Fundraiser Day Four: The Republican's Skitter-Eyed Cipher With The Norman Bates Laugh

From the deeply warped components out of which their Party was assembled --

The Republican Party we have today could disappear and be replaced by a range of its little subsets, all these other -- a Christian right party, a libertarian party, a no government, no tax party, a gun owner's party, a no gays and no immigrants party, each one with its own small niche of true believers...

-- to their real opinion of deficits...so long as there is a Republican is in the White House (Richard Bruce Cheney) --

You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.

-- if you just listen patiently and carefully, eventually Conservatives will share their unhinged plans and ideological delusions with you.

Every time. 

Which brings us to the latest Beltway mystery-which-is-not-really-a-mystery: Why won't Republican candidates at least pretend to give a shit about basic math or the barest fundamentals of public policy anymore?  Here is a sample (with emphasis added):

...

BERMAN: What does Ben Carson do about this all of a sudden now that he's winning somewhere?

PACE: Well, that's going to be a fascinating question because Ben Carson actually hasn't been campaigning very often. We haven't seen him on the campaign trail very much.

TALEV: He's on a book tour.

PACE: He's on a book tour. And a lot of his support is grassroots built up from people who have followed him throughout his career. Now there's going to be a lot of focus on him when he's in the debate next week. He's going to be getting more time, more questions on policy which has not been a strength of his. But again, this is a cycle where some of these standard things that we expect candidates to rise and fall on have just not mattered.

...

Trump will build a 1,000 mile wall and replace the entire concept of "government" with something more awesome.  Carly Fiorina continues to run on a record from fictional Hewlett Packard imported from Oppositeland.  Every Republican tax plan falls somewhere on the spectrum from "ludicrous" to "deranged" to "should be tranked and put in five-point restraints before he yanks his own head off".

So why won't Republican candidates dress up and play along with the Beltway Both Siderist myth anymore by presenting "proposals" with at least minimally plausible titles numbers that don't collapse when subjected to the rigors of 2nd-grade arithmetic?

Well, if you bother to you travel back in time just a few years to the 2012 CPAC convention and...just...listen, once again a leading Conservative will tell you exactly why Republicans do not care one little bit about the policy positions of their candidates for the highest office in the land (emphasis added):

“We don’t need someone to think”

Behind the scenes at CPAC: Who needs to agree on a presidential nominee? The strategy is to rule through Congress

...

But none could doubt the movement’s swagger when Norquist fine-tuned his newest talking point about Mitt Romney. He predicted that the leadership of the conservative movement for the next 20 years will emanate from Congress, not the White House (a likely development for which Democrats seem unprepared).

“We’re not auditioning for someone to tell us what to do,” he declared. “We know what to do. We just need a president who can sign the legislation that the Republican House and Senate pass. … We don’t need someone to think. … We need someone who knows how to hold a pen.”

Doesn't think and has a hand steady enough to sign whatever batshit legislation his plutocrat handlers put in front of him?

Sure sounds a helluva lot like the first and only line of Dr. Ben Carson's political resume.

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