In heaven, Molly Ivins smiles: Gov. Goodhair will be taking his carefully coiffed clown act off the national stage and slinking back to the Lone Star State (sorry ’bout that, all y’all in Austin).

The contest for the Pachyderms’ pestilential nomination has been particularly feeble this time around, like watching a herd of blind pigs try to find an acorn buried deep in their sty, and it’s caused me to consider whether we need a knucklehead tax on would-be candidates.

Here’s how it would work. If you are so woefully ill-prepared to hold high public office that thoughtful people snicker at the very sound of your name, you still get to run — this is America, after all, despite the Kenyan Muslim socialist occupying the White House — but should you drop out because you can only muster the level of support one might expect from a Nazi at a bar mitzvah, the fund-raising ceases at once, the debt comes due with a vengeance, and you have to pay back every dime contributed to your campaign by people who, frankly, should have known better.

True, it’s something of a poll tax. But it’s levied against candidates, not voters. And it would be a net job creator, too, because all the late-night talk shows would have to rehire their writers instead of just running with Associated Press copy.