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The general election hasn't even officially started yet, but the 2012 races as already scaled some pretty lofty heights of ridiculousness. 

Confronted with criticism (and a possible Secret Service investigation) over his violently-tinged comments about the president, Ted Nugent not only isn't backing down, he's turning up the heat and adding names to his list. Nugent appeared on the Dana Loesch radio show yesterday to say that he stands by his speech to the NRA and that "It was 100 percent positive." (We're not sure which part he thought was more positive: The part where he's dead or the part where he's in jail?) He also called Congresswomen Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Wasserman Schultz "sub-human" — one of The Nuge's favorite insults — and then topped all of that off by saying "See, I’m a black Jew at a Nazi-Klan rally, and there are some power-abusing corrupt monsters in our federal government that despise me because I have the audacity to speak the truth to identify the violations of our government."

That wouldn't be so bad, of course, if he didn't also throw in that he's just saying what Mitt Romney wants to, but can't: “Mitt Romney knows what I’m saying is true. He puts it in the words for him, I put in the words for me." The Romney campaign's only response was that people need to be "civil," but it takes a special talent to suggest that government officials have their heads cut off and somehow turn yourself into the victim.

But is that fight not outrageous enough for you? How about this: The Daily Caller took time out yesterday to remind America that when Barack Obama was a child living in Indonesia, he once ate a dog. That revelation (which was actually revealed 17 years ago in Obama's book, Dreams From My Father) gave Romney supporters a brief respite from the controversy over poor Seamus, the Romney's put-upon family dog. We're all having a good laugh, but seriously, both are candidates are dog-hating monsters.

In the grand scheme of the 2012, none of these stories will really amount to much. Romney was foolish to cozy up to Nugent, who isn't exactly Jeremiah Wright, but has enough of a track record on calling people sub-human, that a better candidate would have stayed away. And hanging your hat on an unfortunate Romney car trip was never much a electoral strategy to begin with. But crazed supporters and 20-year-old dog tales is how you spend time in the doldrums of a campaign when no news is bad news. Instead of talking or listening to something serious, it's easier to just get mad about something.

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