Esquire’s Charles Pierce seemingly would like a time machine to take him back a quarter-century so he could advise the Tom Foley/George Mitchell-era Democratic party. Failing that, Pierce wishes today’s Dems would at last act on his idea to persuade the American people that the Republican party is “thoroughly, deeply, banana-sandwich loony,” thereby “beat[ing] the crazy out of [the GOP] so the country can get moving again.”

“Republican extremism should have been the most fundamental campaign issue for every Democratic candidate for every elected office since about 1991,” argued Pierce in a Friday post. “The mockery and ridicule should have been loud and relentless. It was the only way to break both the grip of the prion disease, and break through the solid bubble of disinformation, anti-facts, and utter bullshit that has sustained the Republican base over the past 25 years.”

On Friday's PBS Newshour, host Judy Woodruff joined liberal columnist Mark Shields in declaring that the House GOP's conservative wing is holding the Congress "hostage," with allegedly right-leaning regular and New York Times columnist David Brooks then complaining that Tea Partiers are good at "destruction," but not "construction." Brooks further griped that, "to get elected, especially as a Republican," there is an incentive for "radical rhetoric," referring to the situation as a "mental problem."

The morning after House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy shocked Congress by announcing he was dropping out of the race to become the next Speaker of the House, CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today sprinted over to their analysts to tear into the “really pathetic” conservatives for creating a “chaotic” situation for the House that shows they’re “impossible to run.”

To the surprise of no one, MSNBC ran to find the nearest token Republicans it could after shocking news that House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) dropped out of Speaker of the House race and once such person was MSNBC political analyst and former 2008 McCain campaign adviser Steve Schmidt, who railed against the GOP for “hunting heretics” and not “converts.”

On Tuesday’s CBS This Morning, Face the Nation moderator John Dickerson touted Hillary Clinton’s new campaign ad which blasts House Republicans investigating the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack. After House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy argued last week that the committee's discovery of Hillary’s private e-mail server had caused her poll numbers to rapidly decline, Dickerson touted the “political gift” the Republican had given to the Democratic presidential front-runner.