If you had told me only a few months ago that Donald Trump would not only be a bona fide presidential candidate but also leading in Republican national polls, I would have advised you to get back on your meds. But here we are and the once unimaginable has become reality. In the most recent Fox News poll, Donald Trump leads the pack of 15 declared Republican candidates with 18% of the vote, followed by Scott Walker at 15% and Jeb Bush at 14%. None of the other candidates reached double digits in the Fox poll.

But you, the person I so dismissively accused of being off their meds, quickly remind me of previous Republican candidates who led in presidential polls only to later self-destruct. “Just look at Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry,” you say. “Trump will fizzle and fade just like they did.”

After reading some of the comments people have posted online about “The Donald,” (“Trump tells it like it is;” “Trump…USA, USA, USA;” “Trump is a real leader, not like that wuss Obama;” “I’m a Democrat but I like what Trump has to say” ) I do not think he will go the route of “The Herminator.” Trump is a different animal altogether. He is a showman, a celebrity starring in his own new reality series. The spotlight is squarely focused on him and he is luxuriating in the attention. To his credit, Trump has done something all the other mainstream candidates have been unable to do. He has brought people who otherwise do not care about politics into the game. And boy have they made their political views, however ill-informed, known!

Trump, with an ego the size of which we have not seen in some time, says exactly what people are thinking but other established candidates dare not say. They prefer to deliver their messages in code or through dog whistles. Trump has successfully tapped into a deep vein of racism, bigotry and xenophobia that makes up a large part of the American electorate today. “Trump is like a breath of fresh air because he could care less about political correctness,” one comment read.

The “real” politicians in the race have been put in a bind by Trump’s success. Do they risk offending their base by criticizing Trump or do they lay back and not attack the man? When (not if) Trump, in a debate, accuses President Obama of not being an American will there be any candidate who has the guts of a John McCain who famously told a supporter, “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign’s all about. He’s not [an Arab].”

The Republican Party has stealthily been playing on people’s fears, and ignorance, for quite some time. They are masters at the game. Trump is just the “unfiltered” version of who they are and what they stand for. The chickens have finally come home to roost.

The odds of Trump becoming the Republican Party’s presidential nominee are still remote. With a mouth like his, how long before a Todd Aikens “legitimate rape” moment? But then again America elected a “B” actor president and the great state of Minnesota swore in a professional wrestler governor. As Chuck Berry might say, “You never can tell.”

With Donald Trump, the P.T. Barnum of the Republican Party, running circus rings around the more established Republican presidential nominees, the question on everyone’s mind is, “Where is Sarah?” What “The Donald” has proven is that there is a strong appetite among the Republican base for crazy and who knows crazy better than Sister Sarah?

If the Republican Party base is so keen on a showman running for office, surely they would love to have the ultimate political showwoman throw her hat into the ring! And good news! The rumor on the street is that the base may get their wish.

According to an anonymous source within PalinWorld, the “pit bull with lipstick” is flat broke and could use some cash. Though she accumulated tens of millions after quitting her Alaska governorship gig, the source confirmed she has lost most of the money through bad investments.

First there was the investment in a chain of Florida alligator petting zoos. That misadventure came on the heels of a men’s fragrance Sarah heavily promoted that captured the manly scent of the great Alaskan outdoors. Unfortunately, her “Eau D’Grizzly” never took off with men in the lower 48.

Some establishment Republicans have indicated they would enthusiastically support another Palin run. Their thinking is that she would split the crazy vote opening the door for someone more mainstream, like Jeb. But they should not be so quick to underestimate the lady master of “word salads.” If things don’t break her way, Sarah, as she is wont to do, will just quit… and wait for the next multimillion-dollar book deal.

There is so much for which to thank George W. Bush. The current state of the world, in no small measure, can be traced directly to Bush’s leadership. Remember, he was “the Decider.” And boy did his decisions have a profound impact on everything… the state of the world, the shape of our economy, and even the current condition of Republican politics.

Because of Bush’s election, we now have the sorry spectacle of a Republican clown car so packed, it might take the jaws of life to pry everyone out! Dubya lowered the bar for the presidency so much that we now have, as reality, what would have only been a Saturday Night Live skit not too long ago. Donald Trump? Really?

Bush aptly demonstrated it does not take brains to be elected president. People have to just like you. You’ve got to be the type of guy a person would want to have a drink with. Government is bad, as Saint Ronald liked to say, so why do we need a smarty-pants president anyway? Hence we have a 2016 lineup of Republican presidential hopefuls that not only includes “The Donald,” but Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, George Pataki, Rick Santorum, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, and Chris Christie.

Opps! Forgot to mention Jeb. Remember, him, the smart Bush? It was Jeb who had the right stuff to be president. He was the one with the gravitas and brains to be leader of the free world. It was supposed to be him, not George, placing his hand on that bible at the swearing in.

Unfortunately for everyone, as Jeb was exploring his option to run, he showed the world he doesn’t have that many more IQ points than his less mentally gifted brother. When asked the simple, and predictable, question by Megyn Kelly of Fox News, if, knowing what we know now, he would have ordered the invasion of Iraq, Jeb amazingly answered “yes!” As has become abundantly clear, he is just another bought and paid for Republican. The younger Bush’s rhetoric was that he was his own man. So what does Jeb do? Well, he surrounds himself with the same group of lame, failed advisers from Dubya’s time in office!

I do not know which clown will emerge from that VW Beetle as the 2016 Republican nominee, but those debates will surely be “must see TV”. Pass the popcorn, please.

Thanks Dubya … for nothing!

I was recently at one of my favorite D.C. watering holes and who do I see across the bar from me? None other than the Tan Man! I could see from the way he was hunched over his Johnny Walker he had been at the bar for a while. I decided to move over to his end of the bar and engage the man in conversation.

“Mr. Boehner,” I asked, “would you mind if I sit here?” “Last time I checked it was a free country. Go right ahead. What you drinkin?” he asked. I said I’d have whatever he was drinking. “Joe,” barked Boehner,” a Double Black for my friend here.”

I sensed the Speaker of the House was in a talkative mood so I plunged right in. “Mr. Speaker, Dick Cheney recently called President Obama the worst president in his lifetime. Do you agree? “No,” he chuckled, “the worst president in Cheney’s lifetime was Millard Fillmore! Now I can tell you the worst president in my lifetime… Dick Cheney!” “Sir,” I said, “you mean George W. Bush, don’t you?” Boehner quickly looked up from this scotch and repeated firmly, “As I said, Dick Cheney, the worst president in my lifetime!”

I decided to make a quick U-turn and asked Boehner about the Republican obsession with voter suppression. “Suppression!” Boehner snapped, “You mean voter fraud don’t you?” “But Sir,” I said, ”studies have shown that in-person voter fraud carries the same chance as winning the lottery … back to back.” “Look sonny,” said an agitated Boehner, “we Republicans know all about the facts. We’re not dumb, you know. But how are we going to stay in office unless we take drastic action? If all eligible voters were allowed to vote, the Republican Party would be deader than Kelsey’s nuts.”

“But Sir,” I said, “What about democracy and the idea that everyone’s vote matters?” “Yes,” replied Boehner, “everyone’s vote matters but elections are too important to leave to chance. This is about basic survival. Look what happened to the dodo bird, for Pete’s sake!” As I had no idea what the Speaker meant, I decided to try my luck elsewhere.

“Okay,“ I said. “Could you give me your thoughts on Hillary Clinton?” He looked at me with a sheepish grim. “You know, I like Hillary very much. Heck, in her prime, I thought she was one heck of a babe!” “No, Sir,” I said, “I mean what do you think of her as a presidential candidate? Can any republican beat her?” On that note, Boehner’s face turned even redder than usual. “There is no clown on our side of the aisle that could come close to beating her. She’s smart, ruthless, machiavellian, can play dirty and will do or say whatever it takes to win. She’s stolen our playbook, goddammit!” exclaimed the Speaker.

On that note, the man third in line to the presidency, gave me a hard pat on the back and walked away, “Voter fraud, laddy, our only chance!”

There has always existed a segment of the American populace that, for want of a better phrase, has been a few fries short of a Happy Meal. Think back to your high school days. You had the smart kids and those not-so-bright-kids who knew they were intellectually challenged and pretty much kept to themselves. They didn’t run for class president, student council, or want to be editor of the school newspaper. Those things were for the nerdy smart kids.

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” – Albert Einstein

I guess you could say that the advent of rap music really pushed the concept of “dumb is cool” to the forefront. What started off as an innocent new form of music… think DJ Jazzy Jeff ‘s “Parents Just Don’t Understand” and then think of Snoop Dog’s “Gin and Juice” with such memorable lyrics as “I got bitches in the living room gettin it on and, they ain’t leavin til six…So what you wanna do, sheeeit! I got a pocket full of rubbers and my homeboys do too.”

The new music, which started out as fun and harmless, quickly turned into gangsta rap with all its ebonics and anti-intellectualism. White kids started dressing like inner city blacks, emulating their speech and glorifying street-smart over book-smart.

But the seminal moment when dumb became cool in politics came during George W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 2000. The man talked as if he had marbles in his mouth … and a few missing in his brain. I remember thinking to myself, “This must be a joke. Who would vote for this clown?”

I was waiting on line at my bank in 1999 when I looked up at the TV monitor overhead. It was an interview of Bush with WHDH-TV, the NBC affiliate in Boston. The interviewer surprised Bush with a pop quiz. Bush was asked to name the leaders of four countries …Chechnya, Taiwan, India and Pakistan.

Bush managed to score a 25%, getting the Taiwan leader partly right.

That fiasco drew immediate criticism from the Al Gore camp, which said that Gore could have answered all four questions correctly. “I guess we know that ‘C’ at Yale was a gentleman’s ‘C,'” said Gore spokesman Chris Lehane, referring to the way Bush had described his academic record.

The Bush campaign brushed off the incident.

“The person who is running for president is seeking to be the leader of the free world, not a Jeopardy contestant,” said Karen Hughes, Bush communications director. “I would venture to guess that 99.9 percent of most Americans and probably most candidates could not answer who is the president of Chechnya,” Hughes added.

That incident began what I think would later become known as the “gotcha question.” After watching Bush try to answer the reporter’s questions, I remember thinking to myself,  “Bush is toast.” But I was so wrong!

Many viewers felt sorry for George Bush. They thought the Gore camp acted too disparagingly at Bush’s ambush. Fox News was all over it. How dare that snarky reporter ask Bush such tough questions!

So, for the rest of the campaign, Bush was the sympathetic nice guy you’d like to have a beer with and Gore became Mr. Smarty pants; the brainiac who was probably his high school’s class president!

Smart had become dumb and dumb had become smart, at least to Mr. John Q. Public. What happened in 2000 set the stage for all the low-IQ politicians to follow. I  would name a few of those clown-politicians here but the list is so long I would not know where to start.

“No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” – Henry Louis Mencken

We have entered a new age in America. The not-so-bright-kids sitting at the back of the room have realized they out-number the smart kids and have decided it is now their turn to be in charge. God help us. Welcome to the moron majority!

Pope Francis just continues to amaze. First it was atheists could still go to heaven; then gays deserved love and respect; then his belief in evolution; and most recently, climate change is real and caused by humans. But the biggest shocker of them all came yesterday at a Vatican press conference. Pope Francis announced he is throwing his hat, well, Papal Tiara, into the ring for President of the United States in 2016! The news quickly spread like wildfire causing every declared, and undeclared, presidential hopeful to go into panic mode. Hillary Clinton, trying to put on a brave face, told reporters she welcomed the Holy Father into the race. “Should make for some Spirited debate” she went on to say.

Rand Paul was having none of it.  His remarks about the Vicar of Christ entering the race were not so kind. “I just don’t know if it is constitutional for the Pope to run. After all he was not born in this country.” But the Pope’s newly-anointed campaign manager, Father Bruno Sarducci, revealed a fact very few know. “Yes, His Holiness was born in Argentina but his mother was born in Cleveland, Ohio. As such, he would be eligible to run. If a Cuban Canadian can run so can an Argentinean American.”

When he heard the news that the Bishop of Rome had declared his candidacy, Donald Trump immediately asked for an investigation into the Pope’s birth certificate. “With all due respect, like Saint Reagan used to say… trust but verify.”

Presidential hopeful Jeb Bush had a different take on the Pope’s candidacy. “I think I heard the Pontiff plans to run as a third party candidate. Third party candidates rarely win elections in our country. I like my chances.”

When Father Bruno Sarducci was asked to confirm His Holiness would be running as a third party candidate, he answered, “Yes, it is true. Our Holy Father will run as a candidate for the Compassionate Conservative Party… the CCP, as we like to call it around the V.” The thinking is that since the moniker worked so well for the last self-identified compassionate conservative, you’ve got to like the chances of the real thing.

One immediate effect of the Pope’s announcement has been that any Democrat who had thoughts of entering the race, has suddenly thought twice. “ I might have had a chance in the primary against a woman who wears pantsuits,” said Martin O’Malley, “but there is no way in hell I could ever match the appeal of a man in a long white dress. No thank you, I’m staying out.”

Much of the news media has accepted Pope Francis’ announcement with great joy. Fox News, however, has found itself in a bind. Is the Pope a true conservative? Is he a liberal? Is he too compassionate? But one thing is clear, other than Rick Santorum, you will not find a more religious candidate. As Bill O’Reilly observed, “Many conservative candidates claim to talk to God on a regular basis, but give me a break. We’re talking about the Pope here, for Christ’s sake!”