“‘We’ve tried, Mr. President,’ I explained. ‘But there are unsavory elements within the party who keep bringing them back in.’

My reference, obviously, was to the self-styled luminaries of ‘populism’ who hang like a millstone around the Republican neck — the Sarah Palins, the Plumbing Joes, the Bobby Jindals, the Rush Limbaughs, the motley middlebrow state college pretenders to the conservative throne. A shared contempt for these arriviste oafs unites the Nassau summitteers perhaps even more than our shared fondness for a snifter of well-behaved armagnac VSOP. I have made no secret of my feelings about la Palin and her grim brood of ill-mannered snowbillies, as well that horrid toilet tinkerer from from Toledo whose fifteen minutes have somehow refused to expire. The recent emergence of Bobby Jindal and Rush Limbaugh in the intraparty maelstrom yet affords fresh opportunities for conservative dismality.”