The Invisible Empire of Donald Trump

In Hitler's bunker, he repeatedly said that Army Group Steiner would rescue Berlin. The fact that Army Group Steiner was a ramshackle group of units and unable to save itself was of no concern to Hitler. In his mind, Army Group Steiner was the solution to the desperate straits of the German Army...

--  Steve Gilliard, The News Blog

The brain-rot that has destroyed the American political media really took off when they tried to bend the story they had into the story they desperately wanted.

The story they had is that the GOP has gone mad and is trashing the country.  Simple, fact-based, plain as day and staring them in the face for years.  The story they wanted -- the story that keeps the lights on at Morning Joe, keeps the hot meals coming at POTUS radio and keeps a roof over the heads of frauds like David Brooks and Ron Fourner -- is that somehow Both Sides are always equally to blame for everything and that a mysterious and invisible Third Force is lurking just below the surface of the American polity just waiting the sweep the unrighteous corrupt duopoly (tm Ron Fournier) aside and restore the Mighty and Reasonable Center.  In the Articles of Beltway Faith, the restoration of the Center is the Prince that was Promised -- a Son of Fire and the Warrior of Light who shall unite the warring houses of Simpson and Bowles and balance the budget by 2020 without harming a single gray hair on grandma's head.

But to incarnate the Center, the Beltway has to conjure a Miraculous MacGuffin out of thin air.  A science fiction plot device like the Ninth Ray or the Speed Force on which the Beltway's entire mythology hangs and which they routinely invoke explain why all of the prophesied events foretold in their Articles of Faith will definitely happen despite the fact that no one outside of the Beltway cult can find any evidence anywhere that any of these predictions are based on anything but the denizens of the Acela corridor bell jar re-breathing each other wishful thinking farts for the last 20 years.

This is why Very Serious People continue to get biennial erections over the imminent arrival of Imaginary Independents who will definitely swing the election back to the Reasonable Center this time even though, like the Great Pumpkin, the Imaginary Independents never actually show up.  From David Fucking Brooks, a decade ago...

Party No. 3

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: August 10, 2006

There are two major parties on the ballot, but there are three major parties in America. There is the Democratic Party, the Republican Party and the McCain-Lieberman Party...

The McCain-Lieberman Party begins with a rejection of the Sunni-Shiite style of politics itself. It rejects those whose emotional attachment to their party is so all-consuming it becomes a form of tribalism, and who believe the only way to get American voters to respond is through aggression and stridency.

The flamers in the established parties tell themselves that their enemies are so vicious they have to be vicious too. They rationalize their behavior by insisting that circumstances have forced them to shelve their integrity for the good of the country. They imagine that once they have achieved victory through pulverizing rhetoric they will return to the moderate and nuanced sensibilities they think they still possess.

But the experience of DeLay and the net-root DeLays in the Democratic Party amply demonstrates that means determine ends. Hyper-partisans may have started with subtle beliefs, but their beliefs led them to partisanship and their partisanship led to malice and malice made them extremist, and pretty soon they were no longer the same people.

The McCain-Lieberman Party counters with constant reminders that country comes before party, that in politics a little passion energizes but unmarshaled passion corrupts, and that more people want to vote for civility than for venom...

This is why Very Serious People were so fucking giddy over a Republicans rebranding scam called the "Tea Party" even though it was self-evident at the time to anyone who was not a Beltway hack and was (much, much later) confirmed by conservatives that the "Tea Party" was not a spontaneous uprising of just good ol' fashion Ordinary Murricans who had never been involved in politics at all but had finally been moved to action by the Corrupt Duopoly (tm Ron Fournier) but was instead a transparent fraud designed to get the Bush Regime dead-enders off the hook for the eight years they had just spent cheering on the catastrophes they were now angrily blaming on the Kenyan Usurper who had stolen their country.

And this is why Very Serious People have been willing to go along with Donald Trump's okey-doke that he was bringing millions (billions?  trillions?) of Brand New People into the Republican Party. Y'know, just good ol' fashion Ordinary Murricans who had never been involved in politics at all but had finally been moved to action by the Corrupt blah blah blah...

Except, uh, not so much.  From Politico:

Donald Trump Is Not Expanding the GOP

A POLITICO analysis of early-voting data shows little evidence for one of the Republican nominee’s core claims.

By Shane Goldmacher, May 17, 2016

Donald Trump likes to say he has created a political movement that has drawn “millions and millions” of new voters into the Republican Party. “It’s the biggest thing happening in politics,” Trump has said. “All over the world, they’re talking about it,” he's bragged.

But a Politico analysis of the early 2016 voting data show that, so far, it’s just not true.

While Trump’s insurgent candidacy has spurred record-setting Republican primary turnout in state after state, the early statistics show that the vast majority of those voters aren’t actually new to voting or to the Republican Party, but rather they are reliable past voters in general elections. They are only casting ballots in a Republican primary for the first time...

Nothing more to see here than the same bigots and meatheads who were gonna vote for the Party of Jefferson Davis in the fall anyway, prying themselves out of their double-wides a few months early so they could tell their grand-kids that, in the last year of the Reign of the Kenyan Tyrant, they saved Murrica by voting for the fascist of their dreams twice!

And if you listen very carefully you can hear the prophets and high priests of the Mighty and Reasonable Center begging Army Group Steiner to please, please, please finally show up and save them.