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" The conventional takeaway from Thursday night, near as I can tell, is that Mitt Romney won because he didn&amp;#039;t play with his toes, and that Rick Perry is now surging back into contention because he managed to pronounce correctly, and keep in the correct order, all three syllables in Tim Tebow&amp;#039;s name. (Juan Williams of Fox News was very taken by this demonstration of Perry&amp;#039;s ability to be more articulate than a sedan chair.) Me? Well, I thought they all looked at the calendar, realized that this was the 924,109th and last scheduled debate before Iowans actually gather to cast their increasingly meaningless ballots, and felt it was genuinely time to let their freak flags fly. This they did so successfully that I feel compelled to bring out an old trope I&amp;#039;d thought had been put into cold storage along with Herman Cain&amp;#039;s libid... er... campaign. Yeah, they&amp;#039;re all still nuts. (Willard, it should be noted, declined to sing along in the batshit chorale, preferring instead to sneer at the president for using &amp;quot;pretty-please diplomacy.&amp;quot; Indeed? &amp;quot;Pretty please, Mr. bin Laden, you mind if my boys here shoot you in your eye?&amp;quot; Romney seems content to meet crazy with haughty, and it just might work, at least in this crowd.) We should also pause for a moment to appreciate the stunning vista of absolute extremist lunacy that is the mind of Rick Santorum, which was on shining and glorious display at the Sioux City debate for all to see. He believes that the Iranians will build a nuke and launch it, knowing that Tehran will be a glass parking lot within the hour, because their &amp;quot;principle virtue is martyrdom.&amp;quot; In this, he was joined by La Bachmann, who, in describing the Iranian threat, actually threw the conspiracy of the &amp;quot;worldwide caliphate&amp;quot; into the mix. It truly was a remarkable moment, especially since this pair of weeping hysterics went into orbit because Ron Paul suggested that, if we could all live with 3,000 Russian nukes pointed at us for 40 years, including the more than several that were pointed at us from Cuba in 1962, without launching counterstrikes against them, we can probably live with whatever rudimentary nuclear weapons Iran may or may not have without haring off to another excellent adventure in the Middle East. To this, Santorum argued that, by the nature of their &amp;quot;theology,&amp;quot; the Iranians care not for being rendered molten shadows on the sidewalk, and Bachmann agreed, saying that the hundred-odd nukes tossed back at them in reply would be a mere bump in the road in their implacable drive for world domination. Those of us who imbibed Cold War propaganda with our Cheerios every morning in the 1960&amp;#039;s realized immediately that these two goobers were proving Paul&amp;#039;s point for him. Back then, we were told, the Russians did not fear death like we did because they were atheist automatons. Back then, we were told, the Russians wouldn&amp;#039;t care if we lobbed a few back because they were Communist automatons who believed that their system would triumph, and because they had sustained such ghastly losses in World War II. Now, we&amp;#039;ve got Islamic fanatics who do not fear death instead of atheist automatons who did not fear death, and religious determinists who believe their faith is ordained by the immutable laws of their god to succeed, as opposed to political determinists who believed that their political system was ordained by the immutable laws of politics to succeed. Figuring all this out was easier than listening to Rick Santorum talk about how Barack Obama is encouraging Islamic terrorism in Latin America by way of answering a question about immigration. He was also on again about how gay marriage is undermining the nation. Just once, I wish someone would remind this guy, when he&amp;#039;s gabbling on about what a plucky underdog success story he&amp;#039;s always been, that he lost his last campaign by 15 points, and to a guy so pale he has no shadow, because the people of Pennsylvania thought he was too much of a freaking maroon to represent them any more. Yeah, he&amp;#039;s still nuts. And so is The Girl with the Faraway Eyes. (That was Paul&amp;#039;s best moment, I thought. He pretty plainly was on the receiving end of whatever memo Roger Ailes sent down to the four meat-puppets (Neil Cavuto? Really?) asking the questions. First, they asked him about how unelectable he was, and then he sort of found himself faded into the background noise. This was the first of these things in which Ron Paul really looked 78 years old.) But the apotheosis of all of this came when Megyn Kelly brought up Newt Gingrich&amp;#039;s long-held belief that he should get to fire every judge who ever issued a ruling that Newt thought was incorrect. Oh, did the intellectual spittle fly then! At issue was Newt&amp;#039;s proposal to enable Congress to subpoena judges, impeach judges, and close entire courts, not for criminal malfeasance, but for not acting within what Newt Gingrich believes is their proper sphere of influence as set out by &amp;quot;The Founders,&amp;quot; with whom Newt shares a similar importance in the World Civilizations film-strip that Newt has running on an endless loop in his brain. Speaking as a historian \u2014 which meant, he said, that he knew more about legal history than most &amp;quot;lawyers&amp;quot; did \u2014 Gingrich lectured on how &amp;quot;Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR&amp;quot; defied the courts, and would be proud to stand with them. They, of course, would hurl themselves off a fire escape just to stay out of the picture. He mentioned how Lincoln refused to accept the Dred Scott decision for his whole career. This is, of course, true, but Lincoln never sought to impeach Roger Taney over it, and it took 600,000 dead Americans to reverse it. He also neglected to mention that both Jefferson and FDR got their hats handed to them when they took on the courts. I wondered a few weeks ago what a historian did for a lobbying shop. Now, I know: He sends out for lunch. (And it is remarkable how infrequently in these discussions of activist federal judges, the cases of Citizens United and... shhh!... Bush v. Gore come up, especially since, not too soon therefter, the whole ensemble pledged its eternal troth to Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, or some combination therein. Mentioning them without mentioning either of those two cases is like talking about Henry Hill and forgetting to bring up the Lufthansa heist.) What Gingrich wants to do is to intimidate federal judges into ruling his way. He wants a judiciary by an easily manipulated plebiscite. This is not a new Republican trope. Back during the Terri Schiavo craziness, GOP legislators threatened to defund courts the rulings of which they disapproved. This is a crazy, stupid idea, more so because Gingrich insists his whole scheme was inspired by a 2004 decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that ruled the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional because of the phrase, &amp;quot;One nation, under God,&amp;quot; a decision that was reversed by the Supreme Court anyway. In doing this, Newt inveighed, the Ninth Circuit &amp;quot;undermined the foundation of American exceptionalism.&amp;quot; This is nutty enough that it was amazing Rick Santorum didn&amp;#039;t say it. Eight years after the decision that so exercised him was rendered completely moot, and Gingrich wants to blow up the separation-of-powers because he&amp;#039;s still pissed over the whole thing? Yeah, he&amp;#039;s still nuts. You have to cut Newt a little slack, though: He spent the rest of the evening getting beat up by a girl. While Willard was making sure butter wouldn&amp;#039;t melt in his mouth, La Bachmann sliced and diced Gingrich on his implausible explanation as to what he did for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (I scored it a draw as to which bullshit story was the least believable: Gingrich as non-lobbyist-lobbyist, or the endless rondelay of complete nonsense from Romney as to why he was such a liberal when he was running in Massachusetts. We were here, Willard. We remember.) She also took a few chunks out of him over abortion. Apparently, once, back when he was a person of real influence, instead of a mere peddler thereof, Newt decided not to cast into the outer darkness those Republicans with marginal pro-life voting records. Bachmann kept pounding him with a loaded question George Will has asked him at the time about &amp;quot;infanticide.&amp;quot; Gingrich replied that, look, young missy, get your facts straight here, and The Girl With The Faraway Eyes took his head off. She resented being told, time and time again, by Mr. Historian Guy that she had her facts wrong. &amp;quot;I am a serious candidate for president,&amp;quot; she concluded, &amp;quot;and I get my facts right.&amp;quot; (She pretty much did, too, on this issue, anyway, because, as an anti-choice fanatic, she knows who&amp;#039;s been naughty and nice. They keep lists, those people.) It was the first time I&amp;#039;d ever seen anyone make Gingrich look like the insufferable jackass we know him to be. Usually, he takes care of that job himself. However the campaign turns out, I&amp;#039;d almost guarantee you that Michele Bachmann gets Christmas cards from both of the previous Mrs. Gingriches. CLICK HERE FOR MORE OF CHARLES P. PIERCE&amp;#039;S LONG READS &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; Follow The Politics Blog on RSS and on the Twitter &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a12089/republican-debate-iowa-6618117/>