Republicans in the Quantum Realm

 "What I am saying is... Time works differently in the Quantum Realm." -- Scott Lang, Avengers: Endgame 

Now that decades of the GOP's exponentially escalating mindless obstruction, sedition and treason have been (mostly) successfully memory-holed and buried, a number of out-of-power-but-still-an-asshole Republicans are clearly looking to rehabilitate their reputations and level up their places in the history books by using the Wingnut Quantum Realm to tunnel further and further into a completely imaginary past to discover that -- OMG! -- it was the Democrats who were responsible for fucked-up-ness of the GOP all along!

Specifically it was al the fault of the Kenyan Usurper that Democrats elected president.  

Twice.

Consider a few recent examples.

First, Linda Chavez, a consecrated servant in the temple of St. Reagan and the cringy. heavily-lacquered, mothball-smelling aunt who gives copies of Newt Gingrich's "Rediscovering God in America" to her nieces and nephews for Christmas.  Here, via Mona Charen's "Beg to Differ" podcast is how Linda Chavez "remembers" history and assigns responsibility for where we are today.

Chavez: We've had really dramatic legislation offered that is basically just sort of a rush to judgment. I mean it started, um, maybe there were examples before this, but one of the examples that I think was sort of the breaking point for a lot of Conservatives was the Affordable Care Act which, of course, was passed on a non-bipartisan basis.

Yep.  It was that damn Obamacare which Obama just rammed through willy-nilly without consulting anyone or seeking any Republican input.  

Of course that's a lie and everyone on the Left who lived through that period damn well knows it's a lie. Which is why Lefties who lived through that period are definitely not invited to participate in discussions like this.  Which is how the Liberal blogosphere came to be.  

And that's how babies are made!

But the thing is, I honestly do not know if Republicans like Chavez are capable of facing their own past honestly anymore.  They have been professional liars for the Republican Party their whole lives and lying in the service of depravity while presenting a moralizing, church-lady façade to the world is terribly corrosive to the soul.  

So maybe Linda Chavez has come to actually believe the shit she talks to keep the horror at what she has done with her life at bay, or maybe she doesn't.  I don't know.  What I do know is that there was not one person on that panel who felt moved to correct her ridiculous lies.  Instead there was a some pusillanimous handwaving about Both Sides and The Hatfields and The McCoys...and then they moved right on.

Since a million gallons of ink and a billion pixels have already been spilled documenting Obama's nearly-superhuman efforts to get any Republican to come to the ACA table in good faith (only to be stalled, scammed and ultimately told to pound sand) there seems little point at this late date in tossing a few more adjectives on that pile.  And the Never Trump goofs and superannuated "No Labels/Problem Solvers" old guard Left that make up the "Beg to Differ" waxworks don't want to hear it anyway.

However, if anyone out there is moved to screw with 'em just for the sake of screwing with 'em, here's the one hour and 25 minute video of Obama crashing the Republican Party summit in Baltimore 2010 and very calmly breaking down the ACA for them (sans TelePrompTer), fielding every question and saying very clearly that he would happily incorporate any or all of their ideas into the ACA as long as those ideas helped to expand health care coverage to include more people, improve outcomes and lowered costs.  And boy howdy did he catch them flat-footed.

Deeper into the Wingnut Quantum Realm we find Eric Cantor, fallen-from-grace former Republican Young!Gun!,  trying to ooze his way back to relevance by doing exactly what Linda Chavez did: burrowing into an imaginary recent past and inventing some way to blame the Scary Black Guy who still haunts the GOP's dreams.

Only instead of the ACA being blamed for the Congress being cast out of Bipartisanship Paradise, this time the original Democratic Sin that drove the GOP mad is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  In case you've forgotten, the ARRA was the recovery plan that Obama and the Democrats in congress passed to begin to dig the country out from under the rubble of the Great Republican Recession: a recovery plan that experts now agree was far too skimpy for the scale of the disaster we were facing, and, in a bid to bring Republican on-board, was fully one-third sweet-sweet tax cuts.

Not a single House Republican voted for it, and only three Republicans in the Senate voted for it.  But damn if  they weren't all only too happy to stand in front of construction projects holding giant checks and taking credit for bringing much needed funds to their districts and states.

For example, Eric Cantor.  

From the Washington Monthly in April of 2009:

Cantor Can’t Claim Credit

In February, there were a few Republican lawmakers who claimed credit for spending projects in the stimulus bill they opposed. It was more than a little awkward — lawmakers usually don’t take credit for legislation they reject.

As spending increases, and new projects get underway, we may soon see more of this. Take House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), for example.

Rep. Eric I. Cantor, the House minority whip, led House GOP opposition to President Barack Obama’s $740 billion [sic] stimulus program.

Yesterday, though, the Henrico County Republican said bringing high-speed rail to the region could further spur economic development, creating as many as 185,000 jobs and bringing $21.2 billion to a region already home to about a half-dozen Fortune 500 companies and 20,000 small businesses.

“If there is one thing that I think all of us here on both sides of the political aisle from all parts of the region agree with, it’s that we need to do all we can to promote jobs here in the Richmond area,” Cantor said.

You’ve got to be kidding me. Eric Cantor was arguably the leading Republican critic of the economic recovery package. He not only publicly mocked government funding for high-speed rail, Cantor also rejected the very idea that government spending could generate economic growth.

Now, however, thanks to a spending bill Cantor fought to kill, there may be money available for HSR connecting Richmond to D.C. Cantor is all for it, despite the fact that if it were up to him, the money wouldn’t exist. (Indeed, it wouldn’t even be a possibility until 2014, since Cantor wants to improve the economy by way of an insane five-year spending freeze.)...

But this is how Eric Cantor "remembers" it now...

First John Boehner, now former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R) is rewriting fairly recent history.

While laying blaming on "both sides," Cantor says extremism and craziness in D.C. stems back to Obama's "so-called stimulus bill." pic.twitter.com/umh9XT638Q

— The Recount (@therecount) April 20, 2021

And speaking of John of Umber, this is from "Meet the Press" two days ago:

CHUCK TODD: Was it [Obama] or was it conservative media? I mean, you know, you wrote this about Roger Ailes. You said, "I just didn't believe the entire federal government was so terrified of Roger Ailes that they'd break about a dozen laws to bring him down. I thought I could get him to control the crazies and instead I found myself talking to the president of the club." Here was the head of Fox News. You were trying to -- you met with him to say, "Hey, can we cool this rhetoric down?" So, you put the blame on President Obama. Isn't it Roger Ailes and the radicalization of what happened on sort of right wing at night that torpedoed immigration?

JOHN BOEHNER: No, no. Believe me, Chuck, I wanted to get immigration reform done. President Obama wanted to get it done. But again, every time we'd get ready to move, the president would go out and give some speech or he'd loosen up some, some immigration regulation and just kind of set everybody on fire. And that's not a prescription for getting things accomplished in the Congress.

And this is from The Washington Post in 2014:

Boehner refuses to act on immigration reform

If you want to know how messed up the political dynamic is on immigration reform, just look at what House Speaker John Boehner said at his news conference this afternoon. “It is time for the Congress of the United States to deal with a very difficult issue in our society,” Boehner said, “… it’s just time to deal with it.”

Okay, here’s the thing. In June 2013, the U.S. Senate passed an immigration overhaul bill with 68 votes. That’s an unheard-of tally in gridlocked Washington. The legislation went to the House, where it promptly died. Boehner (R-Hostage) backed down after the more vocal minority in his majority revolted. By June 2014, the president was in the Rose Garden announcing that he was going to take executive action because Boehner “informed me that Republicans will continue to block a vote on immigration reform at least for the remainder of this year.”...

And crowded as the Wingnut Quantum Realm is now, expect it to get a whole lot more like the Dan Ryan at rush hour on Friday as more and more current and former Republicans look for new and creative ways to blame the unhinged, racist derangement of their party on the Black Guy.  

No Half Measures