Even among those who read Erick Erickson’s wild posts this morning demanding that Republicans be willing to engineer a government shutdown if necessary (and it would be) to kill funding for Planned Parenthood, the prevailing assumption might be that the man will calm down and refrain from placing the 10 presidential candidates attending his cattle call next weekend in an uncomfortable position by continuing this unreasonable crusade.

Wrong-o:

This is probably not good news for anyone not named Cruz, Huckabee or Jindal. The irony is that the one presidential candidate who’s actually taken steps in the direction Erickson’s demanding is Rand Paul, who isn’t planning to be in Atlanta next weekend because, you know, he “doesn’t do cattle calls.” Lord only knows what Donald Trump will say.

Ed Kilgore

Ed Kilgore is a political columnist for New York and managing editor at the Democratic Strategist website. He was a contributing writer at the Washington Monthly from January 2012 until November 2015, and was the principal contributor to the Political Animal blog.