But I Didn’t Know Until This Day That It Was... Republicans All Along

In all my days on this Earth I have never heard of any profession outside of Beltway media Professional Political Havers-of-Opinions in which, after decades of aggressively beating the drum your political expertise (and relentlessly slagging anyone who questions that expertise) someone can shrug their shoulders, declare that, oopsie!, they never actually understood the first fucking thing about their field of "expertise", and continue right on as a Beltway media Professional Political Haver-of-Opinions without missing a meal or breaking stride.

And yet again and again, the former Republican political experts with which cable news lards their programming can be found announcing with childlike wonder that, golly gee Buffalo Bill, they never had any idea that their Republican Party was full of Republicans.  

Today's example comes from the very tail end of Mr. Charlie Sykes' otherwise satisfactory interview with McCay Coppins on the death of the American press.

COPPINS: ...if I look back through my notes and see who my best sources were, you know a lot of those people who were more establishment figures have become the fringe right and the people who seemed like the fringe at the time are now the establishment right? And so, y'know when I look back at [his 2015 book, "The Wilderness: Deep Inside the Republican Party's Combative, Contentious, Chaotic Quest to Take Back the White House"] so many of the themes of that book were people, y'know, these political leaders.  People like Bobby Jindal who's a Rhodes scholar and finds himself, y'know, basically playing culture war with the Duck Dynasty guys to... to try to carve out a space for himself in the Republican primary.  Um, y'know all these, guys are kind of trying to contend with the reality that they don't fully understand the base of their party, right? And I think that that ended up being true, just in ways that nobody could have predicted.

Bullshit.  

During all the years that Beltway media insiders were busying themselves fawning over muppets like Jindal and confidently predicting that Jeb! was the future of the GOP and that no one should worry about Trump because it was definitely going to be Rubio, the alarmist, crackpot Left was loudly and consistently warning that the respectable teevee face of the GOP was nothing but an increasingly thin and fragile veneer covering a voting base that was getting exponentially more openly deranged and racist on a steady diet of Hate Radio, Fox News, Regnery Press trash and Gingrich-style politics.  

A thin veneer that was being held in place by those very same Beltway media insiders who refused to see what was clearly happening to the GOP in plain sight, and mocked and slandered the few of us who refused to be quiet about it.   

15 years ago, some disreputable Liberal blogger was shouting into the abyss about the coming meltdown of the Pretty Hate Machine --

Because the Pretty Hate Machine does not come with a conscience, and it now casts its depraved shadow over their entire Party.

And over the entire nation that Party has seized.

And over the entire world that Party has polluted.

It has become all Means and no Ends but More Power, and as with all power, it comes with a steep price.

Because despite periodic and frightening bouts with Mussolinitis, we are not a fascist people by inclination.

In fact, we are taught to abhor authoritarianism. Our whole government is an exercise in the division and dissipation of power and the creation of strong, interlocking safeguards to protect us against the rise of a One Party/Dear Leader State. We number among some of our proudest moments (the Emancipation Proclamation, the defeat of the Nazi and Imperial Japanese Empires, the enactment of landmark Civil Rights legislation, the collapse of the Soviet Union) those occasions when we slammed totalitarianism to the ground, both at home and abroad.

And because these are the very safeguards and traditions that the GOP is working assiduously to destroy, and because there is no majority present in the active electorate actually lusts after the annihilation of democracy in America, they have to do it sloooowly and under a variety of false fronts and pretenses.

Yes there are millions of them, and yes they are virtually packed into the same party... 

 

--that the GOP had built for itself to win elections.

Back to Charlie Sykes yesterday.

SYKES: I think that's the key, is that we -- me, as well as many of these candidates -- just fundamentally did not understand the base of their party.  They thought they did and everything was a was a rude surprise. 

16 years ago, some disreputable Liberal blogger was shouting into the abyss about what would happen when the deranged, racist base of the GOP finally figured out that they held all the cards -- 

One day we will have to explain to the children what happened when Thurston Howell III lost his right mind and decided that for the sake of some tax cuts to make him incrementally more comfortable, his very bestest buddies in the whole, wide world were the Ultra Right Wing Gorgons down in Jesusland. 

 

-- and decided to take over the party.

Back to Charlie Sykes yesterday.

SYKES: No, it's always good to go back and think, "Okay, what what was I thinking back then? Why... why did I think that Marco Rubio would be a strong, stand-up guy?"  I mean y'know, it's strange.  Or, um, "Lindsey Graham?  Well at least he's a strong independent-minded maverick."  And we could we could sort of go through all of them and none of them seem plausible...

Don't worry.  Tomorrow, or the next day, or next week there will be another guest with another opinion that Mr. Sykes is anxious to accommodate and he'll be right back to blaming Liberals for Trump's election or for (no kidding) making the GOP racist.  Because Mr. Sykes is an affable, hollow man who blows this way and that depending on the prevailing breeze from his peer group or whoever happens to be sitting in front of him at the moment.  

Which, all in all, doesn't really bother me that much.

Nor does it bother me all that much that, after a lifetime spent advancing the agenda of the Party of Bigots and Imbeciles,  Mr. Sykes finally figured out that the Republican Party was full of Republicans at about the same time he became eligible for Medicare and far, far too late to undo the damage he had done.  

But what does bother me is Mr. Sykes' reaction whenever some disreputable Liberal on social media  has the poor taste to remind Mr. Sykes that the Left has been warning people like Mr. Sykes for decades that their chosen profession of enabling wingnut madness and racism would end badly.

Because for Beltway media insiders, controlling the narrative is still all-important.

Controlling who gets to be regarded and rewarded as serious-minded professionals and who get relegated to the outer darkness is still everything.  

No Half Measures