So I have two closely related questions this morning.

1: Where do I go to get a live tarantula suitable for throwing at someone?

2: Where do Republicans get these people?

I’m of course today referring to Marisa Simonetti, Hennepin County Commissioner candidate for District 6, (where I live), who is accused of slinging a honkin’ big spider at her Air BnB tenant. Being as she’s just out of jail, she has yet to offer her side of the story, but we do know from police photographs that there was a tarantula involved in some way.

Whatever way and however the tarantula was transported, either in the tupperware container seen in photos, or by air from Simonetti’s hand to the tenant’s face, it’s yet another episode among many involving the extraordinarily curious-to-incendiary-to-nefarious characters in orbit around today’s Republican party.

Focusing strictly on Minnesota let’s quickly not forget:

Anthony “Tony” Lazzaro a self-styled but generally accepted Minnesota Republican “insider.” He’s the 32 year-old guy convicted of sex trafficking indisputably underage girls. The Guardian reported, “Prosecutors argued during the trial that Lazzaro enlisted [co-defendant Gisela] Medina, who he initially paid for sex, to recruit other teenagers – preferably minors – who were white, small, vulnerable or ‘broken’. ‘He wanted sex, and not just any sex’, federal prosecutor Melinda Williams said during closing arguments on Friday. ‘He wanted sex with minor girls under the age of 18. And he had a plan to get it.’ Lazarro’s attorney, Daniel Gerdts, argued that the government’s ‘salacious’ prosecution was based on ‘completely unfounded’ allegations. ‘The prosecution clearly disapproves of Mr Lazzaro’s playboy lifestyle’, Gerdts said. ‘And frankly, as the father of three daughters, so do I. The opprobrium is well deserved, but that is not why we’re here’.”

(I’m pretty sure they were there because the small, white and broken girls in question were all around 15 years old.)

Oh, but wait! Let’s not forget this: “Pictures on Lazzaro’s social media accounts showed him with prominent Republicans, including ex-president Donald Trump and former vice-president Mike Pence. He gave more than $270,000 to Republican campaigns and political committees over the years.”

… which explains why the state’s nigh-on-to-bankrupt GOP treated Lazzaro like a mover and a shaker.

Or, how about Jennifer Carnahan, the quite obviously hot mess wife of deceased Congressman Jim Hagedorn? Because she was wiling to be the nigh-on-to-bankrupt Republican party’s chairman, which requires a willingness to say any matter of hysterical and nutty things into a microphone, Carnahan and her party ended up suing each other over a series of claims, most involving rank financial incompetence. MPR’s story on the settlement, which involved no one paying anyone anything but nevertheless generating a lot of press suggesting both were bonkers, said, “GOP officials said they were pleased the ‘baseless’ lawsuit wouldn’t move forward. ‘After the mediation, she gave up her case without the party paying her anything’, the party statement said. ‘Now the Republican Party of Minnesota can continue our singular focus on solving Minnesota’s real problems, including flipping the Minnesota House in 2024 and stopping the reckless spending and overreach by the DFL trifecta’.”

That’s right. You read that correctly. They close out accusing the DFL of “reckless spending.”

Or, let’s not forget Tony Sutton, the GOP’s party chairman several iterations before Carnahan. A young, corpulent fellow with a stake in the Baja del Sol fast food chain, Sutton was a “must see” press every time he stood up to loudly rail against, you know, “reckless spending” by DFLers and admonishing everyone in sight to learn to “live within their means.”

An act like that could only go one way. And it did, when Sutton resigned the job having run the party into $2 million of debt and then … wait for it … declared personal bankruptcy as a kind of dessert plate.

I could go on … and on. (Hell, I could do 2000 words on Royce White the Jew-phobic, strip-club loving loon running against Amy Klobuchar.) And I should mention, of course, DFL Senator and ninja cat burglar Nicole Mitchell, who broke into her stepmother’s home to steal back … her father’s ashes. That’s very weird, and not at all good, but somewhat short of sex trafficking teeny boppers and running up $2 million on the company credit cards.

But bad as Mitchell looks, the numerical disparity in batshit partisan craziness is so weighted toward this last generation of Republicans she qualifies as the exception that proves the rule.

So “why” do so many of these incompetents and sociopaths turn up under the modern, post-talk radio Republican umbrella? Allow me to freely speculate.

Today’s conservatives are so far removed from any legitimate or meaningful policy concerns their entire focus is … the game. Acting in and playing the game … for their own personal benefit.

I mean the (alleged) tarantula thrower, Ms. Simonetti, is a 30 year-old Kristi Noem lookalike who claims to be a “businesswoman” leading “the Simonetti real estate team” (and tell me you aren’t curious about the financial bona fides of that?). She would make $113,000 if elected. That’s a well-paying gig that wouldn’t necessitate renting out her basement to strangers.

And who knows? As “the only true conservative” in the District 6 race and someone inveighing regularly about “rampant crime”, Simonetti — even if convicted of assault with tarantula — may ride the MAGA coattails to victory in November.

We’re living in that kind of world.