Your Bulwark Word of the Day: The "L" Word!

Your trusted allies at The Bulwark have learned a new word.

That word is "lifeboat".

As in, Never Trumpers now arrogate to themselves the sole authority to grant absolution and premium lifeboat seating to members of the Traitor Party provided they get right this week with Republican Jesus to the satisfaction of Mr. Charlie Sykes..   And you assholes who are being all fussy about "purity"?  Well you can just fuck right off!

Charlie Sykes:  So what I wrote this morning in my newsletter was, okay, [Liz Cheney] was not Never Trump.  She was actually pretty much Trump loyalist up until recently. But she's clearly now Never Again Trump.  Now that could be a thing, right?  I mean, people who would go, "Okay I was... I enabled it. I was part of the Vichy Republican Party and everything, um, but I'm willing to say Never Again Trump", right? I mean that's... that's something.  It's a beginning.

Amanda Carpenter:  That's definitely something.  And I do think there's the temptation among people maybe like us to hold ourselves out as the purists, and we were right from the beginning, and because we were right all along no one else can sit at our table.  Um, if you want things to get better you have to broaden the invites to this party, okay?

No, Ms. Carpenter, as a senior communications advisor and speechwriter to both Jim DeMint and Ted Cruz, you were definitely not right all along.  You were forced kicking and screaming against your will into finally being on the right side some time in 2016 or 2017 while we on the Left really were right about the Right from the beginning.  But of course that doesn't fit your fairy tale, so please continue.

Sykes: I thought you were going to beat up on me! I honestly when we started this conversation because I... I... I wrote this thing basically saying, "Hey listen, we have to... we have to have every principled voice come forward. Even the people who are who are coming to it late. But, uh, we are going to need, uh, these these converts to come around and we can't be super super pure about all this."  Kind of like the, y'know the parable of the Prodigal Son.  But I... I thought you were going to take the "Screw 'Em" line really.

Carpenter: Well my "Screw 'Em" line is based on the people that took positions in December and January, uh, advocating the blocking of counting of votes.  I... I think...

Sykes: That's... that's true. They are irredeemable.

Carpenter: Yes, the people who were talking in December and January, because at that point we knew there was no widespread fraud that could overturn the election.  Bill Barr came out and made his statements. By then there was... there was no doubt. ... So if you were on that train publicly advocating to stop Joe Biden's certification ... you are on the island.

Here it comes...  

Get ready...

Carpenter: You can never get on the lifeboat, in my opinion.

 

Carpenter: But if other people who were not active in that process are willing to say now that Donald Trump provoking [an] attack on the Capitol to stop the counting of votes is a line we shall never cross again and anyone that was involved in that shall never be trusted again, I... I can ... I can work with that. 

Sykes: No I can... I can too.  And this is... I was thinking about this over the weekend because, uh, I was on a show...

 It was Nicolle Wallace's MSNBC program on which you were a guest 

Sykes: ... where somebody was, y'know talking about Ben Sasse being too little too late 

It was Nicolle Wallace who said it.  To you.  While you were a guest on her show.

Sykes: ... and I said wait, wait, wait, wait, wait he's saying the right thing *now*.  He's telling his members, y'know don't go with the crazy, the bigots, this y'know sedition.  He's doing all of this, so, then, the question is, is there room for people like that at the table.  And there has to be, because if we're going to hold Trump accountable, if we're going to push back against all this stuff, we're going to need people like that who were wrong in the past but are willing to say the right thing now. Because we can't change what they did in the past...

Sykes: ...so if we're on the outside or people on the outside throwing rocks at them and saying, "Hey screw you anyway. We don't, y'know, it's too little too late.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah you are unredeemable.  There's no redemption... there's no  absolution for you.  You are always evil and you're going to be evil." so there's no upside to you to make that vote.  That's, shall we say, not helpful.

As I wrote over the weekend, until Mr. Sykes told me. I was completely unaware that Vichy Republicans were so thirsty for the approval of gun-grabbing, baby-killing, Murrica-hating Commies like me that the deciding factor in the most monumental vote of their lives -- whether to impeach the deposed fascist leader of their Party of Bigots and Imbecile, or fuck it, they bought the ticket and they're taking this ride all the way to the end --  was whether or not I threw verbal rocks at them. 

Also Charlie Sykes continues to bitterly resent people on Twitter (Me!) reminding him that his Republican Party actually existed prior to 2016.

Sykes: ...but of course everything on Twitter [imitating what I guess is his idea of a heartless Libtard] "Well, when are you going to do penance for this?" Well okay the last four fucking years of my life.  I'm sorry, y'know, what else do you want me... what do you want me to do? 

Wow, I've gotta say the Jesuits I studied under at Loyola for a couple of semesters really done me wrong.  They taught us that "penance" was an act of self-abasement, mortification, or devotion performed to show sorrow or repentance for sin.  For example, doing charitable work as a penance.  Stupid Jesuits!  Obviously, "penance" means you and your friends being gifted literally hundreds of millions of dollars in free publicity on cable teevee to promote your books, your podcasts, your websites and your opinions. 

So please, MSNBC, whatever you do, please, please don't throw me in that penance briar patch!

No Half Measures