Thursday, July 09, 2020

...And The Horse They Rode In On

The Never Trump Business Model

Yesterday several people decided to send along to me this glowing article about the awesomeness of The Lincoln Project and what hapless bumblefucks Democrats are when it comes to winning elections.


Which is damn peculiar for a couple of reasons.

First, is the idea that the Lincoln Lads just understand "voters" on a deeper, more spiritual level than those cloistered, egghead Democrats ever could.

Really?

Aren't these the same goof who will swear on the graves of their ancestors that they never had the slightest fucking idea that their Republican Party has been a reeking dungheap of bigots and imbeciles for decades?  Decades during which the Lincoln Lads enjoyed very prosperous careers as leaders and ad-makers and spokespersons and professional ratfuckers for that very same Republican Party?

So were they lying when they said they never understood their own voters?  Never knew that the political base they were targeting and pandering to all those years were racist meatheads?  Or are they lying now?

Second, is the idea that the Lincoln Project is being run by electoral supermen who -- whatever you think of their filthy tactics -- know how to win elections god damn it, so just get out of their way and let them run the show.

Look upon our mighty works, ye Libtards, and despair.

OK then, let's look upon their mighty works.

In 2000, those Lincoln Lads lost the popular vote by a wide margin, but won the White House thanks to five Republicans in black robes on the Supreme Court who stole the election for George Bush.

The Lincoln Lads did do very well in 2002 and 2004...by doing exactly what Trump is doing now -- relentlessly exploiting the fears and prejudices of American voters.  Finding America's most exposed nerve and stomping on it over and over again.  Back then it was telling Americans that if they vote for Democrats their kids will probably die in a terrorist attack.  There was Swiftboating.  There was voter suppression.  There were the Scary Terror Alerts that mysteriously ticked up every time George Bush ticked down in the polls.  There was gay bashing.  The racism.  Fox News and Hate Radio firing on all cylinders 24/7.

All this while Dick Cheney's cronies looted the federal government.

Sound familiar?

Then Reality began punching the GOP in the dick so hard that the Lincoln Lads couldn't lie or slander their way to victory no matter ho hard they tried.

The Lincoln Lads lost big in 2006, and even bigger in 2008 despite the fusillade of racist attack ads and whisper campaigns they launched against Barack Obama.  Despite Lincoln Lad Bill Kristol hegira to the backwoods of Alaska to find a flirty, camera-friendly grifter named Sarah Palin who spoke authentic frontier wingnut gibberish.  And despite Lincoln Lad Steve Schmidt positioning her as the Republican candidate for vice president.

The Lincoln Lads won in 2010...by going to the most reliable tool in their toolbox -- the rage, racism and paranoia of the average Republican voter.  Led by the Fake Tea Party, their already bugfuck party plunged shrieking down the Crazy Hole.  Death Panels! Birtherism!   ACORN!  And a Kenyan Usurper waiting just outside your door, ready to kick it in and take all your guns away!

And that's when the deeply principled Conservatives of the Lincoln Project decided they could take no more and broke with their party, right?

Nah.  The Lincoln Lads loved it.  Helped engineer it.  Reveled in it.  And prospered greatly from it.

Of course they lost in 2012, but was it really a loss with the Congress full stocked with wingnut lunatics willing to shut down every government function except endless Hillary witch-hunts which the Lincoln Lads fully supported?

Was it really a loss as long as Mitch McConnell was there to keep his boot on the throat of democracy?   Let's catch up with Lincoln Lad Rick Wilson just four short years ago to find out!

Which brings us to 2016 with the same questions still unanswered.

How is it that the Lincoln Lads -- Earth's Mightiest Electoral Geniuses -- failed so utterly to stop their own party from nominating and electing Donald Trump?  They got behind just about every other warm body in the race from Lil Marco and Jeb! to Rafael Zodiac Killer and Carly "Blood Libel" Fiorina and puuuuuushed.

And ...nothing.  Earth's Mightiest Electoral Geniuses didn't budget the needle one iota.

Hell, the Lincoln Lads even dragged poor David French out his well-deserved obscurity writing bawdy Libertarian haikus for The National Review or whatever and threw him in the path of the Trump steamroller.
Meet David French: the random dude off the street that Bill Kristol decided will save America from Trump
None of it worked, because it turned out that the Left had been right about the Right all along.  That it was we who understood their voters on a deep, spiritual level all along.

Even at the 11th hour, as the rough beast the Republican Party had spawned slouched towards Washington to be sworn, the Lincoln Lads just could not stomach the idea of putting country first:

Which brings us, at last, to the present day, and the one thing I want you all to consider:  Trump may be Death incarnate, but the Republican Party -- the Lincoln Lad's Republican Party -- is the Pale Horse he rode in on.

So unless your agenda includes an honest reckoning of exactly how the Republican Party got to be this way and a commitment to destroying the GOP root and branch, count me out.

Because taking down Trump and a handful of his worst myrmidons is not nearly enough.  As I wrote back in 2015 just hours after he slithered down the escalator, Trump is just the latest and most toxic symptom of the disease of Republicanism.
As I wrote a few years ago,the brain-caste of the GOP spent a 40 years and billions of dollars carefully breeding an army of reliably angry, paranoid, racists chumps. And they have been so successful at completely re-engineering the Right's ideological digestive system that they can no longer process any information which does not come to them in the form of Fox-approved Benghaaaazi goo.  

In other words, in order to win elections and rake in vast fortunes, the Conservative brain caste has painstakingly created the perfect feeding-ground for con men and demagogues like Trump, the louder and more bombastic the better. And from David Brooks and the Wall Street Journal and "Meet the Press", to Ann Coulter and the Washington Free Beacon and the Breitbart Collective, in one way or another, virtually everyone in the media makes bank by flattering Conservative meatheads and pandering to their delusions.
And just like opening states up too soon in the middle of a pandemic, unless the spread of Republicanism by all of its various enablers and vectors is completely flattened and active measures are taken to keep it that way, it will come roaring back the minute the pressure is off. 

And taking down the GOP is not the Lincoln Lad's plan.

So what is their plan?  As far as I can see it's:
  • Pounding away with the most sacred Beltway media lie of all:  Everything is the fault of the Extremes on Both Sides.
  • Abolishing the past.  Yet again.  Especially their past.
  • Limiting the damage to their party to decapitating the regime and a few of Trump's low-hanging henchmen while leaving the party infrastructure intact. 
  • Taking over the party. 
  • With the help of the same Beltway media friends and fellow travelers who have been giving them a massive free platform since 2016, declaring themselves to be the new Sensible Center, equidistant from the Extremes on Both Sides.
  • Going right back to being the same depraved Republican Party they have been all along, but without an orange madman at the top who keeps saying the quiet part out loud,  
Thus will they be rid of Trump and become kingmakers of a re-branded but fundamentally unchanged GOP  and once again banish our inconvenient Liberal voices to the cornfield for the foreseeable future.

But don't take my word for it.  Head on over to  Never Trumper/Lincoln Project HQ at The Bulwark, -- where is is all but illegal to refer to Republicans as "Republicans" -- listen to a few minutes and make up your own mind.

Or listen to a few minutes of hand-wringing over the illiberalism on Both Sides and the horrors of the nonexistent Liberal Cancel Culture!  OMG, they're trying to silence David Brooks!

Why?

Whyyyyy?

Brothers and sisters, if you want to see actual Cancel Culture ruthlessly and efficiently at work, try being an America-hating, terrorist-loving Libtard surrender monkey --


- during the high-cotton days of the Dubya Administration.



Then come back and tell me I' m crazy.



No Half Measures



6 comments:

bowtiejack said...

" Trump may be Death incarnate, but the Republican Party -- the Lincoln Lad's Republican Party -- is the Pale Horse he rode in on."
Good stuff.
Thank you.

Robt said...

Eye of the receiving Ad beholder.

Sure there is experienced professionals that perform in the industry.

The audience and the response you intend to provoke.

The hateful fearful tendencies are very easy to thrill.

When a political party pretty much owns the airwaves and it is a daily substance. Going even more hateful and fear mongering is not a stretch. The implanted base line is established.

For instance, do you think the Lincoln project Ads are targeting Democrats or Republicans ? Both?

If you divided Ads into categories would they look like;
- Right on left or left on right negatives.
-promoting the candidate only and the direction(s).
To invoke emotions as fear, hate or enable promising future?
-Age group's
_issue oriented/
_ fail or achievements?


Kwark said...

Spot on. . . Unfortunately. While the corporate wing of the Democratic party (the somnambulant paid loyal opposition) remains ascendent that Lincoln lads play list is pretty likely to work for them.

Anonymous said...

National Review Is Trying to Rewrite Its Own Racist History
https://theintercept.com/2020/07/05/national-review-william-buckley-racism/

Neo Tuxedo said...

Back then it was telling Americans that if they vote for Democrats their kids will probably die in a terrorist attack.

The good news is, I have finally mentioned Rick Wilson's own personal role in this enough times for him to baw-lock me on Twitter. (For those readers who've missed my roughly six zillion and thirty-two tweets on the subject: in the fall of 2002, Max Cleland, a Georgia congressman who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, was hounded out of office by ads that literally morphed his face into that of Osama bin Laden, because Cleland objected to George and Dick's Excellent Iraq Adventure. The architects of those ads was Rick Wilson, and until he apologizes to Cleland for them and gets that apology accepted, Wilson can take literally all the seats as far as I'm concerned. Cheap grace is not for sale here.)

Rafael Zodiac Killer

You misspelled "Rafael Edward Penisnose". Hope this helps. I can't unsee it, and now neither can you. You're welcome, by the way.

Pagan in repose said...

Because of the billion owned media machine that keeps giving these dick-nosed, dick-less dick-brained on TV yelling Trumpism instead of Republican I still have to try to explain to my liberal friends that this is not Trumpism, it is and has been the Republican party since at least the Prescott Bush 1934 coup attempt of FDR and our Democracy, because the millionaires thought Fascism was the way to keep their money. https://timeline.com/business-plot-overthrow-fdr-9a59a012c32a