Charles Pierce Goes Boom

“If I told them once, I told them a thousand times:
'Republicans' first, 'Puppet Show' second...”

From Mr. Pierce:

...The power rests with Ted Yoho because the American political system has tolerated carefully cultivated ignorance and carefully tailored bigotry for far too long. Ted Yoho has been coming for years. Ted Yoho was made inevitable by the NCPAC campaigns of the late 1970's and by the elevation of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980 and, subsequently, to an artificially exalted place in our history after he left office. The Republican party reveled in all the forces that are now tearing it apart. The Democratic party was criminally negligent and abdicated its profound responsibility to fight against those forces; indeed, it spent the better part of the 1980's and 1990's trying to surf the wave itself. The Democratic Leadership Council, and Blue Dog Democrats generally, bear a heavy burden of responsibility for failing to demonstrate to the American people in election after election how extreme the Republicans were becoming.

A great portion of the courtier press that now expresses horror at what is going on now went gleefully along for the ride as it became inevitable. Any members of that courtier press who relished the pursuit of Bill Clinton's penis, or conducted the absurd campaign of untruth that was waged against Al Gore between 1999 and 2000 lost the right years ago credibly to denounce conservative extremism and Republican vandalism. That means you, Roger Simon of Politico, who was so shocked the other day to discover that racism may have afflicted the process of government since the president's election, but who once claimed to right to make candidates like Gore "jump through hoops" for the pure hella-fun of it. That means you, Chris Matthews, who chased the presidential dick for two years, all the way through an impeachment process that was a constitutional absurdity, but who now discovers that the campaign of destruction never truly stopped. That means you, Andrew Sullivan, with your current existential torment over How It Came To This. (Pro tip: The Bell Curve? Betsy McCaughey on health-care? Fifth-column liberals? You helped.) This means you, David Brooks, sucking your thumb on book leave while the monster that you got rich feeding grows into its full power. This means all of you who went along for the ride on torture, and on Iraq, and who hid under the bed after 9/11. This is how the power came to rest with Ted Yoho, who is a fool and a know-nothing. This is how historical inevitability is created. This is how its momentum becomes unstoppable. This is how the wreckage piles up.

...

It's nothing that the Left hasn't been saying forever, but clearly the one million times we have already said it were insufficient and I momentarily tire of reposting my own material from 2005 :-)