It appears with the implosion of Chris Christie over Bridgegate, Ted Cruz being loathed by every mainstream candidate in the nation, Jim DeMint being the architect of their disastrous government shutdown, Bobby Jindal being too creepy for words, Rick Perry being too stupid (too inarticulate, and ……… oops), Paul Ryan is too creepy, and Rand Paul being too ……… Rand Paul, the Republican Presidential bench is rather lacking for 2016.

It appears that the Republicans are casting about for a viable candidate, and Joe Scarborough’s name has been mooted:

For the past several months, we’ve heard a lot about Joe Scarborough’s blueprint for the Republican Party to get back on track.

The congressman-turned-pundit has been talking about that stuff for years, of course, but it reached a fever pitch last November with the release of his book, “The Right Path.”

“The buzz among GOP insiders is that ‘The Right Path’ has the potential to galvanize conservatives in the way Barry Goldwater’s ‘Conscience of a Conservative’ did half a century ago — especially conservatives ready to return to the winning ways of Ronald Reagan, who is on the cover, shown striding down the White House colonnade,” gushed Politico’s buzz arbiter Mike Allen.

Scarborough talked to TPM about the book, casually suggesting that “Joe Scarborough’s worldview” was in sync with “Ronald Reagan’s worldview and Bill Buckley’s worldview and Margaret Thatcher’s worldview.”

You knew where this was going.

Inevitably, Joe Scarborough’s book tour was viewed as a springboard for Joe Scarborough’s 2016 presidential campaign. A few months after the book’s release, The Daily Caller’s Alex Pappas reported that it’s “widely believed” at MSNBC that Scarborough has presidential aspirations.

Two days after that story ran, Scarborough told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he “won’t rule anything out.”

I know that somehow or other the Republicans will find a nominee in 2016, but this is beginning to look like the life cycle of a drummer for Spın̈al Tap.

^*The largest shark, and likely largest predator fish ever. It died out some 1.5 million years ago. The Genus is still in dispute, between either Carcharodon (Great White) or Carcharocles (broad toothed Mako). But in either case, you are jumping C. Megalodon, you have jumped the biggest shark ever.