President Obama on Monday lashed out at Republican presidential candidates for making what he called "ridiculous" claims about his policies and "outrageous attacks" that crossed the line of political decorum.
At a news conference while visiting [Ethiopia], Mr. Obama defended the international nuclear agreement he and other world leaders reached with Iran and he bristled at the assertion by former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas that the president’s policy would "take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven."
Mr. Obama said such comments demonstrated a lack of seriousness on the part of those seeking to succeed him and reflected an anything-goes political culture that rewards incendiary rhetoric over sober deliberation. Asked specifically about Mr. Huckabee’s remarks, Mr. Obama linked them to those of other Republican presidential candidates, including the businessman Donald J. Trump and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.
Yes, and it's precisely the "anything-goes political culture" that has dominated our politics for years, and is anything but cautious.
Earlier this morning I heard, on CNN, deception artist S.E. Cupp dismiss Donald Trump's 18 percent in Republican polling. That statistic is anything but representative of the Republican Party, she contended. If left at that, she'd be correct. But when we add Huckabee and Cruz's polling (which will now swell) to Trump's polling, "anything-goes" popularity in the GOP rises to 30 percent.
When we then add the polling of Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Booby Jindal and Lindsey Graham — a toxic consortium of mindless jingoism, Gothic economics, and, in general and above all else, a depraved indifference to rhetorical decency — the GOP's statistical, anything-goes standing soars to 58 percent.
And Ms. Cupp, 58 percent is party-defining.