Monday, March 06, 2017

Dear Republicans: Help Is Not On The Way


Sure, the mighty Bush-Off Machine is still parked in the GOP garage, but the question is, can it be retrofitted for the Age of Trump fast enough to get tens of million Republican idiots off the hook yet again?



I doubt it. 

Because in case you hadn't noticed. it has taken the Trumpshirts less than 40 days to be force from their exalted 2004 Bush re-election settings ("We won!  You lost!  Bush is a genius!  Suck it Libtards!") ...

... to the seething, defensive crouch of their 2005 Bush Iraq/Katrina/Terri Schiavo settings ("Everything on non-Fox teevee is fake! It's all lies by the terrible Murrica-hating Libtard media conspiracy!")

Which means that the moment when they start trying to make with the tricorn hats and little Gadsden flags again and pretend that they were innocent "independents" who have never even heard of Don the Con can't be far away.  

Because as I have said before, I've never gone wrong betting on the racism and arrogant ignorance of the Right: I've only erred occasionally on the point spread.  And predicting Conservative behavior is dead-easy because traditionally they only have four basic settings:
  • Arrogant triumphalism: The aforementioned "We won!  You lost!  Bush is a genius!  Suck it Libtards!"
  • All-out denialism: The aforementioned "Everything I see on non-Fox teevee is fake! Terrible lies by the terrible Murrica-hating Libtard media conspiracy!"
  • Bargaining: It doesn't matter whether or not I'm a brain-washed moron...because Both Sides!"
  • Running Away: As I pointed out back during the first Great Skedaddle back in 2009, because Conservatives are by nature abject moral cowards, their last "out" is doing like German soldiers did after the fall of Berlin: stop running away from the catastrophe they created only long enough to burn their uniforms.
The big difference this time around is that the implosion of the Failed Trump Administration is coming on so much faster and more spectacularly than the implosion of the Failed Bush Administration, that we now need to include a fifth basic setting for Conservatives:  Pleading Ignorance.

Of course Conservatives are ignorant -- deeply and malignantly ignorant.  This comes from letting lying demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity take a dump in their skulls for the last 20 years.  But since the GOP OnStar only permits turns in one direction, traditionally the only way Conservatives have been permitted to be "wrong" about anything was that they were "not Conservative enough!".  From Crain's, October, 2015:
Why Paul Ryan isn't hard core enough for the right
After which there is usually a show-trial, followed by the offender crawling back to Limbaugh an giving him a big, wet one right on his gargantuan ass.  From Politico, March, 2009:
Steele to Rush: I'm sorry

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says he has reached out to Rush Limbaugh to tell him he meant no offense when he referred to the popular conservative radio host as an “entertainer” whose show can be “incendiary.”

“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”...
But this time the Pig People's Retreat from Moscow on the Potomac is being forced down their throats over a matter of weeks not years...
From PBS: 
Keystone pipeline won't use US steel despite Trump pledge. 
And -- surprise! --  a whole lot of that steel has come from...Russia! 
From Vox:   
Republicans Are Hiding Their Healthcare Plan in a Basement Because Everyone Hates It
The Party of Personal Responsibility had seven years to work on this.  They loudly and proudly voted on it 62 times but now they're hiding their plan in a shoe-box in Paul Ryan's locker.   Because there is no plan.  Because there never was a plan.  Because they're liars who got lazy in their lies because, let's face it, the average Conservative is a moron who will believe anything, so why not piss in their ear and call it Evian.  Because that's how you win with the Pig People.  
From Vox again:
Mike Pence used private email as governor, and it got hacked
It was everything Clinton's critics alleged.
Lock him up! Lock him up!
And there's the rub.

If the current trend continues, there is simply not enough time to burn all the MAGA hats and there is no decontamination shower powerful enough to hose off the stink of their vote in such a hurry.  So as giant slabs of Trump bullshit burst into flames and fall into their personal lives, expect to see more and more Trumpkins reduced to flapping their arms and pleading that they wuz just plain flim-flammed by Orange Julius Caesar.

From The LA Times:
She voted for Trump. Now she fears losing the Obamacare plan that saved her life.

After struggling for years without insurance, the 55-year-old former small-business owner — who has battled diabetes, high blood pressure and two cancers —  credits Obamacare with saving her life.

Watson also voted for Donald Trump, believing the businessman would bring change. She dismissed his campaign pledges to scrap the Affordable Care Act as bluster.

Now, as she watches the new president push to kill the law that provided her with a critical lifeline, Watson finds herself among many Trump supporters who must reconcile their votes with worries about the future of their healthcare.

Watson, a proud, salty woman who was uninsurable a few years ago, isn’t ready to renounce Trump. But she’s increasingly frustrated by his vague promises to replace Obamacare with something better.

“I’ve been through enough,” Watson said recently, sitting on the patio outside her mobile home, down a sandy road in a rural corner of northern Florida. “I don’t want to go back.”
...

We went through everything we had,” Watson said, including selling off her retirement accounts and mortgaging their home. Friends helped her navigate hospitals where one noted that Watson often was treated like a “second-class citizen” because she lacked insurance. Watson’s aging parents helped with many medical bills.

For a short time, Watson thought she’d found relief when an insurance company agreed to provide coverage. But when she tried to use the plan, she discovered it didn’t cover major medical costs, a trap many consumers fell into when insurers were subject to less oversight. Insurers now must cover a basic set of benefits, though GOP leaders are calling for such mandates to be scaled back.

Watson estimates she and her husband ultimately ran up more than $100,000 in medical debt.
...
Passage of the Affordable Care Act finally offered some relief, thanks to a small temporary program created in 2011 for people like Watson who had been denied coverage.

She was able to get on a plan that ultimately cost $363 a month and is now cancer free...
Ten years ago, the Right had the time and money and (most importantly) the Beltway media complicity necessary to build two different-but-interrelated Bush Era Accountability Escape Modules. For Beltway hacks and other public persons who had accumulated long and ineradicable records of cheer-leading for Team Cheney, they erected the High and Holy Church of Both Siderism.
And, boy howdy, the pews have been packed and the collection plates overflowing ever since!

And for the Great Unwashed party base they created the Fabulous, Tea-Baggulous Bush-Off Machine.  Where...
For the price of their souls and a couple of bucks

The Bush-Bellies could now buy some nips and some tucks.
But now there is no time or money for such craftsmanship.  Now, there is just an urgent need on the part of Beltway elite to get as far away from the Trumpocalypse as fast as possible, which is why "respectable" Conservatives and Both Siderists in the media are now frantically trying to pretend that, somehow, Trump is not a Republican. and that "Trumpism" is some bizarre anomaly which no one could possibly have seen coming, and not the logical and obvious apotheosis of a Party and Movement which they have spent the last 30 years building.

David Brooks NYT, January 31, 2017:
In the first place, the Trump administration is not a Republican administration...
This time, because of the breakneck speed at which The Bastard President is losing his mind in public, there is no time to build a great, spacious ark with Both Siderists in the first-class cabins and the Pig People down in Tea Party steerage capable of carrying the whole, miserable mob of them to safety.

This time the Beltway is throwing together a lifeboat out of whatever they can lay their hands on:  a lifeboat just big enough for themselves and their pals.  So unless Pence and Ryan and McConnell conjure a way to get Don the Con removed from office very soon and then stage a massive "He Fooled Us All!" parade down 5th Avenue, there is no one coming with a magic machine to absolve the party base of their malignant idiocy anytime soon.

And that should make the next several months very interesting indeed.  

12 comments:

SHOON said...

Oh man you overlooked the most critical GOP position of all:

MINORITY REPORT: "oh poor me" those damn all powerful collectivists and their jackbooted social engineering have stripped my freedoms away and their awesome cosmic power now threatens to make Amerika unrecognizable! Plus: freemasons!

trgahan said...

The Bush Off Machine has simply been retooled.

Instead of removing "Trump" from Republicans it is making the 68 million Hillary voters disappear with the media's endless profiles of Trump voters and their "economic anxiety," hate of political correctness, "distrust of institutions," and how they resent liberals for calling them stupid, racist, or bigoted.

The editors have learned where to cut these profiles off right before the crazy comes up. They never point out that White Working Class believed the same shit 40 years ago when they were wealthier and more secure. They definitely never ask "Where do you get your news from? How often to you consume it?"

The Republican women who voted her healthcare away gets a long, gothic tragedy-style, story. The Transgender person who just lost their rights, the deported "Bad Hombre" middle aged women with a brain tumor, the man who helped US forces now barred from entering do not.

BTW, Trump is still at 80 percent approval among Republicans. The administration looks bad, but it is still strong. Any retreat we're seeing a faint to distract from the 1000 lbs of hurt the House is about to ram through as fast as possible.

Randle Aubrey said...

If only there was a way that morons like the one who voted against her own fucking cancer treatments could exclusively feel the full weight of their stupid decisions prior to the rest of us. We might not have to deal with stupid shit like this nearly so often.

ohsopolite said...

Actual paid protesters, mobilize!
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/05/us/politics/koch-brothers-affordable-care-act.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com

Unknown said...

No matter how the Republicans destroy the social safety net, their voters will always blame Obama and the Democrats. Especially that awful witch Hillary Clinton.

bt1138 said...

"Bush Era Accountability Escape Modules"

--------------

You really have a way with words, I must say.

Davis said...

...a great, spacious ark with Both Siderists in the first-class cabins and the Pig People down in Tea Party steerage capable of carrying the whole, miserable mob of them to safety.

The perfect metaphor.

Robt said...

"She voted for Trump. Now she fears losing the Obamacare plan that saved her life."

What other way would you think showing appreciation to a president for that health care?
matter fact, the applause to those Democrats that got the ACA passed against the will of Rush Limp-paw. Well they got full applause as they were voted out for their effort and consideration for America's health care. Not health care for liberals. Not health care for the wealthy. not for the republican.
-----------For Americans-------It's economy hand stability

The guy in the White House who took 4 war time deferments and during the campaign bolstered how proud he was not to pay taxes to support not just the country in general. But specifically didn't pay taxes to support the veterans killed or wounded.
Now there is something they somehow found in their inner hearts to reward the presidency too.

It is not within the conservative ideology to use Government to regulate,free markets like, healthcare industry, insurance Co, medical eqp, Pharma.

Even those who are going to lose their health care are going to find a warmness in their conservative chests (mistaken for a heart) A throb in the skull they would hope is a sign of a logic found inside the brain). That warm feeling they get when someone gets it stuck to them. You know, what they have coming. Seen in movies everywhere. The villain gets his just deserves.
Their vilan vision is so blurred corrective lenses will do nothing.

But again, that warm feeling in their chest at someone getting it stuffed to them, might be the cancer eating their innards like a hungry zombie.

paul Ryan health care,

You have access if you can afford it.
Busting unions and removing labor rights to improve your career.
Tax cuts from the repeal of the ACA.
Defund Planned parenthood for Jesus.

The good old days of unabashed medical bankruptcies and God's will calling souls back to heaven.
I mean, Scalia had ObamaCare and look what happened to him?

But all you folkds that canot afford health insurance for you and or your family. Nor a decent policy to truly cover you and your family.

Understand, there are people that can afford it and their insurance went up $40 dollar a year on their premiums.

Those that cannot afford insurance are blessed to pay taxes to provide those in congress (and their families) with super health coverage. Because freedom, Ayn Rand and free markets. yadda, yoda, yaddah,.....

Unknown said...

You forgot the blame everything on Obama stage, and didn't use the word "cuck" enough when speaking about the Breitbartians.

But other than that, spot on, I now channel Driftglass whenever both-siderism rears its ugly head, which is often.

impeach him said...

yes his is a republican administration. You voted as a republican for him , under the republican banner. That makes him elected by republicans and is a REPUBLICAN ADMINISTRATION that you all created . Now you want to backwash?

Unknown said...

Oh how I hope the mighty Drift Glass turns his rapier wit on Mr. David Frum.

June Butler said...

DG, you're on a roll. You write far better than a lot of folks who get paid.