When the crazies take over the asylum, you've got a big problem. In a saner America, nearly all the Republican candidates for president would have been ruled ineligible for high office based on the simple fact that most of them were saying things that would, in other times, have served as justification for having them locked up in rubber rooms. But then, after nearly eight years of George Bush, we're all a little nuts.

Back in the '60s, when Republican Barry Goldwater said that "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice," the nation decided that the guy was just too crazy to be allowed to play in the nuclear toy box. But when Republican presidential aspirant Tom Tancredo suggested that we "nuke Mecca," the national news media barely took note of it.

Tancredo's campaign stood by his remark, arguing that nuking Muslim holy sites would serve as a good "deterrent" against Islamic fundamentalists. Senior Tancredo adviser Bay Buchanan argued that bombing Mecca would show "that we mean business." Yeah, that'll work. Echoing Tancredo's overtures to the paranoid, Duncan Hunter, another Republican presidential candidate, said he would build an 815-mile fence along the Mexican border in the first six months of his administration. Now that's a man who has his priorities in order.

Fred Thompson, another Republican nut job, proclaimed that: "Our basic rights come from God, not from government." Why, then, maintain an army, or a judiciary, if God is providing us with our rights and overseeing our liberties? Why bother creating a government at all when God had our basic rights covered from the get-go?

There were three evolution deniers among that field of Republican candidates. One of them, Sam Brownback, had the support of a raging evangelical crazy named Phelps who celebrates the deaths of our soldiers in Iraq because those deaths are punishment from God for letting the nation countenance homosexuals, abortion, and women's libbers. Brownback's son got busted for trying to board an airplane while carrying a Glock automatic pistol, so that particular nut didn't fall too far from the tree.

Then there was former Homeland Security chief, Tommy Thompson. Before he dropped out of the race, Thompson put his own brand of insanity on display when he described Jesus Christ as "a free enterpriser ... He was able to change water into wine; now that is the classic definition of a guy in the entrepreneurial spirit."

Yeah, Tommy, but Christ didn't seek no-bid contracts to sell that wine to the military at inflated prices. And let's not forget Rudy Giuliani who, for the benefit of the National Rifle Association, managed to link the 2nd Amendment to Sept. 11 when he said: "Sept. 11 casts somewhat of a different light on Second Amendment rights; it maybe highlights the necessity for them more."

The inference here is that if we're all packin' heat, we can fight the terrorists wherever we see them, with every citizen whipping out his piece whenever he or she encounters a swarthy individual with a suspicious-looking package. Rudy was also the guy who, on Sept. 11, had the time to turn to his crooked head cop, Bernie Kerik, and say, "thank God George Bush is president."

Gov. Mike Huckabee may be the looniest tune still being sung. He's a Baptist preacher who believes we wouldn't have Mexicans harvesting our crops except for the permissiveness of our abortion laws. All those aborted fetuses allowed under Roe V. Wade would, even now, be out picking our lettuce were it not for the evil abortion clinics that have deprived the nation of all that cheap homegrown labor.

Huckabee also told the National Rifle Association that angels guided the bullet that killed an antelope he was hunting, and he further avowed his belief that there will be duck hunting in the afterlife, with little duckies in heaven provided for the pleasure of hunters who slip through the pearly gates. This is a man who hopes to be put in charge of the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. One can assume, then, that should he be given responsibility over those weapons of mass destruction, the angels will guide those ICBMs to the targets he chooses. Abortion clinics, maybe. Additionally, Huckabee redefined what primates are in his insistent view that evolution ain't real.

"If anybody wants to believe that they are the descendants of a primate," Huckabee said in one of the primary debates, "they are certainly welcome to do it." So, the question arises once again: "Who's your daddy?" In Huck-abee-Land, he wasn't a primate.

Finally, we come to John McCain, a guy who thinks it's funny to appear before a conservative forum and re-cast the words "Barbara Ann, "the old Beach Boys song, chanting happily "bomb bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran." And that same wacko sense of humor was on display when he appeared on The Daily Show and said to host Jon Stewart, "I had something picked out for you, too - a little IED (improvised explosive device) to put on your desk."

What a cut-up, especially when you consider that the majority of American deaths in Iraq have been caused by those IEDs. Laugh? I thought I'd die. And it's both crazy and mean as sin when McCain once asked "Why is Chel-sea Clinton so ugly?" and then provided the answer to his own cute little "joke" by explaining "Because her father is Janet Reno."

That's Republican insanity and humor all rolled into one, the kind of Ann Coulter-ish nastiness that slimes three women in one sentence. All of these whackos rose to prominence in the Republican Party, a group that enabled such certifiable nuts to think they were sane enough to lead the most powerful nation in the world. But then such delusions of grandeur are just one of the ways crazy people are known to be crazy.
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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/12895

your article conveniently neglects Ron Paul, the only prominent Republican who isn't beholden to the neocons. For shame!

I like RP except for his views on taxes. It also neglects the queen of crazytown Sarah Pallin

Ron Paul's not a republican, he's a libertarian..he only made the official switch for his failed presidential run..so he's a RINO.