Both Sides Do It: Old Conservative Whine in New Conservative Skins

When you find yourself thirsty for some of that sweet, sweet Both Siderist giggle juice but are stranded in the middle of the week with long, dry days between you and Chuck Todd's Meet the Press, may I suggest you stop by The Bulwark Podcast Network where, now that The Last Guy is gone, our staunch allies are going into the lucrative "But The Liberals..." business in a big way.

They have all the best varietals.

Feeling like something dusty with top notes of vinegar?  Mona Charen invites George Will over for  an hour of fretting about both sides (but mostly the Left.)

Looking for something from deeper in the cellar with more bite?  How about an hour of Deficit Scolding.

For a lazy afternoon, enjoy the robust flavor of two privileged middle-aged white Conservative men tackling the problem of race in Murrica and discovering that it's really the fault of  ...The Extremes on Both Sides!  (Charlie Sykes talks to Tom Nichols)

You see, on the one side is the actual, structural commitment of the GOP to a white nationalism and fanatical denialism:

Sykes: By the way, have you noticed the... the degree to which conservatives are invested in denying any allegations of racism, racial prejudice, white nationalism.  I mean it is really extraordinary the degree to which they have internalized the anti-anti-racist rhetoric.

driftglass:  Yes Charlie.  We noticed.  We noticed a long, long time ago.

But on the other side there is "some guy who called in to a radio show I was doing" --

Sykes:   I think there are people who try to shove everything into the box of white supremacy.  I was on a Sirius XM radio show yesterday and we were talking about the need for voting reform with Dan Abrams ... and a caller called in basically said "You know you guys are you... you guys you...  know are missing the point because you... you shouldn't talk about this without using the word racism in every sentence."

-- and "some guy who popped into my Twitter timeline"

Nichols:  I'll give you a small... um example of it.  I was ... um ... we were talking about ... um this... um Van Halen versus Van Hagar debate that I... and someone I said something about, well you, know the old Van Halen was very MTV friendly ... and someone popped into my timeline to say and what a racist network it was and I thought, you know it's okay for 10 minutes a day for something to not be about a kind of demonstrative or performative denunciation of racism.

But rest assured, these two, random anecdotal incidents are definitely representative of The Left generally because, well, these  two privileged middle-aged white Conservative men say it is.  And therefore the real problem is... (sing it with me now):

Nichols: And this is where I think we have to we do have to talk about the Left for a minute.  Is to say this [fanatical Conservative denialism] is also a reaction to a Left that has become monomaniacal as you point out about race being about um everything. 

Nichols:  And I think this... on this the... the whacked out Right and the Monomaniacal Left have become symbiotic on this question...

See!  See!  If only we Lefties would heed the wise words of Tom Nichols and Charlie Sykes and quit talking about race all the time, Tucker Carlson, Fox News and maybe even the entire GOP would soon blow away like a fart in a wind tunnel.

Stupid Liberals!

But for sheer, cask-strength popskull , you can't beat Charlie Sykes interviewing failed, one-term Republican congressperson Denver Wriggleman yet again.  First it lulls you with Wigglman's preening self-regard and then -- whammo! -- comes the disorienting hallucinogenic strangeness of both men complaining bitterly about the irreversible derangement of the Republican Party that kicked both if them to the curb and the various Faustian bargains Republican office holders have struck with lunatics to hang onto their seats...

Wiggleman: Charlie I lose sleep over this because now I'm not the congressman in the fifth district and we got somebody who actually might be unhinged that has real issues...

Wiggleman: ...but the Republican conference itself is fragmented and I'll give you an example of Adam Kinzinger.  You know he has an opponent Catalina Loft.  The sewer of American politics runs through my phone...

...while at the same time pretending that there are some non-trivial number of Sekrit Reasonable Republican hiding in their offices who would love to jump in and help Joe Biden if only Joe Biden weren't so damn unreasonable --

Sykes:  What I'm sensing -- and some of our listeners are going to be annoyed by this -- but that despite all the rhetoric about unity and healing the administration has not made it easy for Republicans to cross over and vote for some of these big pieces of legislation. 

driftglass:  Admit it, you were passed-out drunk during the entire Obama Administration weren't you Charlie.

... while at the same time bitching about how terrible and extreme the Left has become when talking about the derangement of the Republican Party -- so bad that maybe it has caused the GOP to be much crazier that it would have otherwise been.   

Wriggleman: and then I'm thinking there has to be a third way!  There's got to be a third party! There's got to be something else out there that we can get away from this polarization -- this hyperbole and this finger pointing that each side is equally or worse evil than me because they have a "D" behind their name or they have an "R" behind their name.  And that is that is what's happening. It's good against evil on each side and those lines are being drawn and my fear is it's just going to get worse.

Sykes: Yeah as long as it's a binary choice. It's all you know all one way or all the other way  And I do sense that that's getting worse too because you can sort of see that y'know among Democrats, uh, they become frustrated.  And so there's a a drum beat uh forget about bipartisanship...

And then comes the money shot which you would definitely have no idea was on the minds of your Never Trump allies if all you knew of them was the genial, tidied up Liberal-friendly version you see on MSNBC:

Wriggleman:  It's sort of the right now we always have now this "tough guy" thing going on with Trump and... and with Biden, right?

So how exactly should Intransigent Tough Guy Joe tempt these Sekrit Reasonable Republicans into working with him?  Well he should start by immediately apologizing for the parts of the COVID relief bill he just signed into law that Republicans didn't like.  And then:

Wriggleman: ... include some Republicans in your damn cabinet.  Um, you said you were and include some sort of moderate Center/Right voices that can be in your ear... um... with some of the crazy that could come from the from the far Left because it's... it's happening, right? And once you get to Critical Wokeness...

Mind you, these are just selected snippets.  The whole exchange was like this, and in episode after episode, Team Bulwark is making it clearer and clearer that, now that The Last Guy is gone, they will be serving up some Conservative-comforting version of Both Siderism for breakfast lunch and dinner from now on.

Imagine shitty absinthe filtered though a sweaty 2014 CPAC "Impeach The Kenyan Usurper!" tee shirt and decanted into Schrödinger's cat box.  

Forever.  

 

Burn The Lifeboats