Today In Republican Detachment Disorder: Charlie Sykes UPDATE

Update:  They're all in on it.  All of them.  And 18 months to two years is officially the new, Beltway Approved Absolution Lifeboat.  And all of the Republican scumbags who reaped enormous rewards for decades paving the road down which Donald Trump shambled to the White House -- who are now frantically  rebranding themselves as "independent" 30 years too late once -- are scrambling on board.  From Joey Joe Joe Junior Scarborough yesterday:

Republicans across the United States will now pay a heavy price for two years of moral indifference.

How can you help?

Well...

To help fight the scourge of Republican Detachment Disorder --

Republican Detachment Disorder is an extremely common and contagious affliction which my copy of the Fake Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines succinctly as "It's a huge shit sandwich and everybody but me is gonna have to take a bite." 

Of course, Republican Detachment Disorder has been a persistent component of Beltway Both Siderism for years, but since the Rise of Trump the condition has gone airborne and is now fully pneumonic and spreading like wildfire among Conservatives who made an entire career out enthusiastically helping the GOP shit the bed over and over again, and then, as Reality closed in, suddenly started pretending that it was all the fault of some other Republican Party waaaaay over there.

--  we at the Professional Left Podcast are thinking of launching a game show.

Working title:  "2017...or Not?"

Each week, a prominent Republican media person and Detachment Disorder carrier would be invited on the show to wager some fraction of their wildly inflated salary on whether they can guess which quotes are from the Age of Trump (when they believe their Republican party suddenly and inexplicably went to shit) and which quotes are from a time before Il Douche rode the Escalator of Doom into history (when their Republican party was doing great!)

Example:  Federal judges pose a “more serious [threat] than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings"?

Example:  "...the courts are forcing us to a constitutional crisis because of their arrogance and overreach. The courts have been trying to impose an elitist value system on a country that is inherently not elitist.”

Example:  "...we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. . . . And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence."

We are hoping to coax Valued MSNBC Employee and noted Republican Detachment Disorder carrier Mr. Charlie Sykes to join us as our first contestant.

Because given his utterly inexplicable and very profitable media ubiquity and his willful Strategic Forgettery of the well-documented history of his own party, we should be able to skin him for at least five figures.

And what do I mean by his willful Strategic Forgettery of the well-documented history of his own party?

Well before reading on, take a wild guess as to the date, time and location that Mr. Sykes identifies as the moment his party began sinking into madness and degeneracy, which he describes in yesterday's New York Times as "A G.O.P. Tragedy in Four Acts"?

Ready?

It may be worthwhile charting the party’s descent to this moment. 

Think of it as a drama in four acts.

And when, pray tell, does Act I begin?

In Act I, the curtain opens to reveal a gaudy golden escalator, and as Donald Trump descends to...

Boom.  Done. You need read no further.

This is the toxic lie they will go right on telling themselves and the public until they are forced to stop telling it.

And by "forced" I mean publicly confronted, publicly humiliated and rendered unemployable.

But the most hilarious predictable part?  

This is how Mr. Sykes ends his column:

Throughout this final act, the party’s leaders will desperately try to pretend that this is not a tragedy and that they were not the ones who brought this upon themselves. Some of them will know better, but I suspect that in the final scene they will be left with the question “What have we done?”

Once again the same Republican rats are building themselves another flotilla of lifeboats on which they hope to escape justice for the ruin they have brought upon us all

And this time those lifeboat must be burned to the waterline. 

Behold, a Tip Jar!