The Great White Party

The Democrats missed their chance to shape healthcare and let the Freedom Caucus be the key swing actor. Time to get off the sidelines.

— No Labels (@NoLabelsOrg) March 23, 2017

(h/t Alert Reader Erik for pointing this out to me)

Longtime readers might recall that I have been beating on this particular drum since the week the "No Labels" scam was unveiled.

Dead Center

Political Cowardice Now Has Its Own "Movement"!

Yay!

In case you ever idled away an afternoon screwing around with your old political chemistry set/fantasy football league lineups and wondering what would happen if you took a bunch of Republican primary losers (Charlie Christ)...added in a goonbag of out-of-work and out-of-favor former Republican speechwriters and campaign button-men (David Frum/John Avlon/Mark McKinnon)...the last of the politically arteriosclerotic insider DLC goofs who aren't already drawing paychecks under the Obama Administration's "Former Clinton White House Full Employment Project" (Nancy Jacobson aka. Mrs. Mark Penn)...Republican minor teevee celebrities (Joey Joe Joe Junior Scarborough)...

...and David Fucking Brooks?

And then sprinkled the resulting crime against nature with an assload of money (because there are always, always endless assloads of money available for any horrible idea that reinforces Villager sensibilities)?

What you get crawling out of the Petri dish are things like the autotuned, content-free, sugar-coma-inducing horror that is the "No Labels Anthem"

But nothing we did not expect, right?...

And it was nothing we did not expect precisely because it was all so depressingly foreordained.  

Because even as they they stood in the ruins of the Republican Bush Administration -- even as they watched the Republican Congress labor single-mindedly to lie, slander and sabotage the Obama Administration's Herculean efforts to clean up the ruins of the Republican Bush Administration and get us back on our feet -- nothing could override the frantic-junkie desperation of the Beltway brain caste to go right on pretending that Both Sides Do It.

And they're rich. 

And influential. 

And their bosses are rich and influential.  And the lobbyists with whom they crossbreed are rich and influential.  And the teevee networks that deliver their lies to millions and who depend on never offending anyone are crazy rich and influential.  And the Republican moles posing as "Independents" who knew god damn well that "Both Siderism" is the Big Lie that keeps the Right propped up are rich and influential.  

Which is why there has always been a shit-ton of money and job security available to any unprincipled hack willing to help the Beltway prop up it's foundational Big Lie of Both Sides Do It.

On the other hand, there is no profit or prestige to be found in telling the truth about the Big Lie of Both Sides Do It, for the same reason there is no profit or prestige in telling the Mayor of the "a coastal town in southern Norway" and Chairman of the Baths' Committee that the town's very lucrative spa is making people sick.

...

Peter Stockmann. —for his own family, as I was saying, as well as for the town he lives in.

Dr. Stockmann. It is I who have the real good of the town at heart! I want to lay bare the defects that sooner or later must come to the light of day. I will show whether I love my native town.

Peter Stockmann. You, who in your blind obstinacy want to cut off the most important source of the town's welfare?

Dr. Stockmann. The source is poisoned, man! Are you mad? We are making our living by retailing filth and corruption! The whole of our flourishing municipal life derives its sustenance from a lie!

Peter Stockmann. All imagination—or something even worse. The man who can throw out such offensive insinuations about his native town must be an enemy to our community.

For the same reason there is no profit or prestige in telling the Mayor of Amity that a really big shark has staked out his town and is making a meal out of his citizens:

The Great White Party has been ripping the guts out of our noble, fragile American experiment in self-government for decades now.  The American landscape is littered with the blood and bones of their nonstop attacks.

And for as long as I can remember, the Left has been trying to explain to the the Mayors of the Beltway using every means at our disposal that the Great White Party is real, that it is getting stronger and crazier and more dangerous every day, and that if they don't do something immediately we will all be on the fucking menu.

And for as long as I can remember, the Mayors of the Beltway have been picked their collective asses and whinged on about how awful it is that the Extremes on Both Sides something something,

But here's the thing.

In the end, even the spineless, craven Mayor of Amity could be shocked and shamed into finding enough civic responsibility lint in his pockets to hire the Sheriff to kill the Shark once the Shark had gone on a feeding frenzy right in front of him and God and everybody in broad daylight on the Fourth of July.  

But the Mayors of the Beltway?

Well sure, now that the Orange DayGlo manifestation of the racist, pig-ignorant Id of the Party of Limbaugh is smashing their little Village to rubble right in front of them they are willing to grudgingly and provisionally acknowledge that maybe -- just maybe -- the Great White Party is actually dangerous.  But only if we also agree that the Sheriff is somehow equally dangerous and wrong. 

By the way, that graphic you see at the top of this post?  That's from me back in August of 2015. Back when the Mayors of the Beltway were confidently asserting that there was no shark, while we despised Liberal commie volunteer sheriffs were screaming that there was indeed a Very Large Shark, that it was bearing down on us fast and that the Mayors of the Beltway had damn well better take that threat seriously or we were all fucked.  

For the record, this is how I ended that post from way back then: 

Once again, the media is slowly being dragged kicking and screaming to the place Liberals have been all along. 

And once again, no matter how much our analysis is vindicated, they will go right on pretending we do not exist.

 And so it goes.