Former Dubya Bush speechwriter, Micheal Gerson, continues to make a living putting English words together to form sentences that describe things which do not exist (from the PBS News Hour):

MICHAEL GERSON: I will tell you one hopeful issue for 2016.

With the right lineup, with, say, President Rubio and Speaker Ryan, both of them have tried, from the Republican side, to engage the issue of poverty. Paul Ryan has traveled the country looking at examples of community-based efforts. Rubio has put out serious policy on EITC and other things.

I’m hoping that, under certain circumstances — it would be different from Cruz, for example, or Trump — but under certain circumstances, you do have the groundwork laid for a debate about social mobility in this country that I think could be very productive and is necessary.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And on that hopeful note, we will end it...

And with the right lineup of, say, a series of small meteor strikes, sex scandals and meth lab explosions, it might be possible to take the entire leader caste of the American Fascist Party out of the picture in time to shift the 2016 election to a contest among grownups for the votes of well-informed and pissed-off citizens.

But I doubt that will happen either.

The guy who invented the "smoking gun/mushroom cloud" metaphor so as to better grease the skids on Dubya's Iraqi Debacle is now deeply concerned about Donald Trump because he is "vulgar and shallow" and makes "reckless statements, at worst be called divisive, but have to be called untruths" which has created "a model, a presidential model of authenticity that means thoughtlessness."

And this is why the Republican Party cannot heal itself. Because before they can heal, they must diagnosis the problem correctly. And to do that, they must be willing to look back down long, dark road that led them step by despicable step to being this rough beast, slouching towards the 2016 election.

And that is not a journey which establishment toadies like Mr. Gerson -- who pretend to care deeply about "careful policy" and "seriousness" -- are capable of making.

Crossposted at driftflass' blog.