Thanks for all your help, matey. Now over the side with ye and be quick about it!

If the account in the Times is correct, then the floundering on the bridge of the Good Ship Yooge is beginning to reach critical mass.

The loss of Mr. Lewandowski was intended as part of a larger shift toward the final sprint of the race, according to those briefed on the matter. Mr. Trump had faced increasing concerns from allies and donors, as well as his children, about the next phase of the campaign. It is a move that could reassure donors and Republicans more broadly that he can adjust toward a November election strategy. Two people briefed on the move, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Lewandowski was fired. The campaign manager was seen as having a hostile relationship with many members of the national press corps who cover Mr. Trump, and many officials at the Republican National Committee had strained relationships with him.

Somehow, I don't see Trump firing this guy because he was mean to the national press corps. I suspect some members of the extended Trump clan lined up against Lewandowski and that was the ballgame.

OK, so Lewandowski was a lightweight omadhaun with the personality of sandpaper who suddenly found that he was running the campaign of the presumptive Republican nominee for president. But aren't most of the problems described above really rooted in the fact that the candidate is a vulgar talking yam? And exactly how many times are we supposed to fall for the "adjust toward a November strategy" hogwash?

There has been no indication that He, Trump can resist for longer than a day at a time the impulse to share his every rattlebrained notion with the larger world. It wasn't Corey Lewandowski who went after a judge that was sitting on the fraud trial involving Trump University (a.k.a. Bunco Harvard), and it wasn't Lewandowski who most recently decided that a general shootout at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando would have been a beautiful thing.

"If some of those wonderful people had guns strapped right here, right to their waist or right to their ankle, and this son of a bitch comes out and starts shooting, and one of the people in that room happened to have it and goes boom, boom, you know what? That would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight, folks, that would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight," he added.

There seems to be a persistent—and entirely unjustified—flicker of optimism within some Republicans, and within far too many people in my business, that if they can only get the right people around the vulgar talking yam, they might be able to save the party and themselves from the onrushing cataclysm.

Of course, there is one route open to him, and it's the route taken by all struggling campaigns since James K. Polk was running behind Henry Clay in 1844.

He could hire David Gergen.

Update (2:12PM): Lewandowski made the rounds of the cable news teevee outposts around lunchtime. Sitting with Dana Bash on CNN, and fielding several variations on the theme of, Why does everyone who worked with you think you're a dick? Lewandowski referred to Trump as "the greatest speaker who ever ran for president." To her credit, Bash managed to stay upright.

Yes, friends.

Lincoln: Cooper Union.

Bryan: The Cross of Gold

FDR: On the budget in Pittsburgh.

JFK: To the Baptist Ministers in Houston.

And...

He, Trump, talking about his dick.

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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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