Mitt and the Donald

Posted at 03:36 PM ET, 05/25/2012
Mitt and the Donald
By Jonathan Bernstein

... Donald Trump is in need of publicity – I don’t know, but I’d guess that this all about his TV show ratings or maybe he has a book to push or something – and so he’s running around ranting about birther nonsense ...

... What it does remind us, however, is that there really is something seriously wrong with the Republican Party. I’ve said this many times: both sides have cranks and loonies (yes, they do), but Democratic Party politicians and operatives almost always marginalize, ignore, and when needed condemn those folks, and that’s just not true on the Republican side.

What does matter is that a Republican Party that can’t tell nutty conspiracy theories from reality (or is constrained to pretend that it can’t tell the difference) isn’t apt to be able to govern very well. What does matter is that Republican voters are trained not to know or care about the difference between strong conservative positions and utter nonsense – and there’s no surprise that they react by nominating candidates for Congress who either lose races that Republicans could have won, or wind up embarrassing the party with their behavior in office ...

Donald Trump is just a buffoon and an entertainer; the truth is Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, at their core, are just buffoon entertainers. But there’s something seriously wrong with a party that treats them as serious contributors ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/mitt-and-the-donald/2012/05/25/gJQA6FpIqU_blog.html