12 November—First, a totally irrelevant eggnog update that you won’t care about: Stop & Shop’s store-brand eggnog in half-gallon cartons goes for $5.59 on their website, $5.69 on the Litchfield outlet’s endcap. Similarly, Hood regular and light eggnogs are $4.49 on the S&S website, $4.79 at the store. (But Hood half-gallons are $6.79 online and at the store.) Southern Comfort eggnog, $4.69 on the website and $4.79 on the endcap, is boozeless—just like all the others, including Arethusa Farm’s outrageously expensive flavored milk. In all events, like caviar, eggnog is an acquired taste.

The matter at hand, then, is the charge Vivek Ramaswamy made at last Wednesday’s ludicrous Republican kabuki/freak show/debate in Miami that the GOP is “a party of losers.” That’s certainly not the sort of thing a candidate—especially an unlikely winner—tells people he wants to support his doubtful candidacy. But, like Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy (VR, but not Queen Victoria) claims he’s a political outsider, not a politician. Yeah, right.

On the other hand, the infinitesimal chance of his success within the Republican Party may very well be precisely why VR has the scrotal content and incentive to speak the truth.

Because we all know VR is absolutely right, the GOP has shown itself to be a party of losers. VR puts the blame on Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, but she’s only a convenient scapegoat, a symptom of the party of losers rather than the cause.

The decline and fall of the national GOP predates Ronna McDaniel, Donald Trump’s presidency, and even his candidacy; he too is a symptom of the party of losers rather than the cause. Think about it. Would a party of winners have chosen a disreputable con man and notorious bully as a presidential candidate. The GOP was just lucky in 2016 that its chosen grifter-thug-candidate was running against disreputable—and, more important in campaigning, unappealing and unpleasant—Hillary Clinton.

That the GOP is a party of losers is confirmed and reinforced by the Trump rut it’s been in since his questionable candidacy and embarrassing administration—and into which it’s been working itself deeper and deeper since his well deserved loss. Trump supporters truly are the great unwashed and his enthusiastic followers are gullible and just plain stupid.

But the Republican pols who allow their fear of Trump to continue to intimidate them and dominate their alleged public service are demonstrably gutless, self-serving, and just plain disgraceful.

And then there’s Connecticut Republicans, a proven party of losers . . .