As Blue Gal and I discussed on last week's Professional Left podcast, we have solved the riddle of how the bigoted GOP party base is going to rebrand themselves this time. They already used up "Conservative" and "Independent", and even Joe Scarborough is no longer pretending that "The Tea Party" was ever anything but a massive scam staged for the benefits of the the same, old deplorable dregs on the Right, which (as one despised Liberal scoundrel once colorfully described it):
Like German soldiers after the fall of Berlin...have stopped running away from the catastrophe they created only long enough to burn their uniforms.
So what now?
Well, it's obvious once you grok the object of the exercise. Republican party electoral success depends entirely on the 15-20 million hard-core bigots and imbeciles which the GOP spent decades recruiting into the party. But since these bigots and imbeciles stink on ice, they need to find a way to make them invisible. Dressing them up in funny hats, giving them Gadsden flags to wave around and calling then "The Tea Party" worked for a little while, but that still set them apart. Made them distinctive, which when you reek of racism and stupid as hard as these people do, cannot work for long.
No, the real solution is make the deplorables "disappear" the same way the tunnelers in "The Great Escape" made the dirt "disappear"; the same way that Team Rick can move among the walking dead unnoticed -- by blending the thing you want to hide into the ambient environment. Which, in the case of the Trumpshirts, means getting people to stop calling them "Donald Trump supporters" and start pretending that they are "The American People".
Which is where clowns like Michael Steele come in.
I would say that Mr. Lesbian Bondage Fiasco once again shamed himself on the Squint and the Meat Puppet show this morning (see video above), except as the most famous African-American front man for the most deplorable mob of racists in America politics, clearly "shame" is not an emotion which Mr. Steele is capable of marshaling.
Instead I will say that this is not the first or the second or even the third time I have heard Mr. Steele wave off criticism of some utterly appalling shit that Trump of the Trumpshirts have said or done by asserting that, sure, you might care about it, and "the media" might care about it, but clearly The Murrican People don't care about it, so whatcha gonna do about it smartypants? Bwahahahaha!
At the 6:30 mark in the video above, Mr. Steele insists that "The Murrican People" don't give a shit about Donald Trump's tax return (emphasis added because I wanted it that way):
Steele: Show me the poll where 60% of the American people are saying "I want to see your tax returns". That's Donald Trump's safe haven here. It's not resonating the way it resonates for you. That's why you don't see the pressure on him.
Which turned out to be one of the finest rake-stepping-on moments Mr. Lesbian Bondage Fiasco has had in a long time. Because to her credit, three minutes later, Mika Brzynski came back with exactly that: a poll showing 62% of The American People want to see Donald Trump's god damn tax returns.
Mr. Steel swiftly tap danced away from the bed he just shit and reverted to his Safe Mode, factory-default, Both Siderist setting:
Steele: No, and...I think that's right. This is so easy. Just put the numbers out there. Just put the tax returns out there, because the reality is, for both of these individuals, whether it's health records or tax returns...
Followed frantically by something something "for both Clinton and Donald Trump"... something something email server ... something something Benghazi ,.. something something Clinton Foundation.
This is not the first or the second or even the third time Mr. Lesbian Bondage Fiasco has spectacularly shit the bed in public, and yet week after week, Mr. Phil Griffin continues to hand him big bags of cash to appear on MSNBC and do his funny little dance.
So listen carefully between now and the election and notice how frequently Republicans and their stooges and fellow travelers in the American media whitewash Trump and the Trumpkins out of the visible spectrum with a big bucket of "The Murrican People".
You will be amazed.
7 comments:
Next up from the Republican 1984 language train: There is no racism, only "economic anxiety."
The Civil War? The Southerners were filled with economic anxiety!
World War II? The Germans were filled with economic anxiety!
Apartheid? Economic anxiety!
Jim Crow? Economic anxiety!
Native American genocide? Economic anxiety!
Fear of Islamic terrorism? Well, they're scary brown towelheads...I mean, I'm worried about our oil-production deficit with Saudi Arabia!
If you find Trump appealing, it's not because you're racist...you're just concerned about OUR (wink, wink) future!
Indeed. Making the Trumpshirts go away after the second week in November is a high priority of the media. They really need to return to the days when pointing out racism on national news was the height of rudeness and cost people their jobs.
They have already successfully framed any vote for Hillary Clinton as a "Voter Holding Their Nose" vote, so if they can get the Republican Voters to STFU for a day to two they will be able to start the "When will Sickly, Overwhelmed Hillary and the Democrats Stop the Politics and Actually Listen to the America People?" discussions slated for third week in November through October 2018.
Trump's followers seem to forgive all the horrible things he says and does. Makes me think that there's something really explosive in those tax returns.
It's true that Trump's deplorable supporters are - sadly - US citizens, but why I'm supposed to kiss their heinies is beyond me. These are US citizens who've called for disinfranchising the rest of us, as well as implying (if not outright calling for it) that they'll assassinate Clinton if she wins... of course, if Clinton wins, it'll only be because the vote was rigged.
Frankly, I'm really DONE with pandering to this brainwashed tribe, and I'm thoroughly disgusted with how the media panders to them.
Just got back from overseas. Everyone elsewhere sees that these crude idiots are white supremacists who want to bring back at least apartheid if not slavery, and to enforce all kinds of draconian measures on the rest of us. It's that obvious.
We've totally LISTENED to these creeps, and we've certainly HEARD what they have to SAY. And we do not agree, nor are we impressed. And just because that's how they choose to behave/believe/yell/act out, etc, does not mean that the rest of us have to agree. Nor do we have to condone or endorse or go along with their viewpoints.
They are entitled to their sick, twisted, racist, bigoted, xenophobic, homophobic, sexist, unpatriotic, deplorable viewpoints, and they can yell about them all they want. That's lawful. But the rest of us simply do NOT have to AGREE or pander to them.
Go fuck yourselves.
As the son of a tea-bagger who gets quite irritable if he can't get his daily rush of Rush, plus TV centered on Fox News 24/7, I can tell you definitively that these people were never Republicans. Oh, no! They were always "I'm not a Republican, I'm a Conservative." Even during the Bush era, they took that distinction quite seriously.
So, I know the re-branding effort won't work.
Because they don't want to be "re-branded." You can't keep them invisible because Trump invited them to crawl out from under the rock and now they think they own the place. They're the "real Merkins" and we're not. They're going to want to waive that (Rebel) Flag.
Yet the problem remains: until the GOP has a "come to Jesus" moment when they REPUDIATE all the racists, they will continue to bleed support among non-whites who will be 30% of the vote this year, and 32% in 2010, etc. And that will matter more an more.
As a non-white person would you want to belong to the same party as all the racists?
So, Republicans can dodge responsibility in the media, by insisting "it's not Republicans, it was always Trumpites, and now we've taken the party back so nothing to see here! Time to move on to the next 'ooh! Shiny, shiny!' "
But, that doesn't solve the problem does it? The problem, remember? All those non-whites voting more and more in elections and voting less and less for Republicans? Well, we tried vote suppression, but in an America that will be >50% non-white in a couple of decades, how long could that work anyway? And if Hillary wins, the Federal courts are going to start to BLOCK those "voter ID - No Honest It's Not a 'No Voting While Black' Bill."
So, that brings us back to the "systemic anomaly" which if left unchecked will cause a catastrophic meltdown of the GOP. The minorities problem.
And there is no solution, because a real solution would require the party to 1. Admit it had a problem.
2. Acknowledge the past and repudiate it.
3. Explicitly REPUDIATE the Racists and kick them out of the party - in much the same fashion that Labour socialists kicked the Communists out in the early part of the 20th century.
Since I don't see any of that happening either, we are left with: the GOP is doomed. And this is their Picket's Charge.
"I'm beginning to think that 'the American people' is a meaningless phrase"
Jon Stewart (you have to have flash to watch)
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/s1g29a/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-american-apparently
-Doug in Oakland
amen to that
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