John Cornyn is Now Our Ally So Everybody Needs To Shut Up About Him

Obviously not a strong ally, but still.

I mention this because I have been repeatedly reproached over the past five years by many of my Liberal fellow travelers with much bigger throw-weight than me for bringing up the long and repulsive pasts of various Republican thugs who are now our allies, because the only thing that counts anymore is the Now Time.  

What people did or did not do in the Before Time is above your pay-grade Mr. Grouchy.  All of that will be settled in the sweet bye and bye, so for now all that matters is Now, so shaddap and join the kick-line.

Well, I'm trying to be good, but obviously I'm very stupid so I'll need some of my betters to clarify the rules under which we are all supposed to operate. Because as I understand it, it doesn't matter if a Republican goon has spent their entire public life building the Republican monster machine that gave birth to Trump.  Once a former red-of-tooth-and-claw nemesis says something mean about Trump -- whether loudly and in public or weakly and sotto voce -- our New Rules require that people like me shut up about their bloody, checkered history and welcome them as bothers and sisters in arms.  Because whether you're a Libtard living out of a tip jar and who's been made a pariah for saying true thing about the Republican Party for decades, or you're a Republican mercenary running a multimillion dollar political marketing corporation that sprang into existence barely a year ago, we're all in this together, right!

Because this is nor about Left or Right, right?

The enemy of my enemy, right?

Just like the USA and USSR hooking up as allies-with-benefits for a short time to bring down the Third Reich, right?

So now that Ben Sasse has called Trump a poopy poop head in private, and John Cornyn has boldly opposed him ever so slightly from the shadows --

Cornyn says he broke with Trump on deficit, border wall, but kept opposition private https://t.co/EqtAIdnDyA

— Fort Worth Star-Telegram (@startelegram) October 18, 2020

-- I guess I just don't understand what the fuss is all about.  

From Jennifer Rubin:

Cornyn may not be part of the raving MAGA crowd. But he has supported Trump consistent, even if he now lies about it. He is part of the spineless Republican Senate who lacked nerve to stand up to Trump when it mattered most to his voters back home.

https://t.co/syyiyYgXRE

— Jennifer 'Vote Early' Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) October 19, 2020

From Rick Wilson:

"I secretly opposed Trump."
"I fought against the worst excesses."
"You won't believe what I stopped him from doing."
"I was silent but I am a former general office."
"I needed a job later."
"I had a primary, so I couldn't speak out."

Your excuses will not play, cowards.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) October 18, 2020

From Charlie Sykes in the New York Daily News:

The cowards' comeuppance: It’s too late for a radical reinvention of the Trump GOP

For better or worse, they are stuck with the die they cast long ago, to let themselves become Trumpian lickspittles. The bill for their Faustian bargain has come due.

Over the last four years, they ignored one chance after another to take an off-ramp from Trump. And while they might now boast about driving on his highway at 55 rather than 65, they’re driving on it nonetheless….

Frightened by the prospect of a presidential tweet, they ignored his crude xenophobia, his exploitation of racial divisions, his personal corruption, and his fascination with authoritarian thugs.

They could have said “stop” at any point. They could have raised their voices and used their votes to rebuff him. But they didn’t...

But...but...isn't saying critical-but-true things about Trump the all-access, olly olly oxen free of our politics now?  

Also, should Biden win in November, doesn't this all become moot anyway?  Because Beltway Iron Rule of Democrats who Succeed Republicans clearly states that that Inauguration Day automatically becomes the new Day Zero and that anything that happened before then will be officially off limits.  

After all, the mainstream media compact of "lets agree to not hold Republicans accountable for anything ever" that has been in effect at least since the Reagan Administration is literally the only reason that Republicans like Jennifer Rubin or Rick Wilson or Charlie Sykes are able to make a nice living pushing words together instead of being, say, driven out of decent society with pitchforks and torches years ago.

This is the one trait they all share:  the belief that the moment they left the GOP (or, let's be honest, the moment they were drummed out) just so happened to be the exact right moment to take French leave from the Party of Bigots and Imbeciles.  According to them, before they left the GOP it was a healthy, sane political party and we Liberals who said otherwise were crackpot alarmists.  And after they left the GOP was an unsalvageable shitpile of racists, lunatics, fascists and assorted grifters.  But exiting as they did in the one, perfect, golden moment in between the Party of Lincoln suddenly and inexplicably Freaky Fridaying into the Party of Jefferson Davis, somehow grants them special, permanent dispensation from ever being asked any inconvenient questions about events leading up to Now.  

Think of it as the political equivalent of the Letters of Transit in Casablanca: their alibis  cannot be rescinded, not even questioned:

And yet here they are, new immigrants barely off the "The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth." lifeboat themselves, turning right around and telling the next boatload of GOP refugees to fuck right off!  Than they're not welcome here and their previous sins can never be erased and shall hang like a dead albatross around their necks forever.  

Kinda reminds me of Rosa Berezovskaya or Olga Dubova.

You say you don't know who they are?  Well, allow me to introduce you.  From The Salt Lake Tribune:

Rampell: Immigrants in America pull up the ladder after them

It's not just native-born Americans expressing nativist sentiments these days. Somehow, it's immigrants, too.

"I think that enough immigrants entered this country," Rosa Berezovskaya, an 86-year-old immigrant who came to the United States from Kiev in 2003, told the Forward in a story that ran last week.

"We also came here as immigrants in our own time. But we can't let in crooks, we can't let in untrustworthy people that will cause us problems," said 82-year-old Olga Dubova, who emigrated from Ukraine in 1995, in the same article.

"I like his honesty, that he's against Muslims, that he's against refugees," added Valentina Albert, herself a refugee from Moldova, referring to Donald Trump's immigration policies.

All three spoke to Forward reporters in Russian, if that matters...

Back in 2005, the late Steve Gilliard was delighted that the bigots and imbeciles of the Republican Party were feeling cocky enough in their complete control of their future to come out from their hiding places and fly their racist freak flags out and proud in public. Because catching the racist Right out so far on the wrong side of history might change things:

But as I wrote back in 2015, Gilly got it wrong. It changed nothing. Because by 2015 -- ten years later -- the Conservatives who were momentarily driven from their doctrinaire spider holes by Katrina had long since gone back the profitable business of pimping Conservative claptrap, blaming Both Sides and lying about American history.

Ten years later, if you asked the average Republican base voter what happened during Katrina, you would hear a lot about "buses", "Liberal", "government dependence" and more or less everything else that Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh shat into their skulls ten years ago. As far as they're concerned, this is settled history, just as the assassination of Vince Foster, death panels and a "stand down" plot by the Obama Administration to murder American foreign service officers in Benghaaaaazi is settled history.

Ten years later, and Jonah Goldberg was still doing just fine, thank you very much, and Ann Coulter was still treated as an honored guest on Fox News, and a trusted adviser by the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

Ten years later, "Heckuva Job, Brownie" was being give the full rehab treatment, and Dubya could visit New Orleans to give a speech and is not be driven from the stage by a tsunami of rotten eggs and tomatoes.

Ten years later, the MSNBC you used to know was all but dead, the Liberal blogosphere was a ghost of what it once was, and Steve Gilliard's words were crumbling quietly to digital dust in the untended grave of The News Blog.

Ten years later and, irony of ironies, it turned out to be that fighting every day just to remember our yesterdays as they really happened -- just to conserve the past against an implacable onslaught of revisionist propaganda -- was most important duty we dirty Liberals have.

No Half Measures