So there you are, a lifelong member of the Conservative Elite. Loyal writer of speeches and tanker of thinks, who has logged enough hours trashing Liberals and prostrating yourself at St. Ronald Reagan's reliquary of terrible ideas that you have become a minor but fixed point in the Wingnut Welfare firmament.
And now that you have tilled the Conservative soil under the blazing LED screen and planted and fertilized and watered and weeded your fields with care -- now that you have lived to see what you have help grow from tiny seedlings of hate and paranoia into something so tall and strong that it blots out the sun...
...you run from your creation as fast as your little legs can carry you.
As a former Dubya speechwriter and author of such books as The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush and An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror (with the monstrous Richard Perle) Mr. David Frum is well-positioned to write a long article for The Atlantic (where he is now employed as a Senior Editor, because that is how the world works) about how fucked up the Republican party is...
...without any unpleasant or inconvenient references as to how it got that way.
Mr. Frum's article gives the reader a decent snapshot of what is happening right now inside moldering corpse of the Party of Lincoln, but it is also carefully calculated to leave the impression that the GOP just wandered in from out of town sometime around 2009, fully formed and neatly bisected between a hapless, out-of-touch donor class --
Yet even as the Republican Main Street protested Obamacare, it rejected the hardening ideological orthodoxy of Republican donors and elected officials. A substantial minority of Republicans—almost 30 percent—said they would welcome “heavy” taxes on the wealthy, according to Gallup. Within the party that made Paul Ryan’s entitlement-slashing budget plan a centerpiece of policy, only 21 percent favored cuts in Medicare and only 17 percent wanted to see spending on Social Security reduced, according to Pew. Less than a third of ordinary Republicans supported a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants (again according to Pew); a majority, by contrast, favored stepped-up deportation.
As a class, big Republican donors could not see any of this, or would not. So neither did the politicians who depend upon them. Against all evidence, both groups interpreted the Tea Party as a mass movement in favor of the agenda of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. One of the more dangerous pleasures of great wealth is that you never have to hear anyone tell you that you are completely wrong.
-- and just-plain-white-folks who have grown intractably bitter and cynical for some reason.
Christ on a flaming hover board, Mr. Frum, of course the Conservative Brain Caste thought they could tell the party base how to hate and who to vote for. Who do you think invested 30 years and untold billions of dollars to manufacture that malleable, ignorant, bigoted cesspit of humanity in the first place, Mr. Frum? Where do you think the money was coming from all those years you were drawing a salary from Bloody Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard, Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and the American Enterprise Institute, Mr. Frum? Who do you think invented the fucking Tea Party out of thin air so the Republican base could have a safe space in which to burn their Bush/Cheney '04 lawn signs and learn to pretend they had never even heard of the GOP, Mr. Frum?
The most darkly hilarious part of this whole farce is that you could open almost any vituperative, foul-mouthed, America-hating, terrorist-loving Liberal blog from almost any point dating back to the dawn of blogging and find us pointing out the Gigantic And Blinding Obvious Thing which Mr. Frum and the rest of his ilk are still struggling mightily to ignore (from remarks I made in the comment section of the late Steve Gilliard's News Blog more than ten years ago, and which Mr. Gilliard saw fit to haul up to his front page):
Monday, March 28, 2005They are seriousDriftglass posted this in comments and it's too damn funny to stay there.IMHO it’s as simple as: “Never jump into bed with someone who’s crazier than you are.”
For the Suburban Gated, the non-deranged gunnies and the Tax Cuts Uber Alles Republicans, it’s all jolly good fun having a romp with the Fundies…as long as they keep delivering the 20% margin the GOP must have to win anything and as long as they stay the fuck away from my house and family, its all just good kinky fun……until the sun comes up, and you realize that the Electoral Candy you were offered was just bait to get you into the Windowless Fundy Panel Truck. Oops.
And now you’re waaaay out in the country somewhere you don’t recognize without your pants, and you start to figure our that all the Burning Crosses and Swastikas and Apocalyptic Paraphernalia that tricks out the inside of the van isn't tatted-up Goth Chick posturing.
And Randall Terry and Tom DeLay wave to you from the front seat and say, “Mornin’ shug! Get ready; we gonna burn us some ‘a them Chirst Hatin’ Abortionists today.” Or Fags. Or Negros. Or Liberals. Or Ay-rabs. Or Jews. Or, really, Anybody.
And all of the slack-jawed yokels who were so eagerly helpful while you were passing you’re Lovely Tax Cuts are sitting around you giggling…and armed to their snaggled teeth.
And then you hear, “Bring Out The Gimp.” (Which, for my money, should be the Democrats’ Lead Media Message for the next four months.)
Oh. God. You mean these crazy fucks were serious? Like, really, really serious?!
No shit they’re serious, Suburban Weekend Bad-Ass -- and it's not exactly like you weren't given Ample Warning: Now they have your shriveled nuts in a razor-lined C-clamp, they want the very high interest vig on the Electoral Loan they made you to pay for your Optional War and Drunken Safety Net Shredding Good Times.As I've been saying, the devil wants his due, and he's come to collect.They thought they could play them forever. I guess forever is today.
Or one could read Dr. Krugman in the New York Times this very week for a less vivid and profane version of the same diagnosis:
...But how can this be happening? After all, the antiestablishment candidates now dominating the field, aside from being deeply ignorant about policy, have a habit of making false claims, then refusing to acknowledge error. Why don’t Republican voters seem to care?Well, part of the answer has to be that the party taught them not to care. Bluster and belligerence as substitutes for analysis, disdain for any kind of measured response, dismissal of inconvenient facts reported by the “liberal media” didn’t suddenly arrive on the Republican scene last summer. On the contrary, they have long been key elements of the party brand. So how are voters supposed to know where to draw the line?...
To speak in the language of your people, they paid for those microbrains, Mr. Frum!
And if the donor class lost control of the chumps they created to a craftier and more entertaining demagogue, well tough titties on them.
14 comments:
I remember creating a table of "Who Would WANT to Vote Republican" all the way back in 2004... and I figured out a list where the only ones who would were angry white males over 30, religiously devout or slut-shaming women over 40, fiscal tax-cut obsessives, pro-war anti-Muslim haters, and racists.
This was 2004. Where was Frum then?
This may be slightly off topic, but when I was in college the biggest bunch of assholes around were the Young Republicans. They were all on-the-make would-be servitors of the rich and powerful. Since neither they nor their sought out masters are the brightest bulbs around (a belief system based on more money making you smarter, taller, and better than everyone else) it's not too surprising their master political plan might be a cockup. The real surprise must be that the mob they created won't do what their betters tell them to.
Krugman is right, except....there are NO antiestablishment candidates in the GOP! If the debates have taught us one thing, it is that all of them are the GOP establishment.
The current kabuki fight between some out-of-touch conservative donor class and the "39%+ support" monster only exists in the fever dreams/spewed propaganda of pearl clutching both siders and conservative media operatives paid to pretend America conservatism is nuanced and intellectual.
My guess is they are more worried that, like a House Republican who got caught on an open mic saying "Obamacare isn't THAT bad", they too one day will be Trumped out of their jobs when their bosses realize the GOP doesn't need anyone using their "inside conservative voice" during prime time anymore.
St. Steve, then:
As I've been saying, the devil wants his due, and he's come to collect.
They thought they could play them forever. I guess forever is today.
Richard Thompson, even earlier ("Did She Jump or Was She Pushed" off 1982's Shoot Out the Lights):
She used to live life, she used to live life with a vengeance
And the chosen would dance, the chosen would dance in attendance
She crossed a lot of people, some she called friends
She thought she'd live forever, but forever always ends
I was hoping Frum's article would get a driftglass review. Very nice. I'll give Frum a slight bit of credit for one thing - he's slowly but surely learning to write these missives without larding them up with lazy anti-Obama mendacity in the misguided hope that he'd be invited back into the Wurlitzer. And with that realization, he's also growing more accurate about actually calling the GOP out for what it's become.
But as our kind host documents, he's nowhere near ready to reckon with the full history of HOW the GOP got here, or his own participation in the cynical cheerleading that egged the braindead dipshit base on, to the point now where they're basically a swarm of untreated psych ward patients speaking in tongues who shouldn't be allowed in public without a chaperone and are hopelessly in love with a neofascist carnival barker who wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire.
In any event, I think we know who is most aggressively pursuing Andrew "Innumerate Tory Douche" Sullivan's wayward market share. It's Frummy boy.
I'll give Trump this, he saw an opportunity, and he seized it. Having $ allows one to seize such an opportunity, but damn if he's not willing to go up there and lie his ass off with the best of them. "Republican party has lost control of its rubes", should be the headline of the year. It _is_ the headline of the year, just can't be printed in the paper, or said on television. "Buffoonish billionaire blusters into big lead", with the sub-headline "Establishment sitting in the pantload it just shit into its pants" has got a pretty good ring to it, too.
@proverbialleadballoon: "Republican party has lost control of its rubes", should be the headline of the year. It _is_ the headline of the year, just can't be printed in the paper, or said on television."
Sure it can, as long as at least half the blame is attributed to Obama.
They should make a poster of the comment you wrote in 2005, have it laminated and put in every mailbox in the country. Maybe it will scare some of the people that think it's a fine thing to vote Republican
I found my old webpage from 2004 listing the two sides of who should and should NOT vote for the GOP... re-posted it here http://noticeatrend.blogspot.com/2015/12/looking-forward-at-coming-gop-madness.html
I saw Frum on MSNBC (anybody surprised?) today, and he said that Gingrich ran as an "anti-establishment" candidate.
Yes he did.
Frum, that is. Not Newt.
@Unknown: if only the uppity, Muslim, America-hating inept and out-of-touch Tyrant/anti-Christ/Alinsky would be more equable and amiable in his relations with republicans.
I suppose I will never cease to marvel that the poor schmucks of the GOP Base really think that Obummer, that diligent kisser of the feathery hindquarters of the McDuck Elite, is some kind of radical leftist.
Take 30% Groundhog day and 70% Alien,
You get an ever ending loop where the alien to continue to survive, multiply and live its life style parasitically rapes its prey, impregnates it and takes all from its host.
In the movie "Alien", the spider like creature springs out and latches itself to the face to seed the host and clutches the life of its prey around the neck.
Once the vector completes it's life cycle of seeding, the creature dies off.
The reproduction is complete as a salmon swimming upstream. The offspring develops to be able to sustain life on its own. It bursts out of the host in the most direct manner, Leaving the host with nothing.
If we took that 30% of Alien from the seeding to the parasites birth and played it over and over in a loop. I believe we will discover the definition of insanity as it applies Tri-astro-Quantum physically to how you described (rightfully) our corporate controlled media. Remember in the Alien movie, it was a corporation looking for an return on their investment seeking out the alien.
If it is watching the GOP debates, FOX, the "filling minds full of mush AM crowd. The parasite bursts from their chests leaving a dead soul with the vectors life cycle to only begin again. IF the movie ever played out, Brooks and others) and his noble host body would find a huge hole in his chest.
This loop repeats over and over. to the unsuspecting host who is so mesmerized by this species that cannot remember what it looks like.
Getting desperate. might go to Pet Smart for some Frontline. Hey, if it works on blood sucking ,lyme disease spreading Conservative Ticks. It is worth a try.
As a casual observer from the authorised of the pond: I would urgently advise US political commentators and the voting public to study both century German history esp. the rise of Hitler / Fascism. Niemöller poignantly paraphrased how it all happened
„Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Kommunist.
Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.
Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.
Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.“[28]
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Niemöller#Zitat
Note in the German original (as in reality) Communists (anti-Capitalists) were the primary targets, most English translations quietly ignore that little detail...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
For those, for whom history is too much hard work, they can watch Cabaret and pay a bit of attention, for once for the running narrative accompanying the central love story: The bit of roughing up, putting in his place, the blood on the street...
It really is painful to watch how the supposedly liberal Anglo-Saxon Media has helped to unleash the demagogues on all of us.
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