The present-day Republican Party is so breathtakingly, jaw-droppingly, gut-knottingly stupid, it's hard for us commentators to maintain the right pitch of contempt and disgust when writing about it.

Daniel Greenfield, who blogs as "Sultan Knish" (? don't ask me) does a splendid job here.

Samples:

 Fortunately there is a clear path to victory. All we have to do is convince the Party of Consultants that all is lost and that they should come out as Democrats now. If they do that, then the Democratic Party will be a useless ruin within a decade. If they don't do that, the Republican Party will have the same policies as the Democratic Party, except for the part where it wins elections.

 and:

 The Republican Party has no ideas. Its only ideas involve deciding which liberal platform to "evolve" its way up to and how to sell that "evolution" to the base. And a lack of ideas comes from a lack of beliefs.

 and:

A party without ideas borrows them from its enemies. The big idea that the Republican establishment has is to be more like the Democrats. They just can't decide which area they want to imitate them in the most. But the one thing they do know is that they need to get those annoying conservative ideas off the stage first.

and:

What the GOP leadership fails to understand [is] that a party without a base is a big empty hall. You can get the checks that will allow you to rent the space, you can order up a band and ask them to play a song, but if no one shows up, then you don't have a concert or a dance. All you have is an empty hall.

I don't agree with everything in the piece ? I think, for example, that the Tea Party movement has a tendency to accept a lot of Cultural Marxist discourse at face value, when it ought to be spitting in their faces ? but as opinion journalism ("The Vituperative Arts" ? Auberon Waugh), Daniel's piece is pitch-perfect.

(VDARE.com is adding Sultan Knish to its blogroll)