Today In Watching The Defectives: Rick Tyler

You might know Rick Tyler as the former henchmen for such infamous Republican bottom-feeding hobgoblins as Newt "Ambulatory Stool Sample" Gingrich, Ted "Raphael Babycrusher" Cruz and Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin.

But as he was being run out of polite society on a rail, he shouted "But Donald Trump is a poopy-poop-head" loud enough to be heard by cable teevee bookers so MSNBC hired him on the spot as a paid contributor, which is why you might know Rick Tyler as the sketchy, beady-eyed ex-but-not-really-ex-Republican who pops up regularly on Deadline Shite House and Mourning Joe whenever they need someone with a long Republican CV to say "Donald Trump is a poopy-poop-head".

But being one of the 6,000 ex-but-not-really-ex-Republicans who clog up cable teevee fighting for a chance to say "Donald Trump is a poopy-poop-head..." quickly followed in the same breath by "...but the shithole the Republican Party has become definitely wasn't my fault!" is not a long-term career plan, which is why you may soon know Rick Tyler (unless you have the good sense to change the channel the minute you see him coming) as the author of yet another book in the rapidly growing and very profitable "No One but Me Is a True Conservative and Both Sides Are Equally Terrible and the Racist Shitpile the Republican Party Has Become Definitely Wasn't My Fault" genre of  ex-but-not-really-ex-Republican fiction.

If you are a glutton for punishment you are free to amble over to The Bulwark podcast (don't) to listen to (you really shouldn't) Mr. Tyler tick though all the usual ex-but-not-really-ex-Republican self-absolving talking points.

• No one but Rick Tyler knows what "Conservatism" really means.
• Rick Tyler is quite possibly the only True Conservative on planet Earth.
• St. Ronnie Reagan was the last True Conservative leader, blessed be his name.
• Trump is not a Conservative.
• Trump is not a real Republican.  
• Republican voters are not real Republicans.
• Congressional Republicans are not real Republicans.
• Liberals are terrible.
• The Republican Party isn't driven by racism.
• Trump is so appealing to Republicans because of Economic Anxiety.
• Did I mention Liberal are terrible?
• Neither side cares about The Truth!
• The Republican Party became a Trump/shithole party because something something Both Sides something something Tribalism!

However one thing I did not expect to hear was Rick Tyler slagging Barack Obama hard for "bailing out GM" (no kidding) during the Great Recession.  (found, if you are interested, at the 28:33 mark of the pertinent Bulwark podcast.)

Wow.

And if that would've cost the United States an additional million jobs in the auto industry during the middle of the worst economic calamity in a generation?  And millions more jobs would have been lost as the effect of the collapse of the auto industry rippled through the economy?  And if this additional hammer-blow almost certainly would've pushed the Great Recession into a Great Depression?

Well boo-fucking-hoo. Let markets do their thing! And if there are casualties, it's not the job of Big Gummint to protect American workers in Lordsville, Ohio who make shitty cars from China.

So that was...striking. Didn't know anyone was still trying to die on that hill. 

But as for all the rest,  ex-but-not-really-ex-Republicans like Tyler have clearly decided that their best chance of surviving the collapse of the Trump Administration with their careers intact is to roll out exactly the same strategy that Iraq War pimps used to survive the implosion of support for that catastrophe and the subsequent collapse of the Bush Administration.

If you were wondering what that strategy was and why I stay focused on what goons like Rick Tyler are up, this is me, from almost exactly 15 years ago:

...The Universe is carefully divided into Conservatives – who are wrong – and Liberals – who are somehow, mysteriously and equally wrong all the time and in equal numbers on every issue. And only Captain Obvious [Tom Friedman], frolicking across the few lonely yards of sand on his Isle of Reasonableness, can see the truth.

It does not matter how many millions of miles the Shining Path Republicans drag the “middle ground” to the Right.

It doesn’t matter that the Party of Lincoln is now infested crotch-to-crown with maggoty Segregationists.

It doesn’t matter that Nixon looks like a fucking Socialist compared to the positions now being advocated by the GOP today.

However far into the Armageddonist Abyss the wingnuts charge, Captain Obvious will dutifully pace off half that distance back towards where the Left (the band formerly know as “Rockefeller Republicans”) happened to be that day, drive his little stake into that shifting ground and declare that THIS is where the treasure of Comity and Reasonableness is buried. And that everyone on either side of his little islet is equally and oppositely wrong.

And then stamp his chubby little feet and whine that No One Is Listening to Him!

15 years ago.

No wonder I feel tired.

I'll bet you do too.

No Half Measures