Monday, February 29, 2016

The Republican Party's Maginot Line


A simplistic but instructive summary of the Maginot Line via Business Insider:
France suffered a notoriously quick defeat at the hands of its German neighbor in World War II.  The country capitulated just six weeks after Hitler's land invasion began on May 10, 1940.

France had a system of defense, built in the more than ten years leading up to 1939, but it failed miserably.

The problem was that Maginot Line, a great line of fortifications that spanned France's borders with several neighbors, was essentially a glorified trench. And like any trench, it belonged to the age of the First World War, not the mechanized warfare known as blitzkrieg that Hitler brought to the Second.

The Wehrmacht simply went around the line, borrowing the low plains of Belgium to France's north...
As has already been widely reported, inside whatever is left of the GOP establishment's piss-soaked corridors of power there is a palpable sense of panic and dread as the Day of the Trump arrives.

Those of us who exist permanently outside of the precincts of the GOP establishment and their Beltway media enablers, look on this freak show as we always have looked upon all the other jaw-dropping atrocities the GOP has racked up over the years -- as a tragedy for our country and one more irrefutable validation of what we have been saying about the Right for decades.  A validation which no one inside the power structure ever deigns to notice because no one inside the power structure has ever given a shit what we think and they never will. 

Because if there is one thing that terrifies the Beltway media/political establishment more than Trump it is collapse of all the Big Lies they tell themselves about who and what this country is. The Big Lies that have brought them all so much wealth and power. The Big Lies that have brought Trump the Barbarian to the gates of their little Village.  The Big Lies we dirty hippies keep pointing at and calling "Big Lies".

And nothing could be a clearer demonstration of the magnitude and tenacity of the Beltway media/political establishment's dedication to their comforting delusions than the composition of the motley forces they have arrayed against the Trump Anschluss of the Republican Party...

Remember, at this point the GOP establishment isn't even talking about fixing what's actually wrong with Republican Party anymore, because he Republican Party cannot be fixed -- it's a mad dog in the street and the kindest thing that could happen to it would be for the American electorate to put it out of its misery once and for all so we can go down to the pound and get a new one:



Instead, the Beltway establishment is merely trying to nudge its base away from voting for the billionaire demagogue and instead put their faith in either an openly theocratic lunatic and liar or an incompetently engineered cipher of the donor class. And to this, they are raiding the GOP boneyard for every decommissioned artillery piece from the Bush Regime and rushing it into the fight.

Just this afternoon I saw MSNBC trot out Dan "Baghdad Dan" Senor, Christine Todd Whitman and Harold Fraud Junior to rend their garments and gnash their teeth.

A Bush Regime dead-ender from a time the Base has been trained to forget.
A Damn RINO!
And one of Joe Scarborough's toady backup singers.  

Wow.  

So who else?

Mitt Romney?  The loser who led the base to their doom last time after he promised to rid them of the Kenyan Usurper?

Stuart Stevens?  The guy who was supposed to deliver that Romney Landslide?

Mitch McConnell?  Whose "plans" have nothing to do with redeeming the dreams of the party faithful but only extend to defending his own privilege and so-far-useless Senate majority?


Jennifer Rubin?  Another denizen of Fred Hiatt's Neocon Petting Zoo who spent most of 2012 humping Mitt Romney's leg right down to his metal endoskeleton.

David Effing Brooks?  Who clearly despises the grubby, bigoted peons on whose unswerving loyalty his party depends depends and who mocked at least as often by wingnuts as he is by me?  

These are the kind of people the base doesn't like or listen to already.  People they either ignore or actively despise.  And yet there they are, arm-in-arm, telling a mob of angry idiots that already loathes them that they're a buncha dumb-ass hicks who need to shut the fuck up and do what their betters tell them to do.

Well, good luck with that.

While you're standing on your high dudgeon reading the rubes the riot act, I'll be over here, sipping pretty good scotch and laughing my damn dirty Liberal ass off.  

14 comments:

Bazzer said...

Laugh now. But President Trump will not make us laugh.

Lawrence said...

The serial liar Bill O'Riley has lost custody of his children for being a no good wife beater. Will he invite DFB over to drown their sorrows, or just be an especially bitter asshole at work? We report. You decide.

bluicebank said...

Not for lack of trying, we Liberals have failed to stop the painful slide of our Republican neighbors and acquaintances (or that one friend you can't quit) into the yawning abyss of drug addiction.

The time for an intervention passed a long time ago. How in the hell would we get those on the meth (Trump) into rehab? How would we get those on smack (Carson), glue sniffers (Cruz), sterno huffers (Rubio), and crack heads (everyone else), to enter rehab? Ain't gonna happen. I don't think these poor souls have a bottom. Sure, we could try to get those not snorting Trump to gang up on the tweakers. Yeah, sure, maybe you'll get one guy to Fly Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and he never belonged there anyway.

They're doomed. And depending on the breaks, their meth lab just might cook off and take our neighborhood with it.

bowtiejack said...

Lawrence
FYI
http://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/3dseries/2016/2016_01275.htm

Green Eagle said...

Very well put. It certainly led me to swigging Lagavulin straight from the bottle.

bowtiejack said...

Again, close to brilliant stuff.
And while I like the Maginot Line analogy, the true history of that thing has been distorted.
Maginot, the French politician and WWI trench veteran, who pushed for it was not an idiot and it actually did pretty much what it was supposed to do. Lots of books on Amazon about this.

So who cleaned France's clock with "blitzkrieg" et al.?
Well, if you know your enemy's defensive positions, it's not that hard to run around and overcome them.
Which is why ALL of France had an instinctive sense of betrayal when it happened.
Which is what Hitler did do with the help of the Duke of Windsor (remember him? Wallis Simpson?) who did a tour of the French defensive positions in a make work job as a Brigadier General posted to Paris and passed the info on to Berlin. (Quick victory by the Bosch and guess who would be back on the throne? You do remember the Windsors were originally the Battenbergs and came from Germany and the Duke was raised speaking German don't you? ) Yeah, I know it sounds unbelievable, but it happened.
It's all laid out in a book called Hidden Agenda by a guy named Martin Allen who makes a really strong case. Before you go off on me, get a copy on bookfinder.com.

Oh, and the great romantic gesture of giving up the throne for the women he loved? Check out the book Full Service by Scotty Bowers, former Hollywood procurer, for what the Duke and Duchess were actually, uh, into. Also available cheap on bookfinder.com.

Unknown said...

You know, we might actually be witnessing the final death rattle of the Republican Party. It has morphed into such a monstrosity that it really is only worth killing. I have to say that my absolute favorite development has been Mitch McConnell's soiling himself while trying to save his god damn job by supporting Hillary--so that he can continue to function as a disloyal opposition leader. You know that they are really desperate when this is a better alternative than their front runner.

proverbialleadballoon said...

Is this the part where Mickey Mouse gets out the axe, and starts chopping up brooms? Pure, uncut irony. The real stuff. Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind wasn't 'how to' instructions, guys!

Brad in Dallas said...

Guys I'm sorry, I don't get this "death of the GOP" stuff. Yes Trump is cutting donuts on their front lawn. Yes DFB is showing his stripes. Yes the party leadership hates the guy.

But this November, or at worst four years later, they'll be free of him. Do you think this experience will lead the Kochs and Adelsons to swear off political influence purchasing forever? Will Rupert Murdoch decide to turn his media empire from politics to saving the poor in third world nations? Will Limbaugh say I'm sorry and take himself off the air? Will 1000 Republican state legislators decide they're secretly Democrats?

Give me a break. The GOP is annoyed at being schooled by Trump. They're going to have to put up with 9 months of discomfort. But women manage it all the time, so I think our red state friends will survive, and live to enjoy many more years of hating the dirty hippies.

RUKidding said...

I agree with Donald Walsh.

It's the most enjoyable show EVAH (or at least lately) to watch the R-Team PTB sh*t themselves over Trump. And I even confess to loving some of what the Donald has said, most especially using his long knives on the Bush Crime syndicate. Yeah, baby.

But the GOP ain't going anywhere, and there's no Atticus out there to put down this d*mn mad dog. The Gee Oh Pee will be with us for a long time to come, and the sad clowns of punditry will ever find a way to blame it all and solely on the DFHs and/or the dreaded DemoRATS. Certainly THEY have no part in how this has played out, doncha know??

Bank on it.

Unknown said...

Donald Walsh: I wouldn't count on any of those people you've mentioned being around four years from now. Even if they are still breathing, they will be too damn old to be very active. If Murdoch leaves all to his son to manage things will be different, I believe. He's a horse of a different color I understand. Limbaugh is losing listeners and sponsors by the day. If their ideology doesn't kill them, time will. And sooner than you might think.

Cinesias said...

Kill the GOP as a national party is essentially the same as killing the GOP.

If the GOP loses the ability to win the White House, you can expect a transition of the few remaining moderate Republicans to the Democratic party's right wing.

And you can expect the Democratic party to have its own internal issues, with a center-right wing eventually breaking off and forming a new party...somewhat like New Labour in the UK.

Please proceed, Strongman Trump.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

"Please proceed, Strongman Trump."

"Nach Trump, Uns"?

Uh, no thanks. I never thought I would find myself rooting for the Establishment of the GOP, but I hope they can thwart Trump--or that if they can't, Hillary and the Democratic Establishment can stop him.

Unknown said...

"death of the GOP". I'll never forget, after the 76 election, Bob Dole's (minority leader) press conference. Paraphrasing: "I don't know if the GOP is going to survive, Stay viable..." Of course the next presidential cycle brought us St Ronnie, and suddenly they were like Lazarus. Just a cautionary tale.