Reason Died On The Right Long Ago

But apparently the stink of its rotting corpse and the roar of the wingnut mob as they dance triumphantly around its remains are only now penetrating the quiet, expensive suites of the men and women who decide what we as a nation will see on our teevees and read in our newspapers.

Pity that they're about 25 years too late.

Anyway, I thought now might be a good time for this timely reminder from the Time Before Trump that the Republican Pretty Hate Machines has always been this bad (from March, 2012) --

...
If this is your first exposure to American Conservatism, what you must understand is that ever since they got bent over the barrel at Appomattox Courthouse --

-- and forced to surrender on terms set by the Union devils, Southern White bigots have made it a point of honor never to apologize for any of the loathsome, depraved, anti-American things they say and do, but to instead stand proudly up for their heritage as inbred, rage-drunk, racist shitbags.

On the upside, they pay really, really well.

-- and that the tales of some vanished race of Reasonable,  Grown-Up Republicans for whom the Beltway Media now so piously pines have always just been so much Beltway bunkum. That these mythical Reasonable,  Grown-Up Republicans were always willing to snuggle up to monsters and pander to bigots in order to win election (from Politico in March, 2015:)

[Rush Limbaugh's] first national show was August 1, 1988, too late in that year’s presidential election cycle to have any say or sway. But the next time around was different. And Limbaugh wasn’t sold on Jeb Bush’s father. George H.W. Bush, he thought, was an unrugged Ivy League elite, and one who ran against Ronald Reagan in the primaries in 1980 and decried Reagan’s trickle-down economic philosophy as “voodoo economics.”  Limbaugh idolizes Reagan. He calls him Ronaldus Magnus. Early in 1992, Limbaugh took aim at a sitting Republican president, making it clear to his 13.5 million listeners that he preferred Pat Buchanan, Bush’s ultraconservative challenger in the primaries who said AIDS was “retribution for violating the laws of nature” and that he wanted Limbaugh to be his communications director.

The president’s response to this assault from his right flank was to make nice. He invited Limbaugh to the White House. Roger Ailes, a Bush adviser and a Limbaugh adviser, too, and now, of course, the boss of Fox News, played matchmaker. One night that June, Bush showed Limbaugh to the Lincoln Bedroom. He even toted his luggage.

“It was a thrill,” Limbaugh said the following week in an interview with The Associated Press. “The Lincoln Bedroom—that’s for people like Winston Churchill.”

Limbaugh insisted the visit wasn’t an effort to curry favor—“he never once asked about going on my show,” he said—but the courting of Limbaugh continued. He sat in the president’s box at the Astrodome in Houston at the Republican National Convention in August.

Limbaugh’s anti-Bush stance softened.

Bush lost, of course, and into the White House moved Bill and Hillary Clinton, whose power and shortcomings fueled Limbaugh’s ascent.

So it is long past time to stop pretending that there is anything left on the Right worth saving --

Schumer helped craft legislation in 2013 that would have killed diversity visas but was blocked by House GOP. https://t.co/N9T8sHIomm

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) November 1, 2017

-- or anyone on the Right worth listening to. (from, God help me, The Hill):

Poll: Vast majority of Trump voters say he should stay in office even if Russia collusion is proven

We're at locked in a ferocious cold war with these people.

And those of us who live inside enemy territory -- who have listened to their propaganda networks for decades, who have watched friends and relatives turn into mindless, Limbaugh-replicants for decades, and have been warning about their clearly-stated goals and intentions, their racism, their paranoia and their mindless Orwellian madness for decades -- are feeling distinctly like the Union soldiers who found a copy Robert E. Lee’s orders detailing the Confederates’ plan for the Antietam campaign, just sitting in a field in Maryland.  

From History.com:

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The paper was addressed to Confederate General D.H. Hill. Its title read, “Special Order No. 191, Headquarters, Army of Northern Virginia.” Realizing that they had discovered a copy of the Confederate operation plan, Bloss and Mitchell quickly passed it up the chain of command. By chance, the division adjutant general, Samuel Pittman, recognized the handwriting on the orders as that of a colleague from the prewar army, Robert Chilton, who was the adjutant general to Robert E. Lee.

Pittman took the order to McClellan. The Union commander had spent the previous week mystified by Lee’s operations, but now the Confederate plan was clear. He reportedly gloated, “Here is a paper with which if I cannot whip Bobbie Lee, I will be willing to go home.” McClellan now knew that Lee’s forces were split into five parts and scattered over a 30-mile stretch, with the Potomac River in between. At least eight miles separated each piece of Lee’s army, and McClellan was just a dozen miles from the nearest Confederate unit at South Mountain. Bruce Catton, the noted Civil War historian, observed that no general in the war “was ever given so fair a chance to destroy the opposing army one piece at a time.”

Yet McClellan squandered the opportunity. His initial jubilation was overtaken by his caution. He believed that Lee possessed a far greater number of troops than the Confederates actually had, despite the fact that the Maryland invasion resulted in a high rate of desertion among the Southerners. McClellan was also excruciatingly slow to respond to the information in the so-called Lost Order. He took 18 hours to set his army in motion, marching toward Turner’s Gap and Crampton’s Gap in South Mountain, a 50-mile long ridge that was part of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Lee, who was alerted to the approaching Federals, sent troops to plug the gaps, allowing him time to gather his scattered units.

Behold, a Tip Jar!