Mike Huckabee didn’t surprise anyone with his announcement tonight that he wasn’t going to run for president. But he tortured the few people who cared about his announcement and the political reporters who had to watch by waiting until the end of his show to make the announcement. Maybe he’s taking cues from Donald Trump.

Before the announcement, Huckabee had washed-up rocker Ted Nugent plat “Cat Scratch Fever” in front of the lamest audience I’ve ever seen. It looked like they cleared out the nearest nursing home and dragged the poor folks in the listen to old Ted. It didn’t sound that bad, and Huckabee seemed to do fine on the base, but watching Nugent play in front of this audience was just pathetic.

With characters like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, we’ve been referring to the lunatic fringe of the potential Republican primary field as the confederacy of dunces. Many conservatives seem to have lost their mind when it comes to President Obama, so much so that they will rally around buffoons like Palin and Bachmann.

In order to appeal to the growing lunatic fringe, you have otherwise sensible candidates like Mike Huckabee joining in with idiotic comments about Kenya. We expect this garbage from bomb-throwers like Newt Gingrich, but hearing Huckabee go off the deep end is further evidence that the right wing has serious problems.

Now we have Donald Trump joining in on the idiocy. He’s now gone full birther, saying that he’s very “concerned” over whether President Obama was born in this country. Trump has always been a self-promoting charlatan despite his obvious success as a real estate mogul, but this is truly embarrassing.

The GOP establishment is rightfully terrified by the prospect of any of these dunces drawing real support in the primaries. It will be hilarious to watch, and these GOP “leaders” are getting what they deserved, as they embraced Sarah Palin and her anti-intellectual gibberish when it suited them, and now they have to live with the mass hysteria she and her ilk have whipped up on the right.

And then we have Newt Gingrich, whose attempts to explain away his past adultery are pure comedy gold. Newt is smarter than buffoons like Palin and Bachman, but he’s also the smarmiest politician in recent memory. He’s mean-spirited and a hypocrite, and yet he thinks he can lecture others on morality. Lawrence O’Donnell has some fun with Newt’s most recent attempt to cite a “forgiving God.”

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy