Prophets and Losses

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."

-- William Faulkner

Now that Republicanism Personified Ted Cruz is starting to rot from the amygdala down, members of the still-batshit-crazy-but-not-quite-that-batshit-crazy sub-genus of the Stupid/Crazy Party are stumbling over each other to score their "I've Been Against Ted Cruz Since..." Red Badges of Political Courage.  For example, here is what confidence trickster Peter King -- a man who was perfectly happy tossing gobbets of red meat to the teabagger crocodile until it turned on him -- now has to say about his competition for the hearts and wallets of the rubes:

“I took a chance when Ted Cruz was the darling of the Republicans,” King added. “It was only two weeks ago, but he was the darling of Republicans. I was the only guy taking him on nationwide.” 

Brave, Brave, Brave, Brave Sir Robin.

Of course, Cruz and King and all the rest of the Koch brothers' hired help are not the problems: they are merely the latest and most stomach-churning surface manifestations of the long, deep, Conservative rot that has been eating at the heart of the United States for generations:

...

Unfortunately, the calamity of a potential default has tempered neither judgment nor passion. On Saturday, Ted Cruz—the man who lit the match, won the Values Voters Straw Poll with 42 percent of the vote. Channeling her inner Glenn Beck, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) concluded that the President “committed impeachable offenses.” Bachmann also proclaimed that civil disobedience was a potential response to Obama’s “thuggery,” and compared the Obama presidency to Egypt’s deposed Muslim Brotherhood.

Political pundit and former Nixon and Reagan White House speechwriter Pat Buchanan may well have captured the mood of the Republican base, as he the writes of the spirit of secession sweeping the red states. Unfortunately, Buchanan is not engaging in idle hyperbole or in simple wishful thinking.

Even before the 2012 election, fuses were running short. Texas Governor Rick Perry mused about the possibility of secession, and after Mitt Romney’s loss last November more than 125,000 Texans petitioned the White House to secede. Secession also touchéd nerves in a slew of other states, including Florida, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The spirit of the Civil War endures.

...

Every few years some new, soulless, ambitious goon clambers out of the moral sewer of the Party of Personal Responsibility to seize control of the vocabulary of Hate Radio and appoint himself the party's Demagogue-in-Chief for the moment, harvesting the ever-ripe-and-ready paranoia and rage of the GOP base and dragging us all a little further down the road the Hell.

So while today's Republicanism Personified is a thug from Texas named Cruz, those of us with very long political memories recall ten years ago when Republicanism Personified was a thug from Texas named Tom DeLay:  a monster from the Id of the GOP who presented craven Republican politicians with exactly the same dilemma:  having hitched an electoral ride with the fascist mob, what split-second is just the right split-second to try and jump away from the Clown Car and save themselves?

April 1, 2005

Rep. DeLay Preps the Beds for the GOP's Big Sleep

(This particular bit started life as a comment in Gilliard's Shoppe but has been Repurposed to better serve You, The Customer :-)

The little-“p” politics of this is fascinating.  [The fact that] Over the long run that the GOP is demographically/electorally doomed to become the minority Thurston Howell Party again. Either when the Fundy Shining Path Rebels that make up their margin of victory make one too many batshit demands, or are are told “No” once too often.

(If you want to get a clear picture of how this will look, rent “Fatal Attraction” or “Play Misty For Me”. I’m not going to be ignored, George!)

So either they take their bat and ball and stomp disgustedly back to Mordor, or a handful of moderate Republicans get so freaked out by the Randall Terry Wing of the Party that they bolt or stay home.

But short run…Tom DeLay is now a Household Name. Been waiting 10 years for that to happen and always amazed that Republicans had no fucking clue who he was, even though you’d tell them five or a hundred times. Sheesh. All RAM and no Hard Drive with some people.

Every GOP Leader knows the Gingrich Lesson: No matter how much the membership owes you, they’ll go absolutely Lord of The Flies on your Piggy-ass the minute you becomes a measurable liability. Newt was so completely “I Am The Reich” that he would have been perfectly happy to go into the bunker and fight it out until the GOP was razed to rubble had he not been stopped by his own House Republicans.

And since the Suddenly Huge Liability named Tom DeLay is now just “Tell Tale Heart”--thundering away under the GOP floorboards, threatening to drown out everything else, the question is, will that same dynamic play twice?

Well DeLay ain’t Gingrich. He learned from that episode, and they don’t call him The Hammer for his shipwright skills. He spent a decade forcibly collecting GOP testicles and caching them in his private Crown Royal bag. At the slightest provocation he will to politically and personally destroy anyone who doesn’t bend a deep knee to His Gorgon Awfulness.

And both the Texas and National Republican parties have shown absolutely craven willingness to rewrite the Rules on the fly any time the Beast’s wet-bar needed to be restocked with virgin’s blood, or whenever a law or policy might make threaten to cinch-in the bottomless lust he and his stooges have for Power, Money, Trinkets and Perks, even a trifle.

So (hahah!) they’ve kinda disarmed themselves to accommodate him, and now they’re stuck very much up on that very windy gibbet with him. So if you were running in 2006 and playing How Do I Save My Pink Republican Skin while DeLay is holding your ass held hostage, what do you do?

Got to time it juuuust right. Jump away from Herr DeLay too soon and he’ll blow your head off. Jump too late, and your face will be morphed into Tom DeLay…into Randall Terry…into, I dunno, Osama Bin Laden? in every ad, every day, for the entire election cycle.

My simple suggestion for voters in 2006?

Shoot the hostage ;-)

For the record, to my knowledge not a single Conservative politician, professional Both Sider or mainstream media creature who has ever even briefly awakened to the fact that the GOP is run by monsters has ever acknowledged that the Left was right all along.

If the last 40 years has proven anything, it is that no amount of being right will force the media to listen to Liberals the next time the Right does something treasonous or insane.  Or the time after that.  Or the time after that.

On the other hand, we do have better music.

...
Well you may throw your rock and hide your hand
Workin' in the dark against your fellow man
But as sure as God made black and white
What's done in the dark will be brought to the light

You can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Sooner or later God'll cut you down
Sooner or later God'll cut you down