They never disappoint. And in that, we can take some comfort.
A prevailing sentiment, if not provable proposition, held by the left is that the right is far too saturated in feral malice to ever permit an intelligent thought to escape. For instance President Obama can ask what, to any thinking person, is a mere rhetorical question — let's say, "Do you really think that this verifiable deal [with Iran], if fully implemented, backed by the world’s major powers, is a worse option than the risk of another war in the Middle East?" — and the right's dark luminaries will take the bait every time. They just can't help themselves; any functioning, firing synapses are instantly throttled by a malicious compulsion to sound fashionably stupid.
To wit, this tweet by Hot Air's Ed Morrissey, "Stop all this negativity, my fellow conservatives, on this Iran deal. The Iranians didn't get the Sudetenland"; or this one by Laura Ingraham, "Triple Bogey: So Iran gets sanctions lifted, they keep plenty of centrifuges humming, AND they don't have to take John Kerry?!"; or, last and definitely least, Michelle Malkin's "Obama won't be around to clean up the mess. Well, actually, nobody will be around the clean up the mess" — because of a thermonuclear holocaust.
We're all quite amused, I'm sure, and of course it's comforting to learn — time and time again — that our stereotypical assumptions about the right are more than mere prejudice. Over there, the bloggers, broadcasters and bloviators really are just hateful numbnuts.
Alas, in their unanimous numbnuttery, they also set the overall tone for their party's leaders and presidential candidates, who wish to take no chances with the tinkled-on, malice-infused rank and file. When it comes to topics about which the bloviators and base have no clue whatsoever — centrifuges, fissile material, break-out times, that sort of thing — the candidates take the lead of the clueless.
And why not? Jeb Bush, who said yesterday that he "cannot stand behind such a flawed agreement," has no more idea what in God's name fissile material is, I'd wager, than does Michelle Malkin. He does know that c-e-n-t-r-i-f-u-g-e-s is an anagram of "politics," thus he firmly stands not behind an agreement he probably understands nothing about. But even if Jeb harbored the nuclear expertise of Ernest Moniz and privately greeted this deal with the enthusiasm of Mohammad Zarif, he'd still go with the politics of public numbnuttery. For the tone was set long ago.
Or, there's Scott Walker, whose depths of ignorance and eagerness to pander are so profound, they are virtually unplumbable. Asked this week if as president he would destroy Obama's Iranian agreement "even if our trading partners" and closest allies "did not want to reimpose the sanctions," the vacant governor said: "Absolutely…. I will pull back on that on January 20, 2017, because the last thing … we need is a nuclear-armed Iran."
As noted, that's just unplumbable. There's no way to analyze in any worthwhile way such deep disingenuity or, worse, such breathtaking stupidity. Yet it's fortunate for Gov. Walker that those are the very qualities most admired by the right's bloggers, broadcasters, bloviators and base. What a bunch.