One of the more reliable vanities that conservatives have always enjoyed is that, despite the ceaseless contradiction from the Left, conservatives are a smart, practical, intelligent bunch of people. After all, it has been said repeatedly, conservatives think with their heads and liberals feel with their hearts—and that really, when it all comes down to it, the conservatives wind up being right with prudent care and the liberals are basically just using visceral emotion to make snap decisions with ill-guessed consequences.

After this past week, the Czar isn’t so sure that’s the case anymore. Oh, sure—liberals still feel injustice more than they can prove it, and are eager to make reams of printed resolutions that always result in higher taxes but nothing else. That hasn’t changed.

What’s changed is that, for the first time, the Czar worries that a huge swath of conservatives are really freaking stupid morons.

What other case in point is required than this week’s primary results?

You might think the Czar is going to complain about the rise of Donald Trump as proof of conservative stupidity. Just the contrary: the sustained support Trump enjoys is the proof; his rise is merely a consequence of it.

We have been hearing forever that the Republican establishment is dead (Jeb Bush was jettisoned early) and that conservatives, who allegedly make up the bulk of the remainder, finally have control over their future. Governors Walker, Jindal, Perry, and Senators Paul, Cruz, and Rubio are tried and true tea partiers who want nothing more than to raid Washington like Vikings and throw out all the big spenders, RINOs, and squishes and fix all the problems put in there by Wilson FDR LBJ Carter Clinton Obama once and for all. Indeed, rounded out by the likes of Dr. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, never before has the Republican party looked so overwhelmingly powerful and conservative. What an embarrassment of riches!

Well, the embarrassment part held out just fine. After careful consideration during the first debates, Republican voters deeply pondered the many benefits of each candidate and weighed that against potential risks, and decided that each of them had to go.

As the Czar pointed out to you all last week, conservatives could easily have blown Trump out of the race this week. All we had to do was think for a goddamned second.

Instead, we acted just as badly as any liberal thinker and the results may be catastrophic.

Let’s glance at Twitter. The rise of #neverTrump was a good thing and began trending almost immediately. And it had a powerful effect on Trump’s supporters: many were forced to reconsider the wisdom of their choice, and others confirmed their vulgar repugnance in responding to those tweets. All in all, it cost Trump quite a bit of popular support.

It’s no surprise that the Trump campaign responded with #neverCruz.

But what the hell were all these people—some of whom who read this very site—signing tweets with both #neverTrump and #neverCruz? Who were they supporting? The crashing Marco Rubio, or the never-was John Kasich?

Let the Czar finally explain his rage, here. You hate Trump. Got it: we see it everywhere. But when Cruz is within a few percentage points of Trump and you pull the lever for Rubio or Kasich, you’re an idiot. You’re letting Trump win hundreds of delegates.

It’s de rigeur for home-schooled political pundits to refer to the Republican Party as the Stupid Party. Election after election, the Republicans find some way to screw it up: John Boehner, 47%, Sarah Palin, and on and on. So here we are, in 2016, and the Republicans give you not one but about ten conservative candidates, any of whom could easily turn Hillary Clinton in to a minor speed bump on the way to the White House.

And what do we do? We subject each of them to nonsensical purity tests: Walker was a RINO because he didn’t talk enough about foreign policy. Jindal was a RINO because he came from a blue state. Perry was a RINO because he stumbled during a 2012 debate. Paul was a RINO because he didn’t share his father’s 1930s isolationist view of the military. Rubio was a RINO because he got sodomized by the Democrats on immigration. Cruz is a RINO because, well, probably because he lied about amnesty or something. In 2012, we threw our hands up and wondered why just one of these people couldn’t be a candidate over Mitt Romney. In 2016, it turns out all of these people must be RINOs.

It isn’t the GOP that’s stupid. It’s us: the conservative voters, who eagerly became the circular firing squad that we endlessly mocked the Establishment for being.

So whom do conservatives want? Ronald Reagan, it seems—a pro-union former Democrat who was involved in a major illegal immigration amnesty stunt, who frequently compromised with democrats, who pushed America into all sorts of overseas military engagements, and may or may not have been aware of a secret deal with Iranians and communists to negotiate with terrorists. Got it.

But all these other guys are RINOs because they’re not as conservative as Reagan was?

You’re starting to piss us off. And the Czar will go further: Marco Rubio, for one, is more conservative, historically, than Reagan was. Cruz way more so. Hell, the Czar wonders if he should start comparing Kasich to Reagan as well.

And while you all send nasty tweets back and forth about Cruz and all the other departed candidates, Trump is laughing all the way to becoming the worst conservative Republican president since Nixon. Except of course, Hillary Clinton will beat him in the general so we’ll never know for sure.

When eight more years of liberalism happens, the Czar doesn’t want to hear a single word from you people about it. You were given multiple chances to destroy the Clinton dynasty in 2016, and you systematically disarmed them all for her.

Dummies.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.