Today In Republican Detachment Disorder: Party Like It's 1999 1994

The GOP is just a party, and parties weren't meant to last.

First it was Charlie Sykes, a professional Conservative radio creature who suddenly noticed after decades of feeding the beast in the basement that -- Holy Sorcerer's Apprentice, Batman ! -- the beast in the basement had kicked the door open, slithered up the stairs to the Mr. Sykes tidy parlor and was intent on making Mr. Sykes its next meal.

Since last year, the most influential political talk show host in Wisconsin has found out just how hard it is to be a #NeverTrump conservative on right-wing radio. Ever since Sykes began denouncing Donald Trump on the air—which he does just about every time he talks about the presidential election—he’s strained his relationships with the listeners of his daily radio show.

Sykes’ many arguments with listeners over Donald Trump’s serial outrages have exposed in much of his audience a vein of thinking—racist, anti-constitutional, maybe even fascistic—that has shaken Sykes. It has left him questioning whether he and his colleagues in the conservative media played a role in paving the way for Trump’s surprising and unprecedented rise.

"Since last year".

Put a pin in that.  You'll need it later.

Next up, Mr. John Ziegler who, according to his Media-ite bio, is "a nationally-syndicated radio talk show host and documentary filmmaker" who you can follow on The Twitter at @ZigManFreud or email at johnz@mediaite.com.

If you (who live blissfully outside of the wingnutosphere) have heard of Mr. Zeigler at all before today, it may be because of the low-rent hit-job "documentaries" that he has produced slandering the Clintons, whining about the Terrible Liberal Media Conspiracy, protecting child molesters, and so forth.  Or you might know him for running his yapper in front of various microphones like so --

Ziegler made the following remarks while introducing Fred Thompson at a campaign rally in California: "In case you missed it, some nut job broke in [to Clinton's campaign office] and took hostages and apparently threatened to blow himself up unless he got a chance to speak to Hillary. Now, I found this rather odd because I always feel like blowing myself up after I hear Hillary Clinton speak". ABC News says the audience "laughed and applauded",[62] while FoxNews.com described the remark as "unfettered nastiness".[63]

Just one more of Murrica's hundreds of Limbaugh hatepuke imitators who have made a living by toxifying this country almost beyond repair.

Which is why this headline in Media-ite --

All Along I Thought Trump Wasn’t a Conservative/Republican, But Now I Realize I’m Not 

by John Ziegler | 3:56 pm, August 23rd, 2016

-- cracked me right the hell up.

Yes, cats & kittens, one more professional Conservative well-poisoner has finally taken a sip of the water he has spent his professional life poisoning and is shocked that it tastes so...poison-y.

After much thumbing of his suspenders and gassy orating on the meaning of True Conservatism, Mr. Ziegler finally gets around to the sobbing-like-a-baby part in which he -- just like Mr. Sykes -- swears he was cruelly betrayed by millions of Fake Conservatives who snuck in and short-sheeted the Party of Lincoln in the middle of the night while everyone was asleep:

...I thought that I understood what it meant to be a conservative or a Republican. To me that involved believing in limited government, a strong national defense, fiscal responsibility, constitutional principles, character and honesty in our leadership, and accountability for one’s own actions. What I have been very late to realize is that none of these things are particularly important in today’s Republican Party because the platform apparently got completely changed without anyone telling me.

Oh the fucking humanity!

Mr. Ziegler continues:

In Trump’s party belief in any particular policy or principle is completely arbitrary and is dependent on what suits our fearless leader on any given day (even, it now seems, with regard to his core campaign issue of being super tough on illegal immigration). Even more remarkable than the ever changing policy positions is how utterly irrelevant actual “issues” are to his campaign at all.

In fact, a list of what “Republicans” now stand for has nothing at all to do with policy or principle, but rather is filled with beliefs about very specific concepts. For instance, being a member of the current GOP pretty much requires you to pledge allegiance to most, if not all, of the following views...

There follows a long list of demented conspiracies and jaw-dropping hypocrisies familiar to every Liberal in Christendom.  In fact, this list reminded me of nothing so much as a much, much longer list -- the Bayeux Tapestry of such lists -- published six years ago by "American Dad" (aka. Russell King): a Republican who had finally had it up to here with his party.  The original list has been eaten by internet goblins, but here is the open letter with which Mr. King led off his magnum opus:

An open letter to conservatives

March 22, 2010, 3:16PM

Dear Conservative Americans,

The years have not been kind to you. I grew up in a profoundly Republican home, so I can remember when you wore a very different face than the one we see now. You've lost me and you've lost most of America. Because I believe having responsible choices is important to democracy, I'd like to give you some advice and an invitation.

First, the invitation: Come back to us.

Now the advice. You're going to have to come up with a platform that isn't built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from your own; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more. But you have work to do even before you take on that task.

Your party -- the GOP -- and the conservative end of the American political spectrum have become irresponsible and irrational. Worse, it's tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred. Let me provide some examples -- by no means an exhaustive list -- of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred.

...

And now, finally, we amble back to that sentence fragment from Mr. Charlie Sykes' article in Politico  -- "Since last year" -- which you have been patiently holding all this time and compare it to the very first sentence from Mr. John Ziegler's article in Media-ite (emphasis added):

For over a year now I have been trying to warn Republicans and conservatives about Donald Trump...

Wow.  Somebody pin a fucking medal on this hero.  Because as long as the mindless, bloodlusting herd he was helping to chum into a frenzy were marching where he wanted them to go (namely right over you and me and the Kenyan Usurper) Mr. John Ziegler was perfectly happy making a buck off of their racism and rage.  

And then one day -- Holy Sorcerer's Apprentice again, Batman ! -- he went to the crapper to find tha the beast in the basement had kicked the door open, slithered up the stairs and...well...you already know the rest of that story.

I won't go into the long, ugly transformation of the modern GOP from the Party of Lincoln to the Party of Jefferson Davis that has been going on in fits and starts since at least the late 1940s.  Suffice it to say that the rot at the heart of the Republican Party has been clearly visible since the mid 1990s to anyone with the upper body strength to open the New York Times and read the King's English.  And yet for the last 22 years, anyone speaking that truth out loud was not only exiled from polite society but trashed for being a dirty, Murrica-hating, terrorist-loving hippies and a dupe of the Sekrit Liberal Media Conspiracy by the people like Messers Sykes and Zeigler.

And now, suddenly, saying exactly the sort of things for which the dirty hippies have been cast out and spat upon for decades...

...has become an open invitation for Mr. Zeigler to pen columns for Media-ite, and an e-ticket for Mr. Sykes to appear on cable teevee, apparently any time he pleases.

Now do I mean to suggest that people like Messers Sykes and Zeigler should not be appearing on teevee?

Of course not.

In fact, I firmly believe that they should appear on teevee.

Along with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski and Mark Halperin and Michael Gerson and David Brooks and Chris Matthews and Peggy Noonan and Ron Fournier and Jennifer Rubin and Michael Steele and Kathleen Parker and Phil Griffin and Jeff Zucker a hundred others

At least once a week.

Each with their head shaved.

Each wearing a sign that says "I Collaborated".


(Should you be so inclined I have put out my PayPal button.  However like the Clinton Foundation, I solemnly promise to suspend all fundraising activities once my weekly column in the New York Times and my permanent gig as a rotating guest on MSNBC and CNN are secured.)