There’s a lot of chatter on the Tweeter Tube about the man who convinced John McCain to put Sarah Palin on the ticket, Steve Schmidt. He’s currently the Lincoln Project’s honcho or co-honcho or big cheese or some such shit.

Schmidt’s new teevee persona is old testament prophet warning the world about Trumpism in hyperbolic terms. He often gets red faced as he rants, which happened yesterday on Nicholle Wallace’s MSNBC show.

I take Schmitty’s grandiose ranting with a grain of salt. He’s gone from an overly literal conservative true believer to overly literal Never Trumper. He’s also quite the drama queen. He’s one of those guys who insists on calling the absurd antics of Team Trump a coup. It’s not even a putsch, it’s an extended tantrum or hissy fit. Calling it a coup gives it a gravitas that it doesn’t deserve. Schmidt should cease the coup chatter, drink a Big Golpe, and import some edibles from Colorado. Calm the fuck down, man.

Warning: Baseball analogies ahead.

As a pundit, Schmitty usually swings and misses. If there were a Mendoza Line for pundits, he’d be below it. In this instance, that means he’s a .200 hitter who thinks he’s a slugger because of his orotund vocabulary.

Steve Schmidt is no Mike Schmidt who struck out 1,883 times, but also hit 548 homers in his 18 years with the Philadelphia Phillies.  Steve Schmidt wanted to be the MVP of this campaign but he’s no Mike Schmidt who was a three-time National League MVP. Both, however, would be booed in Philadelphia: Steve because he’s a former GOPer, Mike because he’s a retired Phillie. They boo everyone in Philly; even the greatest player in the history of their baseball team. End of the Schmidt comparison part of the post.

Occasionally, Schmitty digs through his over elaborate vocabulary and hits it out of the park. Hell, even Mario Mendoza hit 4 homers in his 9 years in the majors.  I said we were done with Schmidt comparisons, not baseball analogies.

I somehow missed this Schmidt gem from a January 6th article about Lindsey Graham in Rolling Stone. I’m glad it turned up on Twitter this morning:

“People try to analyze Lindsey through the prism of the manifest inconsistencies that exist between things that he used to believe and what he’s doing now. The way to understand him is to look at what’s consistent. And essentially what he is in American politics is what, in the aquatic world, would be a pilot fish: a smaller fish that hovers about a larger predator, like a shark, living off of its detritus. That’s Lindsey. And when he swam around the McCain shark, broadly viewed as a virtuous and good shark, Lindsey took on the patina of virtue. But wherever the apex shark is, you find the Lindsey fish hovering about, and Trump’s the newest shark in the sea. Lindsey has a real draw to power — but he’s found it unattainable on his own merits.”

That’s why I used the poster for the 1964 Don Knotts flick The Incredible Mr. Limpet as the featured image. In his Sixties heyday, Knotts’ persona was that of a nebbish who thought he was a tough guy. That’s Lindsey Graham in a wingnut shell.

When Don Knotts played Deputy Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show, kindly Sherriff Andy wouldn’t let him load his gun. I suspect kindly Senator Walnuts didn’t let Lindsey put bullets in his gun either. But President* Pennywise is a reckless predator who allows pilot fish Lindsey to load his gun. That’s the Trump-Graham relationship in a wingnut shell.

That concludes this basebally fishy post. The last word goes to The Jayhawks: