The Republican party, as we know, is deeply (and perhaps terminally) ill with the prion disease that has been slowly devouring the party's higher functions ever since Ronald Reagan first fed it the monkey-brains of "movement" conservatism in 1980.

Small wonder, then, that it no longer had the intellectual energy to resist its current assimilation into the deranged cult of a mad king. In fact, the party may be so far gone into Bedlam that it cannot find its way out again. Politico presents more compelling evidence of that fact.

Republican parties in South Carolina, Nevada, Arizona and Kansas are expected to finalize the cancellations in meetings this weekend, according to three GOP officials who are familiar with the plans...The cancellations stem in part from months of behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the Trump campaign. Aides have worked to ensure total control of the party machinery, installing staunch loyalists at state parties while eliminating potential detractors. The aim, Trump officials have long said, is to smooth the path to the president’s renomination and ensure he doesn’t face the kind of internal opposition that hampered former President George H.W. Bush in his failed 1992 reelection campaign.

And, yes, states have done this before, particularly when a president is running for re-election. However, when Bill Clinton was running in 1996, he had no opposition at all within the Democratic Party and his approval rating was fluctuating between 56 and 58 percent. And, frankly, he wasn't publicly nuts. (Privately, we later learned, he was reckless as hell.)

The first step for Republicans to redeem themselves and to heal their party, if that's even possible any more, and assuming they even want to do so, would have been to unite behind a vigorous primary challenge in 2020. Instead, a lot of the party's most respected Never Trump voices seem to be more concerned that the Democrats nominate someone palatable to them. No president ever has deserved "internal opposition" more than this one does. Watch this unfold, and watch the baying of the Never Trumpers get drowned out again by the bleating of millions of sheep.

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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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