Mitch Daniels says he’s not running for president for family reasons. Maybe.  I don’t doubt that his wife’s wishes figured into Daniels’ decision, but it’s likely that, along with Haley Barbour, Mitch sees the road to the Republican nomination running through Cuckooland.

Rational men stay clear of irrational callings, and much as I hate to quote Charles Barkley on any subject other than dribbling basketballs, the Auburn blowhard had it right when he said, “The Republican party has lost its mind.”

How else to explain a bloviating horse’s ass like Donald Trump running up double-digit numbers in Republican polls – not to mention the presidential aspirations of the twitter-brained Sarah Palin and her airhead doppelganger Michele Bachmann?

Once the party of Lincoln produced women like Clare Booth Luce and Margaret Chase Smith, either of whom could have qualified as serious presidential candidates, but who today would be blown away by the same inhabitants of the cuckoo’s nest that last year defeated Utah’s conservative Senator Bob Bennett and helped re-elect Harry Reid by nominating Sharron Angle as his Republican opponent in neighboring Nevada.

So why did Daniels and Barbour drop out of the race? A guess: Early on, Daniels suggested we might give the social issues a rest, then had to spend the next three months backtracking; while Barbour took heat from the Cuckooland establishment because he had the subversive idea that we ought to rethink our commitment in Afghanistan.

Rational men, rational decisions. Other than political crackpots like Bachmann or pandering flippers like Mitt Romney, who needs to spend the next 18 months hyperventilating about secession, same-sex marriage, and the socialist secular plot to override the Constitution with Sharia law?

And what would my political mentor Barry Goldwater think about all this? Can’t say, but if he were alive I know he wouldn’t be running. Too much baggage for the cuckoos: His wife, Peggy, was a card-carrying member of Planned Parenthood.