A new plague has been descending upon RedState as the primary season becomes more serious. No, I’m not talking about the quadrennial invasion of the luaP noR locusts looking for fresh foliage.

Rather, its the entrance of the folks with the following screen names:

[candidate's name]4prez (or variations on the theme)

I seem to recall we earlier had the Sarah Palin variant, who was eventually escorted out the door. But hydra-like, we now have two more heads in the house, as evidenced by the thread to his post being thrown into chaos by the entrance of one of these folks:

http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2011/08/31/dana-milbank-perry-is-not-a-libertarian/#comment-9515

And then there’s the posts and comments by his rival

http://www.redstate.com/romney4prez/

Now certainly from my perspective, these folks do more damage to their opponent by their political equivalent of “friendly fire” that ten of their political opponents are able to inflict – as much by their cring-inducing defense of their candidate as by their over-the-top attacks on others.

Which might be viewed as just deserts, except that the candidates don’t deserve such treatment.

Worse, these exchanges distract from serious discussion of the strengths and weakness of the various candidates – not just distraction, but at times approaching fratricide. Meanwhile, the assessment of the candidates’ effectiveness against their Democratic opponents gets eclipsed.

And even worse still, conservatives/Republicans get needlessly pushed into shouting matches against each other, weakening our common resolve.

Consequently, the quality of discourse at RedState declines, and folks dropping by recoil at the level of conversation that they see.

So what then is my modest proposal? Simply this

When [candidate]4prez (or variants, including “senate” or “house” or “gov”) come into the view,

shoot first and ask questions later (metaphorically speaking).

Ah, the relief…