The Skeevy, Racist, Unrepentant, Third-Cousin Of The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Friend

What all savvy Republicans really want is a new drug.

A superawesome kind of drug.

A drug compounded from exactly the same ingredients they used to make Trump -- racism, paranoia, lies, slander, conspiracies -- because those are how Republicans win elections.

A drug that gives them exactly the same feels as a Trump presidency --  righteous rage, out-and-proud racism, ecstatic grievance, fascist swagger.  

But it also has to be a drug that doesn't come with the socko Trump morning-after hangover.  The cotton-mouthed stumblebum staggering away from the catastrophes they created.  The dry-heaving up of gibberish excuses.  The need to turn Fox News up to 110 decibels to drown out the rest of the world laughing at them.  The need to take a hammer to every mirror in the place so they never risk getting even the slightest introspective glimpse at the horror they have become.

In other words, they hunger for the same kind of ghoulish reset drug that the GOP made out of 9/11.  

From "Like a Virgin" from 2009:

Or don't you remember the day the Right robbed the graves of all those who perished on 9/11 to turn this

into their all-purpose

"Get Out of the 90s Free" card?

And the thing is, it worked.

By selling 9/11 for a mess of wingnut pottage, the Right bought itself an anti-Liberal free-fire zone and two Presidential terms-worth of blank checks. Two terms of an alternately supportive and supine media. Two terms of catastrophe, corruption and treason protected from scrutiny by an ablative shield made out of solid "Why do you hate America?", and a promise that they could go on bareback fucking diseased monsters in the alley all night long, every night, forever and wake up each morning miraculously clean, virginal and still beloved in the eyes of God...

As we have talked about many times on this blog, the goal of the Never Ttumpers has never been to fundamentally reform the Republican party because to actually purge the GOP of what makes it a toxic shitpile would mean getting rid of the xenophobes and the homophobes and the Dominionist Fundamentalists and the gun nuts and the "All Gummint Is Evil" Libertarians and the Krazy Kremlin Kidz and Fox News and Hate radio and all the garden variety morons and, of course, all those reliable bigots.  

And the hard truth is that without those xenophobes and homophobes and Dominionist Fundamentalists and gun nuts and the "All Gummint Is Evil" Libertarians and the Krazy Kremlin Kidz and Fox News and Hate radio and all the garden variety morons and those tens of millions of reliable bigots  there is no Republican Party.  There's just several thousand rich assholes who hate paying taxes and several thousand grifters who make their living preying on the dumbfuck, racist base.  

So for all the Third Way/Country Over Party/No Labels wishcasting you hear from every Never Trumper about creating a third party for imaginary Centrists and fictional Independents, the other hard truth is that there is no path back to power for them that doesn't involve reconstituting the GOP, pretty much intact, but without a shoutycracker madman at the top of the ticket saying all the quiet parts out loud.  

And if you find yourself looking at the sheer scale of such a thing and asking "But how?  I mean...how can they possibly get away with memory holing the monstrous and very sins of an entire political party?" all I can say is, oh my goodness kiddo, are you new here? 

They'll do it by rolling out the Fabulous, Tea-Baggulous Bush-Off Machine -- that miraculous device these same scumbags used to evade responsibility for the eight years or treason and ruin the inflicted on this country under the previous Republican administration -- and giving it a new coat of paint and a handful of new slogans.

But this time they'll do it using the credibility that Credulous Liberal handed over to them free of charge because the enemy of my enemy is now my supervisor.

From me, a year ago:

Now that Trump has gone, as I look out across the vast wasteland of the American political media, I do not see the true history of the Republican Party -- the long, public decent into madness and fascism that ended with Donald Trump -- being discussed all day, every day by Liberals (and supplemented by a few chagrined Never Trump volunteers) on cable news and on the opinion pages of every major American newspaper.  

In fact, I don't see that story being told anywhere, by anyone.  Except, perhaps, by the same rag-tag group of Liberal bloggers who have always told that story, and have always been despised for it.  

Instead I see an American political media which has now been completely colonized by men like Rick Wilson and and a handful of his fellow Never Trumpers.  Men with deep contacts in the media who, with the help of my team,  have insinuated themselves into every media outlet -- op-ed pages, books, writing gigs at major American publications, and appearance agreements on cable news where their books and podcasts and marketing companies are valorized to the tune of millions of dollars worth of free publicity every day -- so thoroughly that if you flip on MSNBC at pretty much any hour of the day you will find a Never Trumper there, on set, telling their story, nor ours.

So as tens of millions of racist Republican shitheads scramble to once again escape responsibility for yet another catastrophe they created, be prepared for your Never Trump friends to use the credibility and moral authority which our Liberal elite handed over to them free-of-charge to open their own, branded Indulgence factory and get into the Mass Absolution Business big time.

If you have been paying attention to Never Trump rhetoric over the past several years, you could not fail to have noticed how, exactly as predicted, they have been continually widening the Circle of Republican Absolution to include basically everyone except Trump and a handful of his most ardent parasites while at the same time escalating their attacks on the Left as being every bit as extreme and dangerous as the Extreme on the Right.  Continually lowering the bar for Republicans so that just about any ballycrawling wingnut can clear it, and raising the bar for Democrats so that unless we nominate Joe Manchin for president in 2024 the entire party should be written off as radical squad commies.

And in case you haven't been paying attention to Never Trump rhetoric over the past several years, senior Daily Beast columnist Matt Lewis has done us all a favor by putting the plan on Front Street (with emphasis added):

DeSantis Might Be Trump-Lite, but at Least He’s Not Trump

I WANT A NEW CRUSH

The GOP’s going to move on from Trump at some point—why not now?

...

Unlike the progressives who love to hate all viable Republican contenders (let’s not forget what they did to Mitt Romney in 2012) and the Never Trump conservatives who have mostly given up on the GOP, there exists a breed of intellectual conservative—National Review, perhaps, being the locus—that is anxious to find a post-Trump Republican who will inspire the party faithful to say Trump was great! But it’s time to move forward into the future.

“The old-line conservative writers who opposed Trump but then made uneasy peace with him really really really really like Ron DeSantis and are all but begging Republican voters to please like him too,” notes columnist Damon Linker.

These DeSantis conservatives believe he’s the goldilocks candidate, which is to say he’s conventional enough to suit them (“flawed, but within normal parameters”), while still being controversial enough to satisfy the MAGA crowd.

Yes, DeSantis is a jerk. A blowhard. Which is to say, he represents the id of the Republican Party’s current incarnation. As such, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that DeSantis has the best chance to replace Trump as the GOP’s standard bearer.

The hope is that the hybrid will be Trump (“He fights!”) minus the unnecessary chaos, humiliating campaign defeats, and attempted coups. Rather than burning calories to defend Trump’s ego, cultural conservatism will actually have a defender. Likewise, the media will not be allowed to set the narratives, and corporate interests (see DeSantis’s war with Disney) will not be allowed to exert undue influence on public policy decisions.

...

Regardless of where you land on that question, here’s what you're not going to get from Republicans: a mea culpa. There will be no moment where Republicans denounce Trump, vote en masse for Mitt Romney or Liz Cheney, and admit you were right (at least, not anytime soon). That’s not on the table.

What could happen, however, is that the GOP could just…move on.

...

Over on Twitter, The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser pointed out that the same Congressional Republicans who refused to impeach Trump are now giving Zelensky a standing ovation.

But, I ask, would it be better for them to boo Zelenesky?

I would rather allow them the cognitive dissonance. I would rather have a GOP that hypocritically supports Zelensky than one that consistently screws him. I would rather have a GOP that furtively, if gradually, transitions to normalcy than one that proudly clings to “America First.”

The same principle is at play when we consider whether it would be wise to root for Republicans to simply transcend Trump in the only way they can.

Personally, I would prefer to give Republicans a “golden bridge” to the future—and an “off-ramp” from Trumpism.

Yes, this allows Republicans to save face—without facing the consequences. But it’s better than the alternative, which is not saving face and doubling down on Trump...

Except letting Republicans get away with eight years of sleaze, obstruction, show trials, lies and impeachment during the Clinton years is what gave us Bush.

And letting Republicans get away with eight years of fraud, lies, war crimes, treason and criminal incompetence under Bush is what created the Fake Tea party and gave us eight years of sedition, sabotage, conspiracy mongering and hysterical public racism during the Obama years.  

And coddling that behavior is what gave us Trump. 

So no, Mr. Lewis, I don't think I'm up for letting your unhinged fascist GOP mob off the hook one more time since letting them off the hook over and over and over again is what got us into this mess in the first place.   

In fact, before you put pen to paper again, it might be an excellent idea for you to toddle on down to your local elementary school, or church, or workplace or, really, anywhere that actual humans congregate and ask the people running those institutions what they think of your novel behavioral theory that the best way to deal with escalating toxic behavior is to ignore it and/or reward it as is goes from bad to worse to sociopathic.  

No Half Measures