conceit by the left that it's smarter, better, and in all ways superior to the riffraff that surrounds it in the good old U.S. of A. Smarter than its opponents, morally superior to all, and simply outclassing all others.

These leftists really believe that concept of superiority, particularly the incarnation that gave us Barack Obama.

That's how they presented Barack Obama to us. For all these years, despite a lot of evidence, in their eyes, Barack was the best. Ever. Smarter, morally superior, he couldn't do less than ace everything he did. He won the Nobel Peace Prize, he gave the best speeches, he outclassed everyone he touched.

Except he didn't.

Try this as often as you want: ask an Obama supporter for three things he accomplished in his life that would make him a qualified and good president of the most powerful nation on Earth. Then ask for one.

There never was an answer to that question. You'll get crickets.

And unfortunately, no one stood up and pointed out the obvious – that the emperor had no clothes.

Apologies to Sarah Palin. She tried. Her comment – "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of a community organizer. Except you have actual responsibilities." – is perfect in 20/20 hindsight.

Because this group got away with it, they began to think even more highly of themselves. Heck, they thought they could do anything. And get away with it. That's what they did. They put their thumbs on the scales of every part of our government. We first saw it when the IRS went after the Tea Party.

They got away with that. They effectively cowed and took apart a powerful uprising of the American electorate. There is no doubt. They admitted they did it. No one got in trouble. Lois Lerner is happy with her pension.

So why not do that to every part of the government?

Obamacare would be administered by the IRS, so they had that covered.

Eric Holder, and then his female clone, Loretta Lynch, decided they could totally tip the Justice Department and form alliances with the FBI. They knew they would get away with it. They had the media cowed; they had the Republican Party cowed and willing to be the political version of the Washington Generals versus the Harlem Globetrotters.

Except...

Their arrogance became a hubris that turned to stupid.

They became stuck on stupid.

They began when they selected Hillary Clinton as the heiress apparent. She would get the same billing as Barack. Smartest woman in the world. Most qualified, experienced candidate ever.

They should have known they had a problem on their hands when she couldn't beat Bernie Sanders in any of the early primaries. The man was a full-bore, advertised socialist with the platform of Hugo Chávez. He was 73, looked like it, acted like it, and the majority of Democratic Party primary voters supported him. Their voters were with him, not her. It was the hint of hints that she couldn't pull it off.

So, rather than realize she was a bad candidate, they took Bernie out. With the DNC, they took him out. Super-delegates. It was rigged. And they did it in plain sight.

Hillary was perhaps worse, a dull candidate with tons of baggage, no real accomplishments. Her voice was awful, and she did not look good. And she was tired and didn't do the work to present herself to the American public as worthy. And yet they picked her as the heiress apparent. It worked with Barack. Why wouldn't it work with her?

The smartest people in the world forgot an Alinsky rule: never let your con grow stale (my version of Alinsky rule #7, "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.") They got stuck on stupid.

It got worse. They developed this strategy of using their opposition research as FBI and DOJ "intel" to inject what they wanted into the body politic to take down the political foe who had the temerity to challenge them. They fed it to their media friends, who dispersed it.

They put together the Steele dossier. They were going to use it to destroy their opponent. It would be easy.

Let me say something here. How in the world could they have read what they paid some ten million dollars for? There are seventeen memos from Steele that are laughably stupid. Wasn't one of them capable of seeing how stupid that dossier looked? Just one?

Apparently not.

All the evidence shows they used that totally made up "dossier" to start spying on every Trump associate possible. They actually went to the FISA court and presented this, as James Comey apparently called it, "salacious and unverified dossier" as proof for a warrant to spy on most of the Trump inner circle.

Was the FISA judge asleep?

Apparently so. Many times.

Was James Comey asleep? No, he got stuck on stupid.

Was the rest of the FBI on the seventh floor that unaware? No, those people got stuck on stupid.

They all got stuck. From the highest down to the middle management.

Even George W. Bush got caught up in the ridiculousness this past week. George, did you forget about that silver spoon you were born with in your mouth? Jeff Flake and John McCain, likewise. Guys, you chose the wrong side.

You got stuck on stupid along with the Democrat-media complex.

How?

Simple. Hubris to the max.

From the Book of Proverbs: "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall."

Here we had a group that thought they were the smartest people ever born. Barack. Hillary. Their inner circles. Their appointed lackeys in the FBI and DOJ. Haughty hardly says it enough. And yes, it is that simple. The kind of fawning nonsense they received from the press, and they tried to pull off something this stupid?

Now they are falling. Hard.

Did none of them actually read that dossier? Did none of them decide, "Oh, my goodness – this is the dumbest oppo research ever! And we paid almost ten mil for this?"

No.

Their arrogance convinced them they could do it. They got away with so much in the past. Why not continue?

"Never let your con grown stale. Never give up the con."

Well, they forgot that little fable about that emperor who had no clothes. In the fable, it took just a little kid to say the obvious. But this is hardly a little kid. This is the guy who beat the heiress apparent. Who they all said could not.

When Trump tweeted about being "wiretapped" almost a year ago, does anyone now think he didn't know how tangled this was, and how stupid and thin was their play? Does anyone now think he hasn't played his cards right? God help them, they underestimated his capacity times ten. No, times a hundred. The man is so many steps ahead of them.

While the media have been missing the biggest political story of their lives, they have been reporting on a story (made up by a paid oppo research guy) that was as stupid as the emperor walking out naked in his new "clothes." Russia, Russia, Russia.

Unfortunately, no one told them the obvious. The smartest people in the world.

Stuck on stupid.

A giant thank you to General Russell Honore. You did the world a favor with what you said back in 2005.

Your phrase is now officially resurrected for the present day.