Sarah Palin took to CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning to excoriate House Speaker Paul Ryan for his failure to enthusiastically endorse Donald Trump, and announce her support for...this person.



Paul Nehlen, a Wisconsin businessman and one-time Ryan supporter, found himself so aggrieved by the Speaker’s endorsement of the Trans-Pacific Partnership that he’s now hoping to take control of Wisconsin’s 1st congressional district in the August primary. The TPP is a trade agreement that seeks to stoke economic growth among the 12 countries involved, though critics say it will harm U.S. workers by moving jobs to developing countries.


In the video, the sleeveless shirt-wearing, woman-toting, motorcycle-cruising Nehlen offers Ryan the chance to “come back to Wisconsin and debate me man to man, face to face, on the realities of TPP. And if you don’t want to debate me, maybe we can arm wrestle.”

Childish though this offer may be, it doesn’t seem to grate on Palin, at least not in comparison to the unforgivable sin of failing to leap to Trump’s support. As she semi-intelligibly told Jake Tapper:

His political career is over, but for a miracle, because he has disrespected the will of the American people...Paul Ryan and his ilk, their problem is they have become so disconnected from the people they were elected to represent. Their problem is they feel so threatened at this point that their power, their prestige, their purse will be adversely affected by this change that is coming with Trump.


Nehlen’s chance at victory, however remote, is not impossible. Majority Leader Eric Cantor also biffed his primary election in 2014, and anyway, stranger things have happened.



Forget the election. Why don’t we just have the nominees square off in a giant mud pit while the electorate pelts them with clods of dirt and old lunch meat?