NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the pussy thing, and the debate. The topic was an embarrassment of riches, not to say a plain embarrassment, and here are some of the outtakes:

Regular readers will recall that Rod Dreher has been extremely Trump-curious lately (“The more things like this happen, the more sense Trump’s idea to halt Muslim immigration for the time being makes”). Friday morning Dreher was swooning for him, with “Trump To Catholics: ‘I’ve Got Your Back’” (“Donald Trump sent a letter to Catholic leaders gathering in Denver… I find this encouraging”) and an even more embarrassing post called "The Little Way of... Donald Trump?" Hours later Dreher was demanding Trump resign. “There is no way a pig like this will be elected president. None,” he wrote, the scales falling from his eyes, or his thumb falling from the scales. Later Dreher declaimed, “When the smoke clears after November, the Benedict Option [subject of Dreher’s new book] will be all we will have left.” By then there’ll have been enough born every minute to make it a best seller!

After the debate Dreher declared Trump the winner and wrote,"You know, I really think Donald Trump still has a chance — not much of one, but a chance — to win this thing. I did not expect to be saying that after this debate." That would be a good reason not to constantly make hysterical statements that you have to disown a few hours later, dummy.

The most interesting thing about Jonah Goldberg’s column on the subject was that it wasn’t totally stupid: He even said people who “still think Hillary Clinton would be worse” than Trump should “just be prepared for an endless stream of more embarrassments in your name.” I think that, while other big-name conservatives are secretly rooting for Trump, this campaign has really put the zap on Goldberg's head. Imagine that your biggest claim to fame is a book about how liberals are all fascists, and then one day your whole movement is taken oven by a guy whose campaign blueprint is the rise of Adolf Hitler. Even worse, the guy thinks you're a loser. If Goldberg’s entire career hadn’t been a geyser of poison shit I’d feel sorry for him.

UPDATE. You gotta be shitting me, Scott Gant and Bruce Peabody at the Wall Street Journal:

What’s next for the Republican Party and Donald J. Trump? After hearing Mr. Trump make a series of derogatory and sexually predatory statements in a 2005 recording that was leaked last week, Republican officials are openly fretting about the future of their party and its candidates. Some are calling on Mr. Trump to step aside so that a new presidential nominee can be chosen.

With Mr. Trump emphatically rejecting that idea, the best chance for Republicans to secure the White House (and improve their prospects down ballot) may be a different course: Mr. Trump could publicly declare that although he will remain the Republican nominee he will resign immediately after taking his oath of office on Inauguration Day, leaving his more-popular running mate, Mike Pence, to succeed him as president.

In this way, Republicans can effectively replace Mr. Trump at the top of the ticket, without having to endure the logistical and legal turmoil of formally nominating a new standard-bearer less than a month before Election Day.

"Logistical and legal turmoil" meaning "impossibility," in this instance.

...Under the 20th Amendment, the newly elected president’s term begins at noon on Jan. 20. A President-elect Trump could recite his oath of office and then immediately resign.

I think they should let Trump do the inaugural address first. Maybe even sit in the Oval Office awhile and give away some pens.

Fantasies like this aren't meant to convince. They're just symptoms of dissociation. Conservatives want the benefits of a Trump campaign (all those nice new Nazi frog voters and energized hillbillies!), but they want you to believe -- they want to believe -- that it has nothing to do with them, because they're in a tower above the fray, swaddled in nice, reasonable discourse.