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Maybe there is — finally — a limit to the amount of sheer bat-guano craziness American citizens will tolerate.

U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-North Carolina, went down to defeat in his state’s May primary.

In an era in which lunacy among political leaders too often has become the norm rather than an anomaly, he somehow still managed to stand out. He had the MAGA movement’s fondness for outright mendacity and told a lie almost as often as he took a breath.

He embellished and distorted every part of his life and career. He attacked opponents and critics with libels and slanders that could have been persuasive only to the greenest and most gullible rubes.

Sadly, there are enough such easy and credulous marks that, boosted by the blessings and endorsement of the age’s prime huckster, former President Donald Trump, Cawthorn found his way into a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

There, he took his place among the GOP’s gang of amoral bomb-throwers, hurling one incendiary charge after another, none of them caring about the damage done or what the blaze consumed. Like true pyromaniacs, they just liked to see the world burn and the flames dance.

Bu the thing about people that nuts is that their desire to wreak havoc is rarely focused and therefore not easily directed or contained. They tend to be about as loyal as a rabid dog.

Eventually, the Cawthorns of this world will bite the hands of those who like to think of themselves as their masters.

That’s what happened earlier this year.

Cawthorn — as usual, without offering even a single bit of evidence to support his claims — lamented the “sexual perversion” he saw in Congress. He said he had been invited to orgies and he asserted that he had seen fellow House members snort cocaine in front of him.

His Republican colleagues were not amused.

Given that Democrats in Washington avoid Cawthorn as if he carried a particularly virulent form of the plague, it stood to reason that the young congressman was saying his fellow GOP stalwarts were the ones holding these coke-fueled orgies.

That didn’t sit well with politicians who like to preach about family values, even if they often don’t practice them. They complained to House leadership and began to treat Cawthorn as if he were something they needed to scrape off the bottoms of their shoes.

The GOP hierarchy did its best to distance itself from Cawthorn, who lost the Republican primary to another candidate whose greatest virtue was that he wasn’t Cawthorn.

American history is littered with cranks and loons such as Madison Cawthorn. They pop up, howl at the moon for a time, then disappear when the entertainment value of watching someone froth at the mouth fades.

Normally, though, only one such oddball at a time claims the spotlight.

Now, we have a whole chorus of them.

In fact, if Cawthorn had stared at his reflection and asked, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the craziest Congress member of all?” the mirror might not have spoken his name.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colorado, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Arizona, and Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, all could stake claims to the title.

We have so many such kooks running free across the political landscape these days — sadly, the lunacy is just as bad in state legislatures across the country — because, through gerrymandering, we have set up an election system that discourages true competition and often rewards outright insanity.

Cawthorn’s home state of North Carolina, like Indiana, is heavily gerrymandered. As a result, the meaningful elections — the ones that count — take place in the primary. Often the contest there is between a cashew and an almond.

Either way, the voters get stuck with a nut.

Still, we shouldn’t surrender to despair.

Madison Cawthorn demonstrated there is a limit to how much crazy even a rigged system can tolerate.

Lord knows how many more to go.

John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

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