PHXated is nonpartisan but doesn’t like having his intelligence insulted. Republicans and the Tea Party folks don’t have that gene. Case in point: J.D. Hayworth’s campaign announcement this a.m. that he’s going up against John McCain in the Republican primary August 24.

The scene was a makeshift podium in a nondescript mini-mall parking lot in northeast Phoenix. The crowd? Let’s just say it had it similarity to a Twin Peaks cast party.

For the the half-dozen or so folks who proceeded Hayworth to the mike, nothing got the crowd going better than the word “teleprompter.”

This is a Fox News trope. The idea is that Barack Obama needs to have a teleprompter to speak. Obama uses the teleprompter a lot, but, as everyone in the world saw when he kicked the house Republican membership’s ass in an open forum a few weeks back, it’s not like he isn’t, you know, a University of Chicago law professor or anything.

Anyway. that was the scene.

Teleprompter teleprompter teleprompter, yuk yuk yuk.

Then Hayworth got up to speak and …

…. read it from a sheaf of papers.

hayworth_anouncement

A close up!

hayworth_closeup

Heyworth left his radio show weeks ago, and has been presumably planning his two-day, ten-appearance campaign announcement in the time since.

The speech he gave, as you might expect, could kindly be described as sub-Obamaesque. (“We don’t need a senator from Arizona. [Hugely meaningful pause.] We need a senator for Arizona!” [Crowd does not go wild.])

You’d think he could memorize such stirring oratory, but no. He spent most of the speech with his head down, reading away. But at least he wasn’t using a teleprompter!

Again, PHXated supports no party. But Arizona Republicans are currently such a mishmash of fear-mongers, hypocrites, moralizing poltroons and boneheads that all one can do is watch them amusedly, feeling only slight pangs of regrets for the yahoos, bumpkins, racists, dolts and folks-unclear-on-the-concept who in the end will be made the victims of their own gullibility and inability to think critically, whether it be the lack of apprehension of the distinction between a teleprompter and a sheaf of paper or just experiencing the vague sense of cognitive dissonance you get when your son has been blown to bits in a senseless war thousands of miles away, brought to you by a guy you voted for twice.

Anyway, McCain is a creep, and may be in trouble no matter what—he got less than 54 percent of the vote in Arizona in the presidential election last year. But he’s obviously a much stronger candidate than a total buffoon like Hayworth. So PHXated is happy to endorse Hayworth in the Republican primary.