Sunday Morning Party Line

"Any sentence that begins 'But Republicans have to understand...' is semantically null and fundamentally ridiculous." -- driftglass

Framing, as any competent writer will tell you, is important.  So let's begin the story of today with life-long-Republican-turned-Independent-after-it-was-way-too-late, Michael Smerconish.  In the parlance of the holy game of poker, please observe how Mr. Smerconish sees David Brooks' tepid, mealy-mouthed concession that, yes, Conservatism really has been fucked-in-the-head for ten years, and then raises Mr. Brooks an addition two decades.

Both videos from Crooks & Liars:

Smerconish Tackles Limbaugh: 30 Years Planted Seed For Trump

Rush Limbaugh Didn't Make Her Vote For Trump?

From The New York Times, December 12, 1994 (emphasis added):

Republicans Get a Pep Talk From Rush Limbaugh

BALTIMORE, Dec. 10— To all the advice for the new Republicans coming to Congress, add this from Rush Limbaugh: A hostile press corps lurks inside the Beltway.

"You will never ever be their friends," the talk-show host warned most of the 73 Republican freshmen at a dinner here tonight. "They don't want to be your friends. Some female reporter will come up to one of you and start batting her eyes and ask you to go to lunch. And you'll think, 'Wow! I'm only a freshman. Cokie Roberts wants to take me to lunch. I've really made it!' " The audience laughed.

"Seriously," he added. "Don't fall for this. This is not the time to get moderate. This is not the time to start trying to be liked."

The freshman class, which included not a single "femi-Nazi," one of Mr. Limbaugh's favorite epithets for supporters of women's rights, whooped and applauded, proving itself one big fan club of the man it believes was primarily responsible for the Republican avalanche in November.

Mr. Limbaugh was made an honorary member of the class as its members tonight finished a three-day orientation here sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and Empower America, two conservative Washington research organizations.

Barbara Cubin, an incoming freshman from Wyoming, told Mr. Limbaugh that because 74 percent of the nation's newspapers had endorsed Democrats, "talk radio, with you in the lead, is what turned the tide." On behalf of the women in the class, she gave him a plaque that said, "Rush Was Right." He also received a pin like the ones the freshmen wore, saying, "Majority Maker."

"Rush is as responsible for what happened here as much as anyone," said Vin Weber, a former Representative from Minnesota, now of Empower America. Citing a poll taken after the election by Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, Mr. Weber said that people who listened to 10 hours or more a week of talk radio voted Republican by a 3-to-1 margin. "Those are the people who elected the new Congress," he said.

...

He may have relentlessly promoted the "Contract With America" -- the Republican campaign agenda -- and trashed the Democrats all fall on his 659 radio stations and 225 television stations, but, he said, he was merely "validating" a feeling already abroad in the land.

...

In closing, he asked his audience to "leave some liberals alive" as artifacts so that "we can show our children what they were."

...

Quibble to your heart's content about the exact date the Party of Lincoln died and the Party of Jefferson Davis rose up in its place, but one thing can no longer be equivocated away: the Right has been out of its god damn mind and getting more depraved and reckless by the day for decades now.

Decades.

And since this horrifying trend was plainly observable for a long, long time to anyone who did not have an ideological or financial interest in pretending otherwise, it is time to state loudly and clearly that those who have spent a majority of their careers feeding the Beast instead of fighting the Beast have no business anywhere near the public square.  They have sided with fascists and racists and lunatics against facts and history and their own country.  They have flunked "Being an American 101."  They have (as Ted Sturgeon famously said of H.G. Wells' later work) sold their birthright for a pot of message.

And so we have one half of our frame; That Which Has Gone Before.

Here is the other half:  That Which Is Happening Now

From The Hill:

Tamron Hall leaving NBC as network makes room for Megyn Kelly

Tamron Hall is leaving NBC as the network makes way for Megyn Kelly at the 9 a.m. hour.

The company confirmed Hall's abrupt departure from both NBC, where she anchored the third hour of "Today" and MSNBC, where she served as a late-morning anchor.

NBC is believed to be making room for Kelly's new show during the four-hour "Today" time slot, and Hall and Al Roker's program will likely be cut.

The former Fox News star is expected to make her debut with NBC in the fall. She's under contract with Fox News until July, but signed off from the network in early January after announcing her decision to jump to NBC.

Kelly is reportedly making anywhere from $12 million to $15 million with NBC...

From Politico, January 5, 2017:

Greta Van Susteren to join MSNBC

Greta Van Susteren is joining MSNBC, taking over the channel's 6 p.m. time slot with a new show called "For the Record," the network announced Thursday.

Van Susteren’s show will feature both news and analysis, working as a bridge from MSNBC's dayside news shows into its more opinion and analysis-focused primetime. She starts on Jan. 9, and the show will be based out of Washington D.C.

“Greta is a true pro with a proven record of tough journalism,” MSNBC President Phil Griffin said in a statement. “Her broad range of experience and sharp news judgment will be of great value to MSNBC as we build on our momentum going into a new year and a new administration.”...

From Mediaite yesterday:

REPORT: Gretchen Carlson Considering a Move to Join MSNBC

Because the media is a racket,  And as far as the corporations who own the media are concerned, there are no villains, only ratings.  And working for Team Evil is no different than working for the putative Good Guys; just interchangeable lines on a resume and fungible Q Scores:

The Q Score (more popularly known as Q-Rating) is a measurement of the familiarity and appeal of a brand, celebrity, company, or entertainment product (e.g., television show) used in the United States. The higher the Q Score, the more highly regarded the item or person is among the group familiar with them.

And if you believe otherwise?   Well..

...you are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. 

It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today...

The networks shovel shit and call it "news" because it's cheaper and much less risky than reporting on the actual news.  For example, the news that there is a fascist halfwit in the White House because the party that elected him are a shitpile of thugs, con men, demagogues and simpletons is terrifying, and so the shit they shoveled this week?

Awfully thin.

On "This Week..." we learned that presidential spokes-potato, Huckabee The Lesser, is not actually authorized to speak for Il Douche on any subject whatsoever, except, obviously, to reiterate that Obamacare is the worst mistake since The Phantom Menace and that Il Douche is awesome!

HUCKABEE-SANDERS: Well, that's a question you'd have to ask the president.

HUCKABEE-SANDERS: Look, I'm not going to speak specifically for the president on that topic...

HUCKABEE-SANDERS: You know, I certainly can't speak to the military...

HUCKABEE-SANDERS: I haven't had the chance to speak with him directly about that, but I would imagine...

And since she also can't juggle or sing or do simple math by stomping her hoof on the ground, I see no reason why this waste of carbon was on the teevee machine at all.

Also, shockingly, Girl Scouts apparently egg houses with such frequency in "The South" that they have a quaint local saying about it.  You know, we in "The North" have a quaint local saying about the likes of Susan Huckabee Sanders, so maybe we're not so different after all:

On Meet the Press...

...Chuck Todd said, "drip, drip, drip".
...Town Hall attendees said, "Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. Do your job."
...Chuck Schumer said, "Dump Trump. Dump Trump."
...and Charles Baudelaire said, "Always be a poet, even in prose."  But not on Meet the Press.

Newly-elected DNC Chair Tom Perez said a lot, most of which I couldn't bring myself to care about too much.  Seems like a nice guy.  Said all the required peppy, slogany-things.  Go win me some elections, Tom, and we'll talk.

Certified Ozark corn-pone peddler, Tom Cotton, lied his fool head off about the future of health insurance and said everybody should just chill the fuck out about Vlad the Elector working Trump like a sock-puppet because something something "the process" and people'r gettin' out too far over their damn skis.  Under a very nice Castilian Round Oak Dining Table somewhere, Mr. David Brooks is hugging a bottle of very good tequila, weeping as a child would weep and saying to no one in particular, "Why Tom?  Why!  Did! You!  Do!  This!  To! Me!"  

But don't worry; his interns have seen this before many times and they know how to dry him out.

And speaking of former David Brooks' interns who are suddenly someplace they would rather not be, NBC keeps trying to make Ramesh Ponnuru happen.  Ramesh Ponnuru is not going to happen.  Also, I have no idea if Mr. Ponnuru is, in fact, a former David Brooks' intern, but it seems to fit, so like Chuck Todd, I'm going to leave it there!

Elsewhere, a giddy old lush --

Boehner: Republicans won't repeal and replace Obamacare

'They’re basically going to fix the flaws and put a more conservative box around it,' Boehner said

-- and the Viscount of Thee Noble Fief of Ohio --

Governor Kasich Wants To Prevent Millions From Losing Healthcare

-- both agree that any attempt to roll back Obamacare without replacing it with something even more awesome would be The Ring of political maneuvers.  Try it and seven days later you will be politically dead:

And if either Kasich or Boehner swung any political cod at all within the national Republican party, their quaint opinions might actually mean something.

But Il Douche rules the Party of Jefferson Davis now.

And any analysis that is predicated on the notion that 'But Republicans have to understand...' is semantically null and fundamentally ridiculous."