Random Observations on Last Night's GOP Debate Thing:
1. The Rude Pundit's second to none when it comes to his contempt for buffoonish grifter/pizza pusher Herman Cain, whose sole purpose in running for president is to be able to add a line to the marketing materials for his speeches and books. So it would have been fine if the other GOP candidates at last night's seven-way in Las Vegas had treated him like a clown whose presence mocks the political process, if they had viciously dissected him. Instead, they decided to respond to his surge in the polls, his 9-9-9 tax plan, the man himself like he was the house nigger who tried to tell his master a better way to stable the horses.

Here's Rick Santorum: "Herman’s well-meaning. I — and I love his boldness and it’s great." And Rick Perry: "Herman, I love you, brother, but let me tell you something: You don’t have to have a big analysis to figure this thing out." And Mitt Romney: "I like your chutzpah on this, Herman, but I have to tell you, the analysis I did, person by person, return by return, is that middle- income people see higher taxes under your plan." And Newt Gingrich: "[F]irst of all, I think that Herman Cain deserves a lot of credit. He’s had the courage to go out and take a specific, very big idea — at the right level — and he has us — he has us at least talking about something that matters."

That's great. White dudes acting like the old black guy is a child. Hand those bastards a mint julep. There could have been a fuckin' banjo playing behind them.

2. Of course, Cain did say the following in the span of about two minutes: "This is — this is an example of mixing apples and oranges. The state tax is an apple. We are replacing the current tax code with oranges. So it’s not correct to mix apples and oranges...No. That’s an apple...We are replacing a bunch of oranges...He was mixing apples and oranges...Governor Romney, you are doing the same thing that they’re doing. You’re mixing apples and oranges...Whether you throw out the existing code and you put in our plan, you’re still going to pay that. That’s apples and oranges."

Vote for Herman Cain: A man with the tenacity to never bail on a shitty metaphor.

3. Michele Bachmann is still gloriously, weirdly dumb and apocalyptic. She's like the guest you invite to a party because you know that, no matter what, she's gonna do something crazy, like hump the ice sculpture. There was her geography fuck-up: "[Obama] put us in Libya. He is now putting us in Africa." (If you don't know why that's a fuck-up, get a globe, dumbass.) Actually, that's probably more of a racist thing: Uganda, Africa, same difference.

Then there was this: "If we give Congress a 9 percent sales tax, how long will it take a liberal president and a liberal Congress to run that up to maybe 90 percent?" The highest tax on goods anywhere is 25.5% in Iceland, and that's a VAT, which is a bit more comprehensive in what it's based on than a simple sales tax. So, umm, maybe in some fantasy of a liberal fascist America of Bachmann's deranged mind it might go to 90%, but chances are pretty damn low here in what we might colloquially call "reality."

4. Mitt Romney does not like being interrupted. Man, that Mormon motherfucker looked like he was about to Hulk out of his temple garments when Perry started in on him over a report from 2007 that Romney had used a landscaping company that hired illegal immigrants. Romney was having none of it, laughing like he was gonna cut a bitch, and then going red-faced and yelling when Perry kept in on him.

You know what the real story is? No, it ain't that Romney kept using the company for a year after. It ain't even Romney's pussy statement he said he told the company, "I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake, I can’t have illegals," which means that it's apparently okay to "have illegals" if you're not running for president.

No, the real story is that the company was hired for, among other things, "clearing debris from Romney's tennis court." How is that not even a little eyebrow raising? (Easy there, Ron Paul.)

Oh, and Romney revealed that he's really a walking dick.

5. The most disgustingly pandering moment of the debate? When Romney and Perry joined Ron Paul in opposing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada. It was a Republican Congress in 2002 along with George W. Bush who approved the project (and the ball got rolling under Ronald Reagan). It was Harry Reid and then President Obama who halted it. Paul has some credibility because he actually voted against it.

Once again, hey, Republicans, good work. Have fun in the general election.