A commentary from the Toronto Star gives reasons why Sarah Palin should run for President. Oh this ought to be good.

First off this Bob Hepburn points out that Palin still has some rabid supporters who are always begging her to run: 

Every day Bonny Gray prays she will soon turn on her TV and see that Sarah Palin has entered the U.S. presidential race. 

“I am a believer in prayers being answered and I pray every night for you to be our next president,” Gray wrote two weeks ago in a Facebook post. “You against Hillary would be a sure victory for you.

......

Take Kristine Weaver Bryant, who like Gray is pleading with Palin to jump into the race. “If you don’t run, our country is ruined,” Bryant wrote in another Facebook post. “Please Sarah, it is time for a female president. Don’t let it be Hillary. We beg you!”

Well you know, Bob, crazy people want all kinds of things they will never get. 

I once heard a person with schizophrenia begging Jesus to take him to Disney World.

Guess who didn't get to go?

Hepburn then goes to the polls: 

A poll conducted for CBS News in January suggested 30 per cent of Republicans would like her to run, although 59 per cent disagreed. Only former Florida governor Jeb Bush, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, who isn’t running, scored higher.

So almost 60% of Republicans don't want her to run, and this guy STILL thinks she should give it a shot?

But wait, he has more: 

Still, there are many reasons why Palin should enter the Republican race, starting with the fact that she would bring fun and excitement to what now is a dull contest filled by white males with no charisma. 

Palin, whose ego knows few bounds, could actually be a strong contender if she finally started to listen to her smart, well-paid political advisers, stuck to written texts and avoided those embarrassing off-hand remarks that have tripped her up in the past. 

She has a strong base, especially among religious Republicans, and that base still believes in her. She has 4.4 million “likes” on Facebook and more than 1 million Twitter followers. She can easily raise the millions of dollars needed to run a serious campaign.

Okay, let's take these one at a time, shall we?

First off, I think Bob is mistaking barely contained lunacy for "charisma."

Second, most of Palin's well paid advisers are actually shadowy organizations that help her to laundry money, and those that actually DO advise are terrible at their job.

And thirdly, most of those Facebook and Twitter "likes" are bought and paid for with SarahPAC money, which by the way is drying up faster than water in California.

What else ya got, Bob?

And while I disagree with almost everything Palin and the Tea Party stand for, their voices do deserve to be heard.

No, Bob, no, they don't. 

In fact, allowing the rabid Right Wing fringe to have a voice is how we ended up with a Greg Abbott as governor of Texas, a Ted Cruz as a Senator from Texas, and let's face it, it's how we ended up with a Texas.

Do you want another Texas, Bob?

No, Sarah Palin is yesterday's news. In fact, it's yesterday's news that the parakeet has already pooped on, and has been rolled up and used to beat the dog for humping our legs.

Having a handful of crazy people believe something is no reason for rational people to think it's viable.

If that were true we too would start seeing Elvis at the local Quicky Mart and start telling tales of being anally probed by aliens.

Maureen Dowd's vision of a Ted Cruz inspired American Armageddon. Think "The Terminator" meets Ayn Rand.

Courtesy of the New York Times: 

Dead cherry blossom trees litter the bleak landscape. Trash blows through L’Enfant’s once beautiful boulevards, now strewn with the detritus of democracy, scraps of the original Constitution, corroded White House ID cards, stacks of worthless bills tumbling out of the Treasury Department. 

The BlackBerrys that were pried from the hands of White House employees in 2013 are now piled up on the Potomac as a flood barrier against the ever-rising tide from melting ice caps. Their owners, unable to check their messages, went insane long ago.

Because there was no endgame, the capital’s hunger games ended in a gray void. Because there was no clean bill, now there is only a filthy stench. Because there was no wisdom, now there is only rot. The instigators, it turned out, didn’t even know what they were arguing for. Macho thrusts and feints, competing to win while the country lost. 

Thomas Jefferson’s utopia devolved into Ted Cruz’s dystopia. 

Law and order broke down as police, who were not getting paid, eventually decided to stay home. The fanatics barricaded in the Capitol dug in, determined to tear down what their idols, the founding fathers, had built. Darkness soon devoured the rest of the country.

Whose to blame you may ask? Who do you think?

A gaunt man and sickly boy, wrapped in blue tarps, trudge toward the blighted spot that was once the World War II monument, scene of the first shutdown skirmishes. They know they may not survive the winter. 

“How did this happen, Papa?” the boy asks. 

“Americans had been filled with existential dread since the 9/11 attacks, but they didn’t realize the real danger was coming from inside the government,” the man says. “It started very small with a petty fight over a six-week spending bill but quickly mushroomed out of control.” 

“Whose fault was it, Papa?” the boy presses. 

The man tries to explain: “The Grand Old Party, the proud haven of patriots who believed in a strong national security and fiscal responsibility, was infected with a mutant form of ideology. It was named the Sarahcuda Strain after the earliest carrier. Remember when you saw that old science fiction movie, ‘I Am Legend’? A scientist described the virus that burned through civilization as being like ‘a very fast car driven by a very bad man.’ That’s what happened: In the infected Tea Party politicians, brain function decreased and social de-evolution occurred. They began ignoring their basic survival instincts. 

“It’s hard to believe now, but they were fixated on stopping an effort to get health care to those who couldn’t afford it. It eventually led them to destroy all the things they said they held most dear.” 

The boy is confused. “They killed America because they didn’t care about keeping Americans alive?” he asks.

"The Sarahcuda Strain," I love it!

But yes in the final analysis the young boy's question is absolutely accurate.

I don't always enjoy Maureen Dowd, but this is a must read and it does a pretty great job of putting a rather ridiculous conflict into a context that is both entertaining as well as informative. .