Just how unspeakably stupid IS Mark Steyn?

For me, one of the ongoing mysteries of the right-wing wankersphere is how many of the most prominent, revered and oft-quoted pundits are, for the most part, people so imbecilic that I wouldn't trust them to wash my car.

Here, Canada's Mark Steyn manages (unintentionally, I'm sure) to refute months worth of asinine, American right-wing talking points:

On the radio a couple of weeks ago, Hugh Hewitt suggested to me the terrorists might try to pull a Spain on the U.S. elections. You'll recall (though evidently many Americans don't) that in 2004 hundreds of commuters were slaughtered in multiple train bombings in Madrid. The Spaniards responded with a huge street demonstration of supposed solidarity with the dead, all teary passivity and signs saying "Basta!" -- "Enough!" By which they meant not "enough!" of these murderers but "enough!" of the government of Prime Minister Aznar, and of Bush and Blair, and troops in Iraq. A couple of days later, they voted in a socialist government, which immediately withdrew Spanish forces from the Middle East. A profitable couple of hours' work for the jihad.

I said to Hugh I didn't think that would happen this time round. The enemy aren't a bunch of simpleton Pushtun yakherds, but relatively sophisticated at least in their understanding of us. We're all infidels, but not all infidels crack the same way. If they'd done a Spain -- blown up a bunch of subway cars in New York or vaporized the Empire State Building -- they'd have re-awoken the primal anger of September 2001. With another mound of corpses piled sky-high, the electorate would have stampeded into the Republican column and demanded the U.S. fly somewhere and bomb someone.

Note what little Markie is suggesting here. He's suggesting that the terrorists have kept a low profile to lull American voters into a false sense of security, a sense of security that would allow them to drift slowly over to voting for the (gasp! horrors!) Democrats because, as we all know, the terrorists want the Democrats to win. So ... the absence of murderous domestic terrorism lately is because ... the terrorists are playing politics -- this is little Markie's view on things.

Hang on, though. Wasn't it the GOP who ran on a platform of how effective they had been in protecting America, with the Dickster going so far as to claim credit for the fact that there had been no attacks on the U.S. since 9/11?

So, according to Cheney, it's due to Republican cleverness and perseverance that the American people have been safe the last several years. No, wait, says Steyn -- it's only because the terrorists have been cleverly playing politics because they want the Democrats to win the election that there haven't been any attacks.

Personally, I think the last several years of American domestic safety is because aliens from the planet Weembo are broadcasting anti-terrorist mind-control rays. Sure, I have no evidence to back that up, but that just means I'm no worse off than Steyn and his vacuous pontificating.

And to think people actually take this dingbat seriously.

P.S. Not surprisingly, Blogging Tory and Deranged Catholic Kathy Shaidle thinks Steyn is a freakin' genius. And you know what? Comparatively speaking, I think she might be right.