Watch Out for Punchline on GOP Clown Car Jokes

This “Washington Post” headline says it all: "The Republican field is a clown car."

I guess the Post can get away with that, since it's on the opinion page and the headline is summing up the opinion of columnist Dana Milbank, who is a great writer, but one for whom the GOP candidates clearly don't engender a great deal of respect. (Especially when it comes to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), the latest Republican testing the presidential waters.)

It's pretty clear Milbank doesn't think much of this increasingly crowded Republican field. Maybe because after going through Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson, and throwing in the possibility of Donald Trump, and even former New York Gov. George Pataki -- it is a crowd. But why does that make it a clown car?

Because Milbank doesn't think any of them has a shot. Or worse, maybe he thinks they're all jokes?

He has a right to his opinion, but be careful assuming it is fact. Because if memory serves me right, many in the media were saying the same about the Democratic field of candidates in 1992.

At the time, they were up against a very popular George Bush, senior, who fresh from his liberating Kuwait victory, was sporting approval ratings north of 80%. So, by comparison, the seven Democrats challenging him really did look like the seven dwarfs.

Until one of them got the nomination -- and proved a remarkable candidate. That was Bill Clinton... and I think we know how that race ended up.

The guy everybody dismissed from the clown car gang, the guy everybody laughed at ended up beating the incumbent president no one thought could be beat.

Until he was.

So beware those who write about clown cars: more often than not, the joke's on them. And suddenly the ones mocking the clowns in that car, are the clowns driving it.