My current assumption about the 2016 GOP primary is that, barring an act of the Trickster God, its end stage will devolve into an epic battle between Rick Santorum and whichever schlub the “sane” business rump of the party can shepherd through the contests between the snake handlers and the glibertarians (JEB!, Jindal, and Cruz being the current contenders). However much those of us in the Reality-Based Community regard him as a godsbothering sideshow freak who becomes ever more dislikeable the better he’s known, Santorum got the ‘Best of Losers’ ribbon in 2012 — no matter how much money Mitt Romney and his supporters fed into the primary woodchippers, the dumb sullen heart of the Stupid Party gave Sanctorum their votes. And Repubs, committed authoritarians that they are, treat “It’s His Turn“ as one of the prime directives; thus McCain followed Dubya, and Willard followed McCain, and Sanctorum fully intends to follow Willard in the next quadrennial circus parade.
It therefore makes me a very happy Democrat that Rand ‘Thanksdad’ Paul is already making a strong bid to play the Third Party Spoiler, per Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly:
Can Rand Paul’s “Constitutional Conservative” Coalition Hang Together?
In the wake of Rand Paul’s trip last week to Iowa, which seemed design to launch (or at least aggressively explore) a 2016 presidential candidacy, certain elements of his potential nomination-campaign coalition are looking at each other with suspicion. As WaPo’s Peter Wallstein noted, he’s been spending a lot of time with conservative evangelicals—earlier in a trip to Israel, and last Friday in meetings orchestrated by Christian Right impresario David Lane—and they want to be assured he’s not some dope-smoking sodomite libertarian…This sort of evangelical outreach is giving the heebie-jeebies to leading libertarian writer Nick Gillespie, who complained in a Daily Beast column that Paul is trying to serve two masters…
Later Night Open Thread: Good News for Democrats in 2016 – GOP EditionPost + Comments (31)