10.3 - Clown Award: Reince Priebus

Clown Award: Reince Priebus

Now for the Clown Award, given as always for meritorious stupidity.

I say at the top that I swear to you that I have been trying to avoid going after members of TheRump's team. I have.

So for this week's clown I considered Thomas Hodgson, sheriff of Bristol County, Massachusetts, who has come up with a plan to send prisoners to help TheRump build his Great Wall of Orange on the border with Mexico.

I considered the Washington Post, which is embracing with increasing gusto its role are mouthpiece of the right-wing status quo masquerading as a vapid "centrism" and did its duty on Martin Luther King Day to argue that King, despite his rabble-rousing and radical calls for racial and economic justice and his embrace of democratic socialism, was actually a conservative.

But I couldn't help myself, the temptation was too strong. So this week's winner of the Big Red Nose is TheRump's incoming White House chief of staff and current chair of the Republican National Committee Reince Priebus.

A few days ago, congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis suggested that he thought TheRump was not a legitimate president because he thought that Russian meddling may have affected the outcome. Now, it needs to be repeated that even assuming the Russians are guilty as charged with hacking and leaking information damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign, there is no good reason to think that changed the outcome. You could argue, I suppose, that it could have affected the margin, but actually flip the outcome, no. In fact, as I pointed out last week, there is good reason to think that the Russians had no expectation of doing that or even particularly wanted to.

But anyway, Lewis said that and of course the whole GOPper world exploded, especially TheRump himself, who really put his foot in it by responding in effect that Lewis is a loser from a crappy district who should not be talking smack to his betters.

Reince Priebus

Still, Lewis was not alone and an undercurrent of "illegitimate" and if there is such a word overcurrent of "Not My President" was on-going.

Send in the clown. On "Meet the Press," Priebus called Lewis "irresponsible" and said he had started a "firestorm" and he wanted something done about it. Someone, he said, should "step up" and "call it what it is - it's wrong what is happening, it's wrong how some of these Democrats are treating President-elect Trump."

And who is it that should "step up" according to our clown?

You already guessed: It's Barack Obama. Barack Obama. The party Reince Priebus now chairs planned on undermining Obama's presidency even before he was first inaugurated. The party Reince Priebus now chairs declared it a priority to make Obama a one-term president. The man who is about to be Reince Pribus's new boss spent years as the patron saint of the birthers and as recently as July 2015 refused to say that Obama was born in America.

But Reince Priebus thinks it is now Barack Obama's responsibility to "step up" and defend the legitimacy of Donald TheRump.

If I thought he had enough self-awareness to realize what he's saying, I'd say he had a lot of chutzpah. But I doubt he does. Instead, he's just a sad little weasel.

In other words, Reince I do admit he has a cool name Priebus is a clown.