It starts off reasonably enough, but Romney starts to school host Tampa Bay 1040 WWBA host Mark Larsen and by extension Ron Paul on taxes and entitlements and you can feel the rails start to give way. When Romney has the audacity of hope to laugh at Paul for suggesting that the way to keep the nation secure is to jettison our intelligence agencies and blame ourselves when jihadists attack, well, the rails fly apart. Romney senses the madness and leaves the host to his rant. Turns out there was a Ronulan underneath the whole time.

Now, lest anyone think that I’m advocating the current system, income tax and all, I’m not. I’m not a fan. But I don’t think Paul has the answers, and he comes off as a crotchety old man who is in over his head on every issue. He doesn’t even know who wrote his newsletter, or so he claims, so why should anyone believe him when he says what he says about taxes? Or foreign policy or anything else. If you’re not a racist yourself but you can’t manage to keep your personal newsletter from devolving into a racist cesspool, you can’t or won’t disavow the various miscreants who are publicly supporting you and you’re happy to accept donations on a day that your supporters chose to explicitly celebrate a long-dead terrorist, you ought not be handed the keys to the executive branch of the US government. Ever. Sorry. No number of discrete ideas that sound good on paper but would never survive Congress can overcome all that.

That his supporters can’t engage non-supporters without yelling and carrying on just seals the deal as far as I’m concerned.