9 October—The Mallard Filmore comic in Friday’s newspapers has Mallard watching a television out of which emanates this monologue: “I’m the deeply flawed Republican with a ton of baggage who somehow made it through the primary but will definitely blow it in the general election, and I approve this message.”

Loren Fishman, the politically astute conservative cartoonist who has been producing the Mallard Filmore strip for politically astute conservative cartoonist Bruce Tinsley, who still has the byline, for a couple of years, is right on the mark.

Take Connecticut’s two top Republican candidates this year, Bob Stefanowski for governor and Leora Levy for U.S. senator. They’ve both made it through the state conventions, Bob with no trouble because he was unopposed, Leora surprisingly outpolling the much better candidate, Themis Klarides, because the simpletons who voted for her were impressed or intimidated by her endorsement by Donald Trump.

Neither Stefanowski nor Levy was seriously flawed to begin with, though Stefanowski, in addition to having run a super-Shylock money-lender not long ago, had given Trump an A rating in a 2018 debate and has avoided the subject this year (as well as his AQ NRA rating); and Levy, having been critical of Trump in 2016 has whorishly sucked up to him ever since and gratefully accepted his endorsement.

To make matters worse, Trump will be holding a totally useless fundraiser for Leora Levy at Mar-a-Lago next week. Useless because Trump is anathema to most Connecticut voters, any money raised for poor Leora will be wasted on a campaign that’s been and will continue to be ineffective, and Connecticut Republicans have an embarrassing history of screwing up in all events.

Truth be told, Democrat candidates are every bit as flawed as Republican candidates. But in most cases the more seriously flawed ones get winnowed out in primaries or conventions. So why can’t the Republicans do that? Easy. They tend to be more dogmatic than Democrats and less adaptable, part of being conservative.

But most of all, as we’ve seen before and are seeing now and will see in the future, Republicans are stupid. QED. That’s why they’ll blow it in the general election—not just in Connecticut—and they’ll certainly deserve to lose. Problem is, the Democrats don’t deserve to win . . .