I Am The Book-Burning, Moron Left

Steve Schmidt:  Professional Indignantista

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't believe that I, personally, have ever been a topic of discussion on one of the Very Large Podcasts on one of the two Very Large Liberal Podcast Networks.  So let me say right up front that I have rarely felt more "seen" than I felt listening to Ana Marie Cox interview her friends Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson on an abbreviated episode of her podcast.

Because after letting them talk about how terrific their Lincoln Project is for  25 minutes or so, she got around to talking about me!

Or at least asking them my question.

The question.  You know the one.  The Question reserved for the fields of Trenzalore and the fall of the Eleventh.  The Question that must never be answered, hidden in plain sight. The question they have been been running from all their lives.

Anyway, here it is  (rush transcript, all typos are my own):

Ana Marie Cox:  ...Steve, I covered the McCain campaign so I know exactly what your...contribution to, um, the Republican Party has been.  But I know this is a subject of, like, constant discussion on the Left.  About the Never Trumpers.  And I'm curious just what you think of that?  The fact that there are people who really want to hold you responsible for, basically, because you helped create the modern Republican Party you set the stage for what's happening now.

Steve, I'd like to hear from you first, 'cause I...I've talked with Rick about this, but I haven't heard from you.

I'd like to be able to report that good ol' Steve took it in stride and answered it in the spirit in which it was asked.

I'd like to be able to say he replied thoughtfully and deliberately, like a pro, and not as a peevish, shouty denialist.

Now that it's clear the Republican Party it rotten with bigots and imbeciles and mad men all the way down to the floorboards, I'd like to be able say that good ol' Steve steered his remarks towards the Stuart Stevens' Middle Road: acknowledging, calmly and with some grace, that his Republican Party did, in fact, exist prior to 2016.  That it is a party built on racism, that it has been rocketing down the road to fascism for a long time, and that despite clear and ample warnings that this was the case, for whatever reason, he and people like him went right on building the GOP monster machine that birthed Trump. 

But of course, the Steve Schmidt that speaks with some humility -- who exhibits a modicum of Personal Responsibility -- does not exist anywhere except the imaginations of wishful thinkers.

Instead, the other Steve Schmidt showed up.  The real Steve Schmidt.  The guy who, just last year, ripped off his microphone, stormed off the set and burned down his own podcast at the effrontery of anyone even brushing lightly up against the subject of Howard Schultz.

You remember Howard Schultz, right?   He was the guy for whom Steve Schmidt was perfectly willing to toss his principles overboard, abandon the fight against Trump and lose his job at MSNBC once a sufficient quantity of Schultz's  cash was on the table.

That Steve Schmidt showed up...and unloaded on me with both barrels.

Schmidt:  I guess my reaction is to the smugness and the sanctimony of it.

Wow, smug and sanctimonious!  That is so "me".  Please continue!

Schmidt:   Makes me want to respond with a colorful colloquialism from my native New Jersey [Rick Wilson giggling in the background] that begins with "Go" and ends with "yourself".

Yeah, I get a lot of that.

Good ol' Steve then goes all the way in on the political coward's favorite, all-occasion area denial weapons -- Straw Men and Both Siderism -- with a little sermonette about how anyone who thinks one political party is 100% virtuous and the other party is 100% evil is a sign of "being a moron."

In fact, it turns out that it's people like me and not people like good ol' Steve who fucked everything up!

People like me are...

Schmidt: ...precisely the type of people that explain the reciprocal tribalism that's gotten us into this fucking disaster.

So just exactly how bad am I?  Well, according to good ol' Steve, I am somewhere between "Charlie Kirk" bad and "Nazi book burner" bad.

Schmidt: I have as much disdain for a Left Wing Nut as I do for a Right Wing Nut, and a book burner is a book burner.

Good ol' Steve continues:

Schmidt: I can't stand the illiberalism of the hard core Left.

Yeah, we're all pretty terrible, what with our promiscuous "remembering" of "stuff that happened in the past" and all.  Good ol' Steve continues:

Schmidt: I was a Jack Kemp Republican!  I come from the northeast of the country which was filled with Liberal Republicans...at one point in time.

Yes, and glaciers once extended all the way down to the Missouri and Ohio Rivers...at one point in time

Also it is shocking to learn that they didn't have radio or television or internet access or regular newspaper deliveries or any awareness of, say, Newt Gingrich or Wayne LaPierre or Tom Delay or Jerry Falwell or Karl Rove or Grover Norquist or Bill O'Reilly or Lee Atwater or Phyllis Schlafly in "the northeast of the country" until 2015.

Shocking and sad.

Good ol'  Steve continues:

Schmidt:  One of the things that I think is badly overdue in this country in something that, y'know, I have, y'know, tried to do over the recent years is to understand where other people are coming from.  What informs their point of view. 

OK, this cracked me up.

Here's a late-breaking newsflash for good ol' Steve.  I have no trouble understanding where Republicans have been coming from the last several decades because they never shut the fuck up about it.

Out here in the real world where I live what the Right thinks has been roaring out of Conservative Hate Radio all day, every day, for decades. 

What the Right thinks snarls at you from the televisions tuned to Fox News at the garage and the barber shop and the bar. 

What the Right thinks sneers at you on the op-ed page of our local paper -- a paper that syndicates ghouls like Ann Coulter and Mark Thiessen because they know damn well what Republicans want.

And what the Right thinks gets right up in your face at civic events and local eateries and at the grocery store and at the post office because out here in the real world local Republicans have never been the least bit shy when it comes to sharing their thoughts about "Killery" or "The Kenyan Usurper".

And speaking of The Kenyan Usurper, good ol'  Steve continues:

Schmidt:  ...the American political system is built on concepts including incrementalism and accommodation and compromise and we're gonna need some of that in this country.  We're gonna need some grace after this period.  

Once again, good ol' Steve's feigning ignorance of basic American political history is almost comical.

See, we had an eight year experiment in compromise with Republicans.  It was called the Clinton Administration:  Clinton actually delivered on lots of things Republicans had screeching about for years and they reacted by shutting down the government, launching a four year witch hunt and impeaching him over trivia.

Then we had another eight year experiment in trying to work with Republicans when Democrats elected an intelligent, humane, scandal-free constitutional law professor to fix the multiple, crippling catastrophes Steve Schmidt's Republican Party had left in their wake after eight years of George W. Bush.   Barack Obama was exactly the sort of incrementalist/accommodationist leader that Steve Schmidt now dreams of and Steve Schmidt's Republican Party reacted to his election with eight relentless years of sabotage, sedition, unhinged racism, Birtherism and, finally, Trump.

So fuck that, Steve, and if that makes me a zealot, well I can live with that.

And speaking of zealots...

Schmidt:  And we are in a bad, bad, bad place, and I think that the zealots -- and they exist across the spectrum in American politics, right? -- aren't going to be the answer to making anything better.  And I think that anybody who want's to assign blame, y'know, to people that, y'know, served in campaigns or in government really as political staffers I think is profoundly naive about, y'know, what happened over the course of, y'know, the last 20 years, y'know, at a...at a meaningful level with what they really disagree with. 

This right here is why you will almost never find a Never Trumper in any forum where a smug, sanctimonious, book-burning zealot like me might ask them questions about their inconvenient past.

And I refuse to trust any Republican -- especially ones hawking a book or taking up space on cable teevee -- who either runs away or lies or goes off like a human hand-grenade whenever the subject of the pre-2016 GOP comes up.

No Half Measures