I get way more email than I could ever possibly read. Roughly 75% of the people who have ever sent me an email are nodding knowingly and cursing at your computer screens right now. Sorry. A large part of that is because of the endless volume of spam I get from political campaigns, at least some of which I’m professionally required to open. Even still, a campaign usually has the email title and maybe the first two lines to catch and keep my attention. I’m sure you guys can relate this time of year, too.

So I get this email from Kelli Ward’s campaign this afternoon, and the title of the email says:

WARD RESPONDS TO SEXIST SMEAR

Alright, you’ve cleared the first hurdle, Kelli Ward campaign. There’s a primary tomorrow in Arizona in which there isn’t really an especially good option, but I suppose I better open this email to see what the old coot John McCain said about Kelli Ward that’s being described as “sexist.”

But then the email gets immediately less interesting and nearly loses me:

PHOENIX- Dr. Kelli Ward released the following remarks about the latest last-minute smear from pro-McCain Arizona Grassroots Action PAC

Oh FFS, never mind. You expect me to get worked up about some non-affliated pro-McCain PAC, good grief. Sigh. Oh well, I guess I’ve come this far, I might as well see what some yahoos who spent probably $300 or less producing a YouTube ad have said or done.

which recently implied that Ward practices prostitution:

Alright. Congratulations. I am going to click on that link. Well done, Kelli Ward campaign comms shop. You have succeeded in getting me farther than 99.9% of emails/articles ever do. I’m going to actually click a link and see for myself what you’re talking about. And boy, am I glad I did, because I saw this:

Wh..what? What on earth did I even just see? How did anyone in the Kelli Ward campaign allow this video to happen? How on earth is this implying that she engages in … in prostitution? I mean… although I’ve just admitted that I don’t know what’s happening in this video, I am nonetheless confident in saying it’s not prostitution. Yes, it’s called #StreetCornerKelli, but a lot happens on street corners, including whatever the heck this was, for example.

It is, however, embarrassingly campy and hilarious and if you squint right maybe a little endearing and you wish the Ward campaign would have the maturity and confidence to make a joke out of this instead of going full-metal SJW about it. But while I was sitting there writing up an email about this video, YouTube started autoplaying one of this organization’s other anti-Ward videos, and it’s possibly even crazier:

I dunno, man. John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and their followers are like those mosquitoes from Jurassic Park who have been frozen in amber for millions of years except in their case it’s just since 2004 when not being in favor of writing the military (and the NSA) a blank check was a super sick burn on a GOP candidate. I mean, the Chemtrails bit was a solid beginning but that thing went off the rails quick.

I’ve had people on both sides of this race ping me to get involved and take a side, and I’ll be honest with you, I’ve just been unwilling to get in the middle of it. McCain is one of the worst Republicans in the Senate, and is a shameless, self-interested bastard, there’s no doubt. But a substantial number of the people who are lining up behind Ward during this campaign have caused me to seriously doubt their judgment during this Presidential primary season. Given that one of the people I’m referring to is Phyllis Schlafly, who has torched her reputation with me as thoroughly as anyone in history could possibly torch the reputation of a once-great woman, I’m engaging in some understatement here by saying that I have come to “seriously doubt their judgment.” And of course, then Trump himself had to go muck it all up by endorsing McCain.

Look, I apologize. Until the final fallout from the November election, it’s not going to be as easy (at least for me) to detect clear-eyed favorites in GOP primaries – with rare exceptions. And in the absence of having a reliable personal compass on this race, I thought it best to just let it play out on its own.