Donald Trump is the Greatest Thing to Ever Happen to Bush Regime Dead-Enders

Ugarte : Too bad about those Never Trumpers losing out on all those sweet, sweet GOP advertising gigs, wasn't it?

Rick : They got a lucky break. Yesterday they were just Bush Regime Dead-Enders. Today they're the "Awesome Center".

Ugarte : You are a very cynical person, Rick, if you'll forgive me for saying so.

Rick :  I forgive you.

      -- Casablanca Rebooted

When Donald Trump flipped all the GOP's racist switches, hit the Big Red Button and rocketed the party further into Crazytown than it had ever been before -- 

--  the dregs of the Bush Regime got the greatest gift they could ever ask for: the chance to claw themselves out of the professional Sarlacc pit into which their Bush stank had cast them and rebrand themselves as the very model of the modern Sensible Centrist, all without having to change their wretched ideology one iota!

By appropriating that most enduring and toxic of all mainstream media myths they cast themselves as a band of Sensible Centrists standing heroically between the (sing it with me now) The Extremes on Both Sides, forcing the two equal and opposite threats to Murrica from the Left and the Right to bend the knee.  

For example...

You might remember that back 4,000 years ago in May of 2020 the Democrats in the House of Representatives passed the Heroes Act:  a three trillion dollar relief package calibrated to meet the unprecedented dual national threats of a collapsing economy and a surging pandemic.

Then it was sent to the Senate where Mitch McConnell killed it.  Didn't offer an alternative.  Didn't offer to negotiate in good faith for the good of the country.  McConnell just did what McConnell does: kills some measure vital to the health and safety of the country and wallowed in the prospect of the human suffering his sadism would unleash.

In September, as the devastation from our crippled economy and a roaring pandemic continued to escalate, the Democrats returned to the table with a scaled-back Heroes Act by a third, hoping that the obvious need for immediate action would move McConnell to action.  From Forbes:

House Democrats released an updated Heroes Act proposal yesterday in a final attempt to break the negotiation logjam over the next coronavirus stimulus package. The scaled-back plan is estimated to cost $2.2 trillion, which is $1.2 trillion less than the original $3.4 trillion Heroes Act passed in May. “Democrats are making good on our promise to compromise with this updated bill, which is necessary to address the immediate health and economic crisis facing Americas working families right now,” Pelosi said in a letter to Democrats. “We have been able to make critical additions and reduce the cost of the bill by shortening the time covered for now,” she added.

As Democrats negotiated against themselves, McConnell's ghoulish position of "Fuck the country, let 'em all die" remained unchanged.

Well we all know the next step in this sick little game, right?  After all, I've been writing about it since the very first week I hung out my blogger shingle back in April of 2005:

In [the media's] weird fetish to be “objective”, the Republicans learned the little trick that makes you dance like organ grinder monkeys. Whatever goofy-assed idea they came up with, you’d reflexively cede them half the distance between the truth and their goal.

There was a book I loved when I was a little driftglass called, “Half Magic” by Edgar Eager, about a talisman that granted the user exactly half of what they asked for. Wish to be ten times stronger that Lancelot, you’ll get five. Wish for a million in cash, you get 500K. In the Mainstream Media, the Right Wing of the Republican Party found their Half Magic Charm. And each time you met them halfway, they moved the goalposts another twenty yards again...and you jogged right on along behind them, ten yards at a time.

So who will swing into action to save the country by demanding that Democrats lop yet another trillion dollars off of their bill so they can call it "bipartisan"?

That unholy spawn of the godawful No Labels scam called The Problem Solver Caucus!  Yay!

Problem Solvers Caucus co-chair: ‘Pragmatic’ lawmakers will ‘rise to the top’ in new Congress | Just The News https://t.co/xuR1s1LpNh

— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) December 5, 2020

And to bring our little parable full circle, you will never guess who just adores the Fake Centrism of the Problem Solver Caucus.  From Bush Regime Dead-Ender David Brooks on Friday:

The 2020 election results have powerfully strengthened moderates. After months of gridlock the moderates took charge this week, crafting a bipartisan $908 billion relief compromise. Led by Senators Susan Collins, Joe Manchin, Mitt Romney and Mark Warner and endorsed by a bipartisan group of House members from the Problem Solvers Caucus, it is big enough to make a real difference and includes two thorny issues, aid to the states and liability protection, which should, on the merits, be in the law.

This is how democracy is supposed to work! Partisans stake out positions and then dealmakers reach a compromise. This is a glimpse of the sort of normal-functioning democratic process that has been largely missing since Newt Gingrich walked onstage lo these many decades ago.

Funny how, after a quarter of a century staunchly defending his Republican Party using every trick in his magic bag, David Brooks has suddenly noticing that Newt Gingrich actually existed and was a national disaster "many decades ago".

And who else loves the PSC's sweet, sweet Centrist jelly?  Bush Regime Dead-Ender Mona Charen who is now The Bulwark's "policy editor" and who introduces her Bulwark/Beg to Differ podcast this week by introducing their special guest and the most indefatigable Bush Regime Dead-Ender of all, Bloody Bill Kristol, as the...

...founder of The Bulwark and one of America's leading public intellectuals.

And like clockwork, the signing of the praises of you-know-what begins with emphasis added here and there as it suits me:

Bill Kristol:  Look I've been leaving aside which party... they both kind of  were excessively stubborn and didn't feel much pressure I guess to really come to a deal before the election and, uh. if they're feeling pressure now that's good. 

Yes, as long as you blithely ignore what has actually been happening over the past nine month, things will always line neatly up in favor of Fake Centrism.

Kristol: I think whatever deal is made is frankly, good, because it could always be supplanted and supplemented by what happens after, uh, Joe Biden becomes president and for me it's a little bit of a test of whether we can I put it this way we've been uh people all of us have been debating for a month at least or almost a month since Biden won are we just in for four years of brutal trench warfare -- Ron Brown seemed to describe the election results as making the trenches just wider and deeper than ever and that would seem to be the safer bet based on recent history -- or conceivably could you have sort of a moment where somehow there's enough disgust at the hyperpolarization and partisanship and gridlock and everything that you get at least in some areas some... uh... you know, some... some people working together maybe with leadership that's the easiest way but maybe with uh you know non-leaders coming you know Gangs of Eight and so forth in the House and Senate and we saw a little bit of that on... on the pandemic relief package. I haven't followed closely enough in the last few hours.  I'm not sure we know what's going to happen but I took that as a hopeful sign that the Biden years might not just be a replay of the last decade or two.

The last decade or two, during which Bill Kristol was apparently on a helluvan absinth bender so he can't be expected to remember, y'know, the fucking Iraq War or suchlike trivial historical details.   

Charen: Um, Linda [Chavez] there's a caucus in the House -- a bipartisan caucus called the Problem Solvers Caucus.  Now think about that for a second.  I mean if they're the Problem Solvers what are all the rest of them doing there?

Chavez: That's right we thought that was why we sent them was to, uh, to solve problems.  

Charen:  But they were they were instrumental in, uh, in bringing forward this latest, um, compromise.

Chavez: Yes they were.  Yeah they were.  And you know, like Bill, I... I'm actually hopeful um that we're going to see some movement...

And here is their token "Liberal", Bill Galston, beaming with pride at his unholy offspring:

Bill Galston:  This is, uh, the product of a multi-year effort to create functioning bipartisanship in the House and Senate.  The Problem Solvers were created in the first instance by a group I helped found -- No Labels -- about 10 years, you know, which was founded about 10 years ago and, you know,  it has now become  the largest and most influential bipartisan caucus in the House of Representatives and many of the nine Senators who stepped forward alongside the Problem Solvers on Tuesday are members of an unnamed group [The Neville Chamberlains?]  that No Labels has taken the lead in creating over the past six to nine months. So this didn't come out of nowhere and it represents an effort not only to build from the center out but also from the bottom up...

There is, however, one, small fly in the Centrism Ointment with which these folks are so liberally lubing themselves up.  From CNBC:

McConnell shoots down bipartisan $900 billion coronavirus stimulus plan as stalemate drags on

Oopsie!  

Still, if decades of public failure and catastrophe hasn't forced these Bush Regime Dead-Enders permanently offstage, and with the Beltway media stocked with sockpuppets like Jake Sherman who are more than willing to do their dirty work for them --

PELOSI has held out for a big deal for 6 or so months. She said this morning that now that BIDEN is president, she is willing to do a smaller deal.

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) December 4, 2020

--- I doubt this little hiccup will prove to be much of a setback.

No Half Measures