CNBC provided a dramatic, championship-fight opening, as though it was introducing intellectual heavyweights to the nation.
First up, Herman Cain, who offered the shocking observation that an improved economy and sound currency are good objectives. Tom Dewey alert, via the 1948 Louisville Courier-Journal: "No presidential candidate in the future will be so inept that four of his major speeches can be boiled down to these historic four sentences: Agriculture is important. Our rivers are full of fish. You cannot have freedom without liberty. Our future lies ahead." The Courier-Journal was mistaken only about the future.
Mitt Romney actually compared the American economy to Italy's; he later described himself, against universal agreement on his flip-flopping, as a man of "constancy" -- and he topped that off by steeping himself in some unapologetic flag-wrap.
Ron Paul immediately careened to the Fuck 'em approach. Fuck everybody. Let 'em all go down. Somehow when Paul advocates it, naked nihilism is sort of endearing.
Jon Huntsman rather courageously asserted a Wall-Street-Occupying, TR-trust-busting attitude about big banks, which Rick Perry, uncourageously, countered with the seemingly inexhaustible cliche: "If you're too big to fail, you're too big." Thanks, Rick.
Newt Gingrich stepped in to enthusiastically engage in some classic Bernanke-bashing, just before launching into the class-warfare-waging, food-stamping president. Oh, and he doesn't like the media. That's always good for some rousing, right-wing applause.
Michele Bachmann, essentially all by herself, will repeal Obamacare and Dodd-Frank.
As president, Rick Santorum will repeal the preceding four years.
And that was just the opening. What an absolute joke, with the possible exception of Huntsman's leftward maneuver.
It's sleeping-pill time ... or then again, there's CNBC's Republican "debate."