What high-ranking elected officials in the Republican Party need most right now is a fool.
Not the kind who’s addled or stupid, but a wise fool who is allowed to take the liberty to speak truth to power, to tell the King what he needs to hear, to say things that no one else in the King’s favor is able to tell him, to "advise him in the premises." (Or her. After all, Queens have needs for fools, too.)
Like the fools in Shakespeare, mostly commoners who spoke to authority with wit and wisdom, simple people who can be accepted as entertainers but who tell truths that groundlings in the cheap seats of the audience know and accept at face value for the reality they contain.
That would save the GOP a lot of trouble, even inside its own party.
Cases in point: VA Governor Bob McDonnell and his switcheroo on the GOP-sponsored vaginal probe bill. Rick Santorum on contraception, and so many other things. Darrell Issa's panel of wise clerics. And Willard Mitt Romney, with his royalty-like inability to relate to us common folk.