Dispatches from the Clown Car

Hey, remember how the Republicans were going to have a shortened primary and be nice to each other this time around, because they'd convinced themselves that extended, bruising primaries is why they've lost the last two elections, and not because John McCain was an angry, entitled grump who failed at concealing the hot cauldron of rage beneath the transparent veneer of a terse smile stretched thinly across his face, and who chose an epic dipshit as his running mate, nor because Mitt Romney was a mannequin from the 1% Store whose attempts at seeming folksy made him seem like a clueless dolt, and who literally said out loud that people aren't entitled to food, nor because their party's entire platform is rank garbage, nor because Barack Obama was a superior candidate by virtually every metric?

Whoooooooooooooooooops!

In the first salvo of the 2016 Republican ad wars, a conservative group is about to unleash a seven-figure ad campaign targeting Senator Rand Paul for being out of step with the party on Iran, just as he launches his presidential campaign.

The Foundation for a Secure and Prosperous America, a 501(c)(4) group led by veteran Republican operative Rick Reed, will go live with its campaign against Paul on Tuesday, while the senator is in Louisville, Kentucky, announcing his presidential candidacy. The group will begin airing ads on broadcast TV, cable and the Web in several early primary states accusing Paul of being weak on Iran and tying him to the Barack Obama administration's Iran policy, which polls show is deeply unpopular among Republican voters.

"Paul supports more negotiations with Iran while standing against more sanctions that would hold the Iranian regime accountable. That's not a conservative position, that's Obama's position," Reed told me in an interview Monday. "His longstanding position on Iran and his agreement with Obama on Iran calls into question his judgment."

The scale of the campaign is remarkable this early on in a primary fight, and reflects not only the depth of the hostility toward Paul's worldview among many conservatives but also the prominence of national security in the 2016 cycle.

"He doesn't even want to starve and bomb the fuck out of everyone! He's basically BARACK HUSSEIN OBUMMER!" Cool campaign.

I'm still super sad that there will be fewer Republican primary debates this campaign, because those are always terrific, if by "terrific" one means "an appalling display of mostly white men tearing each other to shreds over who hates more of the American people and also people all over the world, but especially marginalized USians, whose rights they definitely want to put in a garbage disposal."

But, sure, I guess I'll survive just watching surrogates run horrendo ad campaigns against every candidate, until one of them comes out the least worst and then proceeds to slowly reveal himself as a waking nightmare to the voting populace. Good times.

Meanwhile: Cue the progressive/libertarian dudes defending Rand Paul as a rare beacon of freedom-loving among Republicans, without a trace of irony, despite the fact that he's inveterately misogynistic, homophobic, and racist.