I try my best to ignore election-related news cov­er­age in non-election years such as this one. It’s dis­tract­ing and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. But it can be hard to tune out—especially when the list of appar­ently viable con­tenders for the Repub­li­can ticket include such, um, bril­liant minds as Her­man Cain and Michelle Bachman.

There are two phe­nom­ena at play that I have trou­ble under­stand­ing. First, who would rally behind a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date that lacks a top-notch knowl­edge of law, pol­i­cy­mak­ing, for­eign pol­icy issues, and eco­nom­ics? (Isn’t this sup­posed to be the hard­est job in the world?) Sec­ondly, why does the Repub­li­can vet­ting sys­tem seem to revolve around pub­licly ques­tion­ing the can­di­dates on whether they are con­ser­v­a­tive enough? (Can there be no room for com­pro­mise in a func­tion­ing two-party system?)

For­tu­nately, some­one has writ­ten a funny and inter­est­ing essay explor­ing both top­ics: “Why Repub­li­cans Embrace Sim­ple­tons and How it Hurts Amer­ica.”