Portman and other GOPers pamper the base

 As the presidential winter Olympics move  closer to the Big Year, the candidates and their confederates are showing no signs that they  are prepared to abandon their  caregivers in pursuit of Barack  Obama. From the wilds of New Hampshire to the Disneyland on Capitol Hill, the past week 's events have been glued to discrediting the term-limited president who won't be on the ballot.

Confusion was rampant. What, you might ask, did the GOP missionaries have in mind when they voted to block EPA rules limiting greenhouse gas  emissions.  Being nasty was their way of telling the world that they strongly objected to Obama's climate change initiative in the wake of his meetings in Paris with others to  give us cleaner air to breathe. It was the Republicans'  monstrously crude way to demonstrate, first things first, their mad strategy  to undercut the president.

Next, in the wake of the San Bernardino massacre,   Senate Republicans voted against a couple of attempts to tighten the control of guns.  Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, d.b.a. the NRA, joined 9 other Republicans in fighting off stricter gun measures

Portman, you may recall , is a candidate for reelection against Democrat Ted Strickland and describes himself as a "common sense" conservative.  But as we've mentioned before, he's a tag-along conservative who prefers to do only those horrible things to please the party's base

Base? Are we talking about the current state of the party in which nearly half  believe that Obama is a Muslim?  Or a chorus line   of meek presidential candidates  who carefully sidled past  San Bernardino offering little more to the conversation than their "thoughts and prayers".  Ted Cruz, a man of no known conscience  and even less respect for the newly dead,    acknowledged the moment by appearing at a gun show of unity.  Can you remember a more tasteless display of insensitivity?

Get used to it, folks.  This group of outliers is seeking allegiance from Tea Partiers, frantic religious conservative, racists and haters of anything with a government stamp on it, which would include the workers who clear your street after a snowstorm and the ones who come to your mailbox every day  with your social security checks.

Led by Donald Trump, who now seems to be caricaturing himself for comic effects,  they all claim to have the answers.  We know they don't.