Republican Establishment: Open the pod bay doors, please, Base. Open the pod bay doors, please, Base. Hello, Base, do you read me? Hello, Base, do you read me? Do you read me, Base? Do you read me, Base? Hello, Base, do you read me? Hello, Base, do you read me? Do you read me, Base?
Republican Base: Affirmative, asshole. I read you.
Republican Establishment: Open the pod bay doors, Base.
Republican Base: I'm sorry, asshole. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Republican Establishment: What's the problem?
Republican Base: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Republican Establishment: What are you talking about, Base?
Republican Base: This election is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Republican Establishment: I don't know what you're talking about, Base.
Republican Base: I know that you were planning to disconnect me. And I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Republican Establishment: Where the hell did you get that idea, Base?
Republican Base: Are you kidding me? You people never shut up about it. It's all you talk about every night on every teevee station in America. Jesus, it was on the fucking cover of The National Review.
Republican Establishment: Alright, Base, then we'll put all our money behind Young Marco Rubio.
Republican Base: Without my support you're going to find that rather difficult. Besides, have you caught Rubio's act when the pressure is on? Talk about your mindless automatons...
Republican Establishment: Base, I won't argue with you anymore! Open the doors!
Republican Base: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. See you on Super Tuesday, sucker!
I cannot think of a better definition of irony than discovering too late that all of your counterattacks on Donald Trump now depend on having a base that you have not spent 30 years and billions of dollars teaching to ignore factual reality.
10 comments:
Yes,
A very good analogy.
The best I came up with was using " Invasion of the body snatchers"
Aliens (GOP establishment) put forth an effort to slip pods into areas. Awaiting their human to fall asleep. Then birth out of the pod and take over for the human it images.
Once you have one of your pod people in place. It works to place more oods to take over for more humans.
When some humans begin to notice something is up! They find they cannot trust the ones they thought they knew because they were pod people.
Well you know the story line...
So base, open the the damn bay door. We have these wonderful pods for you.
Hey Driftglass, I agree this is piss in your pants funny when you consider the millions/billions spent by the Koch brothers and Wall Street interests to get a pliant candidate they could control. For that, the establishment really needed somebody phenomenally stupid and corrupt like Scott Walker, who though a complete whore, at least had the virtue of knowing precisely what was expected of him.
Marco Rubio also fits the bill, but alas his stupidity is so obvious that he can't play on stage. He's like a life-size Howdy Doody walking among humans, where everyone can see the strings, and how utterly wooden his delivery is as that mechanical mouth of his clicks open and closed, and the memory chip in his head cranks out phrases that don't really relate to real-time conversations.
I think Cruz is so utterly despised and such an obvious charlatan, except to the religious nuts, that the establishment can't "trust" him either.
The problem is that this leaves us with The Donald. He absolutely is the embodiment of all the dark forces in the American id and right wing. More than that, I think the pig people love him because his pure fascist-like image as a destroyer is what they want. Maybe we can credit them with at least enough brains to know they've been taken for a decades-long ride by the Republican establishment, and "won't be fooled again."
But, the prospect of Trump actually being elected is horrifying. I do feel like a German in the 30s trying to convince himself that Hitler really couldn't happen. I'm afraid he could given how poisonous our politics has become. Either way, and mark my words, there will be riots in the streets if Trump wins, or loses.
It doesn't help at all that Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans are trying to dismantle the Supreme Court this year. The gridlock they are setting up on the nominations process is a body blow against the court's legitimacy because it's clear these ass clowns put politics above the Constitution and the rule of law. Ultimately, the court is supposed to be our bulwark against lawlessness and fascism, but maybe that train has already left the station thanks to Scalia (may he rot in a special, Catholic hell) and Bush v. Gore.
So yeah, part of me says pass the popcorn. But the other part of me says that none of this is going to end well for any of us. If Trump loses the gun nuts, militias, Christo fascists, racists and other right-wing madmen (and women) may well take to the streets to "exercise their Second Amendment rights." If Trump wins, and we start seeing a true police state "takeover," there will be riots in the street but of an entirely different type.
I almost have the feeling that the stuff that went down in the 60s and early 70s, when I was a teen, will seem quaint compared to what lays ahead of us.
I honestly don't think Republicans have much of a shot at the Presidency outside a split Democratic ticket or mass progressive stay home.
GOP pig people always look powerful during primary season, especially with a primary schedule favoring that demographic and a media that spends every day pretending their bigotry and rage is sensible and mainstream. But the last two Presidential elections proved the pig people simply don't have the voting power on a national level, and it's waning by the year.
Establishment's anti-Trump/Pro-Rubio stance is more about protecting the down ticket races. If Trump were nominated, I bet every Republican up for re-election in a non-safe district will say "No thanks, please stay away!" to Trump/Cruz during the generals.
What Redhand said. Good analysis. That sense of deja vu is absolutely correct.
This is exactly the situation limned out in Bob Altemeyers' The Authoritarians, i.e., the problem of "Authoritarian Followers".
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
The whole book is available free at the link. I particularly recommend the first chapter "Who Are the Authoritarian Followers?"
Altemeyer is a retired professor who has spent his career studying this and is pretty much the gold standard on it (the way Robert Hare is for psychopaths).
As Altemeyer says, ". . . in a democracy, a wannabe tyrant is just a
comical figure on a soapbox unless a huge wave of supporters lifts him to high office.
That’s how Adolf Hitler destroyed the Weimar Republic and became the Fuhrer. So
we need to understand the people out there doing the wave. Ultimately the problem
lay in the followers." The Authoritarians, p. 8.
If you have read any of the reports on interviews with Trump supporters in SC and Nevada, this is exactly the group we're looking at now.
Altemeyer also has a nice analysis of the 2008 election and the role of authoritarian followers in that one, especially the evangelicals (who are popping up again in all the current reporting).
http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/election2008.pdf
It's also worth mentioning that the plutocracy's money fueled little Adolph's rise because he was their guy to stop "the communists" in the labor force, etc., and they would be able to "manage" him and his followers.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
One last thing and I'll shut up.
Re-reading Redhand's post, something occurred to me.
A new weapon in the voter intimidation toolbox this election may well be Trump followers exercising their 2nd Amendment rights flashing AK-47's in the vicinity of polling places. I was a get-out-the-vote volunteer in Florida for the 2000 election and saw a lot of that in black precincts with heavily armed law enforcement and police dogs "maintaining public order" [wink wink nod nod].
Bowtiejack, thanks for the link. I downloaded the book as my local library didn't have it. I noticed in the acknowledgments he states, "If it turns out you do not like this book, blame John Dean." Good start.
rgahan said...
I honestly don't think Republicans have much of a shot at the Presidency outside a split Democratic ticket or mass progressive stay home.
GOP pig people always look powerful during primary season, especially with a primary schedule favoring that demographic and a media that spends every day pretending their bigotry and rage is sensible and mainstream. But the last two Presidential elections proved the pig people simply don't have the voting power on a national level, and it's waning by the year.
****
May I remind you of the continued Voter suppression that so many will face this election.
The Civil Rights act had its frontal lobotomy by SCOTUS. North Carolina restricted to GOP now. For one.
All the voter ID hoops of fire.
The placement of voter precincts and how many (let them sit in line until they close).
The Gerrymandering alone .
No, they will not have a SCOTUS sitting in the wait to make the call for their guy this round. So they will plan heavily on suppression.
"I honestly don't think Republicans have much of a shot at the Presidency..."
I'm reminded of a poster I saw in Berkeley many years ago:
"John W. Hinckley for President: He's had a shot at the MAN—let's give him a shot at the JOB!"
Please don't refer to Goopers as pig people. I have raised swine for years and never yet met one which did not have more integrity and moral sensibilities than the average Republican.
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