Beau Elliot
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The Republicans seem to be coming unhinged.

What? you say. Haven’t the Republicans been unhinged for the last 20 years or so? At least in your book?

There are no Republicans in my book — well, except for the girlfriend’s family. But it’s a bit unfair to say Republicans are unhinged. I mean, statistically, there must be some hinged Republicans.

We just don’t know them.

Although, at times such as these, it does seem that if Republicans were a door, they would be so unhinged they’d be laying on the floor.

That’s inaccurate, actually. It should be “lying on the floor.”

But take the speaker of the House debacle. You might as well; apparently, just about anybody can become the next House speaker.

You’ll remember (it’s only been a couple of weeks) that House Speaker John Boehner is famously going to retire so he can get some more tanning time in. (My parents used to tell me that they would tan my hide if such and such, so I have this thing about tanning. It’s not Freudian; I’m Jung at heart.)

Enter Kevin McCarthy, the next Republican in line and a shoo-in for the speakership. Well, a shoo-in until he admitted that the House Benghazi committee wasn’t really interested in investigating Banghazi, it was interested in hanging around for years in order to hurt Hillary Clinton’s presidential run (which, I admit, seems more like a presidential stroll).

Also, McCarthy seemed to have a major problem speaking English. Apparently, his native tongue is Martian.

So, out with McCarthy and in with … Joe the Plumber?

The list of House-speaker hopefuls appears to be about as jumbled as a traffic jam on the Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge. Which New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie knows nothing about.

Christie is also running for president, but the way things are going, he could be the next House speaker. I mean, some serious people are talking about bringing Newt Gingrich back to be speaker, even though he’s not, technically, a member of the House.

Newt Gingrich? What? Attila the Hun wasn’t available?

What about the Man in the Moon?

Meanwhile, Boehner slowly twists and twists in the speakership, waiting for a replacement and some more tanning time, interrupted only by some golf. Time, time.

Of course, we’re talking about Republicans, whose sense of time is almost geological. Or would be if they knew anything about science.

But science to them is like Islam — something foreign and therefore something to be feared and, frankly, spit upon.

Luckily, using the word lightly, for Republicans, they have Carly Fiorina (the next speaker?), whose sense of science, and truth, seems to come from some parallel universe, thus proving the existence of string theory.

Of course, it might be string of yarn theory, not quite what the cosmologists had in mind, exactly.

But then, it’s truly difficult to tell what cosmologists have in mind.

Kind of like Republicans. But maybe Republicans are a metaphor for these times, which is a scary thought. But you have to consider scary thoughts; otherwise, you grow up with this thing about tanning and door hinges.

“Door hinge,” by the way, is Arlo Guthrie’s famous immediate response to the statement “Nothing rhymes with orange.”

And you thought there was no rhyme or reason.