Holiday excess, non-stop TV sports and, most especially, the internecine strife amongst a disastrously weak covey of cacophonous Republican nestlings, all fighting for the dubious worm of nomination against a popular, pragmatic and politically skillful, even charismatic, incumbent, has me unplugged, back to reading of Catherine the Great and listening to “The Magic Flute.”

For a time, a competent Mitt Romney and the brilliant ambassador, Jon Huntsman, gained my ear. Both are honest and intelligent, but Mitt’s too scripted, too careful, too political, too dull, too pathetically eager for me. The Brylcreme in his hair has gone viral into his persona.

Huntsman? He’s too good for your average GOP troglodyte. Huntsman can’t raise a pulse with these folks. It’s not your fault, Jon.

The other GOP wannabes? Forget but don’t forgive.

And so, I instead turn from my everyday curmudgeon into downright grouch.

We expect, no, demand, that major party candidates demonstrate some minimum standards of character and competence, a fact so far grasped only by Herman

Cain, and, as I write, the otherwise ludicrous Michelle Bachmann.

Yes, Romney (and the unloved Huntsman) can stand beside Ike, Reagan and Bush I. But the others? Zanies, incompetents, fools, religious quacks. Ye gods and little, very little, fishes!

And, for some time to come, it is hard to avoid them, they are underfoot, in our face and tedious, oh so tedious. I would guess than none could flutter the pulse of any competent voter.

Apparently, they can’t, as each one struts his or her brief moment, we see them, seriatim, pass from the sunlight, to the umbra of the forgettable, only to then crash and burn, a brief glow then, “Get the hook,” and into the utter Stygian gloom, sound and fury to be heard or seen no more.

A day or two ago, it was Rick Santorum’s turn in the sun. Good timing, Rick, but don’t start gloating yet: You have no more clothes than the half dozen other naked wannabes. Here today, gone tomorrow. Those about to crash a burn, salute us and don’t slam the door on your way out.

So what is wrong with Mitt? Apparently, he is not what trueblue Republicans call “conservative.” Proof lies in that he was a successful state governor in a liberal state, my former home.

That’s bad? Ah, you see, in the catechisms of today’s Republicans, a party far morphed from the party of our greatest president, Lincoln, far from Ike, Reagan and Bush I, these guys, Romney and Huntsman excepted, are creatures emerged from the crypt that holds the avatars of the GOP’s darkest hours, The John Birch Society and Sen. Joe McCarthy.

Perhaps I am optimistic, but I think sanity will prevail and Romney will squeak by. But the damage will have been done. Not only is Barack Obama able and careful, Romney is the guy who is too straight to woo the fair maid of election, too wooden to best Barack Obama.

Our sitting president has so far disappointed me, yet he is a strong candidate and an able, attractive man; he will trounce a fragmented and hapless GOP. Then will this winter of discontent be made glorious Indian summer. Well, maybe.

WELD HENSHAW lives in Brunswick.