Paul Krugman seems to have really nailed it when he described today’s Republican party as “the party of Beavis and Butthead”:

Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.

Except that the Republican party seems to be willing to snicker at anything. Here’s a prime example from the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.:

This morning, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton spoke to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He tried to up the fear quotient in the room by raising the prospect of an Iranian-sent nuclear attack on an American city. “It’s [a] tiny [threat] compared to the Soviet Union,” Bolton said, “but is the loss of one American city — pick one at random: Chicago — is that a tiny threat?” The audience erupted in cheers and laughter at the idea of Obama’s home city being obliterated.

That’s truly hilarious, isn’t it—the nearly three million Americans who live in the third largest city in the U.S. wiped out in a nuclear holocaust? Definitely worth laughing at and, yes, cheering for.

When the likes of Bolton and Limbaugh and Michael Steele are the presiding deities of the Republican party, the country will be in safe hands for a long time to come.

(I am idly wondering, though, how come this uproarious moment of stand-up comedy didn’t make the networks’ CPAC highlights reel. Surely America deserves to share the joke?)