The McCain/Lieberman Party Gets a Face Lift

Back before the dawn of recorded time, a mid-level toady for the George W. Bush administration was standing in his back yard watching from a distance as his Republican party imploded.

This alone would have made very him uncomfortable because this guy had really gone all in on the unalloyed brilliance of Bush, his regent Dick Cheney and their minions who controlled the Congress and the courts.

But what made it so much worse -- intolerably worse -- was that his Republican party was self-destructing in exactly the way those damn dirty hippies had said it would self destruct.  In blood and  fire.  In corruption and shame.  In criminality and criminal incompetence.  All floating like punch-bowl turds in a noxious pool of lies.  Because when he wasn't practically under the Resolute deck polishing George W. Bush's knob, this guy -- who had had the ultimate Trusted Political Insider Wise Man imprimatur bestowed upon him just a few years before -- had spent most of the previous six years mocking and slandering Liberals for suggesting that any of this would happen.

And now it was all happening. Right out in public, in front of God and everybody.

Fortunately, this guy had been inexplicably gifted by The New York Times with one of the most prestigious jobs in American journalism, and when the crisis came he knew exactly what to do.

That guy was named David Brooks, and he coped with his complete and abject failure by unleashing a torrent of New York Times style-book approved invective against...

...Both Sides!

From August of 2006:

All were on display Tuesday night.

The Democratic Party was represented by its rising force — Ned Lamont on a victory platform with the net roots exulting before him and Al Sharpton smiling just behind.

The Republican Party was represented by its collapsing old guard — scandal-tainted Tom DeLay trying to get his name removed from the November ballot...

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.

Yes kiddies.  Scampering back to "Both Sides Do It!" home-base every time the Republican party shits the bed has been the go-to move for the American punditocracy for a very, very long time.  And since the Republican party has been in a continuous and escalating state of public bed-shitting for decades now, "Both Sides Do It" has become the permanent, legal residence for every dishonest hustlebuck in the Beltway media.

This does, however, lead to a second problem.  If the Republican party is a monster machine built out of racism, rage, stupidity and conspiracy-mongering -- and it is -- and the media is contractually obligated to pretend that, no matter how deranged the GOP gets, somehow the Democratic party is always just as equally and oppositely bad...

...who would be left to run the country?

David Brooks answers this question in the same wretched column from 13 years ago.  We would be governed by a glorious imaginary Third Party that would wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

“Party No. 3”
...

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 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...

On policy grounds, too, the McCain-Lieberman Party is distinct. On foreign policy, it agrees with Tony Blair...

On fiscal policy, the McCain-Lieberman Party sees a Republican Party that will not raise taxes and a Democratic Party that will not cut benefits, and understands that to avoid bankruptcy the country must do both.

On globalization, the McCain-Lieberman Party believes that free trade reduces poverty but that government must invest in human capital so people can compete. It believes in comprehensive immigration reform.

The McCain-Lieberman Party sees Democrats in the grip of teachers’ unions and Republicans who let corporations write environmental rules. It sees two parties that depend on the culture war for internal cohesion and that make abortion a litmus test.

It sees two traditions immobilized to trench warfare...

The McCain-Lieberman Party is emerging because the war with Islamic extremism...

It is emerging because of deep trends that are polarizing our politics...

It is emerging because social conservatives continue to pull the GOP rightward...

It is emerging because highly educated secular liberals are pulling the Democrats upscale and to the left...

The history of third parties is that they get absorbed into one of the existing two, and that will probably happen here. John McCain and Hillary Clinton will try to reconcile their centrist approaches with the hostile forces in their own parties. And maybe they will succeed (McCain has a better chance, since the ideologues on the right feel vulnerable while the ideologues on the left, perpetually two years behind the national mood, think the public wants more rage).

But amid the hurly-burly of the next few years — the continuing jihad, Speaker Pelosi, a possible economic slowdown — the old parties could become even more inflamed. Both could reject McCain-Liebermanism...

Mr. Brooks and his many, lazy, dishonest imitators have grown wealthy and influential over the years by writing this kind of fiction.  Tales of an Imaginary Reasonable Republican Party that would swing into action any minute now and an Imaginary Conservative Intellectual Renaissance that was always just around the corner.

It's not just that none of these things are true (they're not) or that none of these ever happened or ever will happen (they didn't and they won't.)

It's that, for the worst possible reasons, this same old toxic horseshit will never die.

From Newsday, yesterday:

Romney-Gabbard, Make America Decent Again

Oh my goodness.

Senate Republicans could convict, or threaten to convict, thereby pressuring Trump to resign. They could even work out a deal by which they acquit in exchange for Trump not seeking a second term.

Donald Trump would burn the White House down and piss on the ashes of the Resolute desk before he would leave it under any of those conditions.

But please, do go on.

Each of these options would leave the Republicans in need of a compromise candidate with very little time left on the clock. Republicans would need someone who understood the requirements of a national campaign, someone with widespread (and largely positive) name recognition, and someone on the record opposing both Trump and Trumpism. 

Running Romney would immediately alienate the Trump base...

I know it is painful to frame your mouth to say the words, but there is no "Trumpism" and there is no "Trump base".  There is only "Republicanism" and the "Republican base" -- a base which was already stuck with Mittens von Romney once, lost, hated every minute of it, are still seething over it and would riot if anyone ever tried to swap out their beloved Il Douche for the despised R-Money.

But please continue:

..., but would attract voters from the sensible centers of both parties, along with independents, all of whom seem to be horrified by what they have heard thus far in the Democratic debates. 

There it is.  Riding in on a unicorn farting vintage David Brooks fairy dust in every direction, the greatest political thimble-riggery of all:  the Imaginary Sensible Center.

Of both parties!

Please continue.

Romney could play this centrist position to devastating effect with just about anyone sharing the ticket...

Sure.  Just ask President David French.

Please continue

...but there is one very shrewd move that would allow him to walk into the Oval Office in a landslide: Romney could pick a Democratic running mate. 

But he shouldn’t pick just any Democrat. He should pick one with a growing national stature, one with the background to appeal to Republicans and Democrats alike, and one who has openly accused the Democratic Party of playing a rigged game in its primary campaign.

PleaseSayJoeLiebermanPleaseSayJoeLiebermanPleaseSayJoeLieberman.

Mitt Romney should pick Tulsi Gabbard.

Even better!

They agree on little politically, but that is a benefit.

This has never, ever been true.

The ticket would not make the party faithful on either side of the aisle happy, but why should they be the final arbiters of who ascends to the presidency?

Because a president is not Jesus and therefor does not "ascend" anywhere.  He or she is elected.  By voters.  And voters have a variety of interests and concerns.  And voters with shared interests and concerns gather together in voluntary associations called "parties" because that is the most efficient and reliable way to get people "elected" to "political office" who will address their interests and concerns.

And Mother Mary and her Dancing Beans do I really have to explain this shit to [checks notes] an associate professor of economics at Duquesne University and the managing director of the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom at the University of Arizona?

Yes.  Apparently I do.

I'm Not At Politicon!