The Bold Declaratives Giveth and and the Mealy-Mouthed Qualifiers Taketh Away

Jonathan V. Last is one of the Voices of Authority over at The Bulwark website.  A very big wheel.  And here is a thing he had to say about the Republican Party just days ago:

Last:  I don't think I've said this on your show but I have... I have floated this elsewhere because this is really the... the largest thesis that I've been working on and I'm... I... I bring this up to you. Charlie, because I'd like to hear your reaction to it.  Understand I am not 100 committed to this -- I'm like 80 of the way there to believing this. But my thesis is that, in its current configuration, the Republican Party represents a clear and present danger to our democracy.  What do you think?  Is that too much at this point.

Cool.

Well now that we're all in agreement, lets divvy up the enormous amount of work that needs to be done in the way that makes the most sense.  Never Trumpers can start by putting their own back yard in order by rooting out all that has gone so terribly wrong inside their Republican Party with all the ruthlessness they used to build that Republican Party in the first place.  And the rest of us -- those who haven't spent our adult lives incubating a fascist movement inside the dead husk of the Party of Lincoln -- will busy ourselves trying to repair all that the Republican Party has corrupted or destroyed.

Except...  

Except, well, I really hate to be picky but seeing as how we've been burned so many times before, I am obliged to ask you all to be very specific about what you mean about the Republican Party "in its current configuration".   Because fixing a problem -- any problem -- depends on honestly and accurately diagnosing the cause of that problem.  When exactly did it begin?  Who specifically created it?  What fueled it? And so forth.

So, in your judgement as professional Conservatives havers-of-opinions, did the GOP lock itself into an inexorable strategy of racism, lies and madness 30 years ago during the Gingrich/Limbaugh/Hate Radio/Fox News 1990s?  Or was it the Reagan/Atwater 1980s that did it?  Or the Nixon/Southern Strategy 1960s and 1970s?  

Mr. Last, why don't you go first.

Last:  That's what we've seen from the Republican Party for the last five years.

No, I don't think your really getting it.  Mr. Sykes, how about you?

Sykes:  This is... this is the story of the Republican Party over the last four or five years.

I guess I didn't make myself clear.  We're looking for the origins of the wingnut virus.  The laboratory where your unholy Republican experiments were performed,  not the shambling, rotting monster that finally -- long after it was too late -- kicked the doors off the lab and ran out of your control.  Mr. Last, why do you go ahead an take another crack at it.

Last:  The thing that I found the most disorienting of the over the last five years...

Gosh.  Still not getting it.  Mr. Sykes?

Sykes:  ...and... and in my life over the last four or five years.

Mr. Last?  Last chance.

Last: This isn't... this is not the kind of thing that would have even been thinkable before four years ago.

Alrighty then.

Mr. Sykes, any final thoughts?

Sykes:  ...I will tell you that the events of the last 30 days have strengthened that.  I mean it's... it's... there was a time before the election when you could make a case for the recovery of the party, but this is almost as if...

Wow.

I despair of the future of this happy alliance.

No Half Measures