Last night, at the Republican caucuses in the already-forgotten state of Iowa, the explicitly theocratic fanatic and serial liar with the dentist's drill voice came in first, the fascist carnival barker and serial liar came in second, and third place went to a hard-core serial liar teabagger and serial liar with who promises to restart the Bush Regime's Imperial Conquest Machines with a vengeance, and torture anyone who looks at him funny.

Or, as Mr, David Brooks of the New York Times wrote it in a column with the most perfectly Brooksian denialist title ("Donald Trump Isn’t Real") I have seen in a long time:

The amazing surge for Marco Rubio shows that the Republican electorate has not gone collectively insane.

Wow.

So if Rubio coming in third signals the triumphant return the Conservative Establishment and the reification of Imaginary Republican Moderation which Mr. Brooks has been confidently predicting every fucking week for the last decade --

What happened in Iowa was that some version of normalcy returned to the G.O.P. race.
-- what shall we make of Donald Trump coming in second?

[Trump's] concession speech was an act of pathetic self-delusion.

Oh. Ok.

Excerpted from Driftglass.