I was watching a bit of the midday Fox panel hootenanny on Wednesday and they were discussing the president*'s rather obvious caving on his big, beautiful Wall with the big, beautiful doors, and one of the panelists tried to make the point that, hey, the president* didn't mean, you know, like a wall Wall in all those fevered speeches he gave to the ginned-up rubes all over the country. He could've meant a fence, you know?

But David Asman, the putative ringmaster of that circus, slapped the kibosh down on that by pointing out that, yes, when the president* talked about a wall, the audience believed he meant a no-shit, you-can-see-it-from-space, by-god Wall, and now they weren't going to get it, and the president* caved, and the red-hats are not going to be happy with him.

(Brief pause here to note that The Wall always was a stupid idea, a boondoggle in waiting that wouldn't have worked even if they'd built it, which they never would.)

Trump bring his engineering expertise to Wall planning. Smith Collection/Gado Getty Images

Right about the same time, Rush Limbaugh went on the electric radio program that he still pumps out daily to people in rural diners and called the president*'s folding on the wall "the biggest betrayal since 'Read My Lips.'" So, I guess the period of mourning for the repose of the soul of the late Poppy Bush is officially over. He's back to being the RINO who sold out the party by helping to save the hollowed-out economy left to him by Ronald Reagan.

Years ago, talking to me and to an editor at this magazine, Bill Clinton mused that the Republican Party began going crazy when Pat Buchanan challenged Poppy from the right in the 1992 Republican primaries, forcing the incumbent president to starboard. But the seeds of this rebellion were sown four years earlier, when Bush felt compelled to issue that doomed—and, ultimately, unredeemable—promise in his acceptance speech at the 1988 Republican convention.

Bush speaks at the RNC in ’88. Shepard Sherbell Getty Images

(I'd go back further than Clinton did, but there's no denying that the relative success of the Buchanan campaign energized the loonies.)

Having dispatched Michael Dukakis, then-President Poppy looked at the cavernous hole his predecessor's adoption of the supply-side snake oil had left him, and, in 1990, he struck a deal with congressional Democrats to raise some taxes in exchange for some spending limits. That sent all the flying monkeys aloft. They never forgave him, except briefly, during the recent period of national mourning. That Limbaugh cited Bush's actions today, 28 years later, and that he linked them unfavorably to the president*'s promise to build a wall, should tell you all you need to know about how deeply that one "betrayal" sank into the unconquerable wingnut id.

That should tell you all you need to know about how deeply that one "betrayal" sank into the unconquerable wingnut id.

(For the record, it took no little guts for Bush to do what he did, although he never should have issued the promise in the first place. In 2014, the John F. Kennedy Library gave Bush its annual Profiles in Courage Award for having done what he did.)

Look, there's no question that when the president* promised them a big, beautiful Wall, his audiences wanted an actual big, beautiful Wall, preferably topped with razor-wire and guarded by Navy SEALS. He's not going to be able to get away with tap-dancing around with phrases like Artistically Designed Steel Slats, which he tried to do on Tuesday. It would be ironic as all hell if this was the drop-dead moment in his relationship with his loyal Base.

Artistically Designed Steel Slats? Hell, man, you can't see those from space.

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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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