Republican Campaign Triptych: Hypocrites, Racists and Loons

Over at Salon, Dan Sinykin has been traveling with the three major contenders in the Republican clown car bus in Iowa, and finds the differences revealing. 

"Tailgunner Ted" Cruz supporters:

... Cruz makes a joke about how, when the pope was in town, Obama made things awkward by answering to His Holiness. The crowd is delighted.

Other of Cruz’s jokes have more sinister implications. He tells one where the punch line is about using pesticides on regulators, another about how, after his presidency, countless members of the media will have checked themselves into therapy. A favorite of his involves padlocking the IRS and relocating its employees to the southern border. “Think about it, sir,” he says. “Imagine you traveled thousands of miles in the blazing sun, you’re swimming the Rio Grande, and the first thing you see is 90,000 IRS agents. You’d turn around and go home, too!”

Imagine it, indeed. One might pause to imagine the suffering endured by migrants under that sun, but Cruz has the crowd under his spell.  [Ed. note - Remember it's Cruz who's the candidate of the "Christian" evangelical movement.]

A Marco "Glug Glug" Rubio supporter:

“It’s just not the party I grew up with,” says Stephen Blobaum, an IT worker from Des Moines. “This racial stuff,” he says with a sigh, “it’s gone from insinuations to right in your face racism.”  [Ed. note - It was much more tolerable for him when it was just the dog whistles.]

A "Rump" Trump supporter:

An elderly man approaches me as I take notes. He asks what I’m doing. I tell him I’m a professor. “I’ve had my fill of fucking intellectuals,” he says, but he clearly wants to talk. The air fills with “Jingle Bells.”

“I love Trump,” he says. “He’s not an intellectual. He says he’s going to make America great again, that excites me. I got so excited I went out and bought a tricycle. I can’t hardly walk, but I bought a tricycle on just hope. I got it in August—end of October, 14 miles I was going on it, my Trump hat on backwards, going down the highway.”

“I just got excited about it,” he says. “The man excites me.” [Ed. note -  An elderly man, possibly with a stiffie,  riding his tricycle done the road with his Trump hat on backwards ... those are the people who are going to "Make America Great Again."]

Hypocrites, racists and loons.  Quite a base you're working with there, Republicans!  Well- deserved after decades of nurturing, of course.

BONUS:  Michael Grunwald on the Crazy you might have missed while the spotlight was on "Rump" Trump.