Meatheads All The Way Down

If any of you "There has to be a pony!" Never Trumpers were hoping that somewhere out here under the open skies and among the fertile fields of the American Midwest we were growing a better crop of Republicans -- a more sensible, rational strain that might be the seedlings of a new party -- keep lookin', boy-o, because our Republicans are just much of a moral dumpster fire as they are everywhere else.

Here, like everywhere else, the party is an admix of bigots, imbeciles, fundamentalists, ammosexuals, Conservative family dynasties,  whiny Libertarians, and assorted other weirdos and perverts.  Here, like everywhere else, behind every wreck-the-gummint initiative and think tank, and every wannabe Trump candidate for higher office you will find a crackpot neofascist billionaire financiers willing to pour staggering amounts of money into The Cause.   However unlike elsewhere the antics of our Looney Party don't leach into the nation headlines because at the moment, here in the Land of Lincoln, Republicans are outnumbered and largely impotent. 

And while you might think that living in a state where the government actually tries to help its citizens would have a leavening effect, you would be wrong.  Because these days all politics are no longer local.  They're national.  And our local Republicans seethe with all the venomous prejudices and resentments that drive the national party.  Richard Irvin -- a "More Law-n-Order Than Thou" guy running in the Republicans gubernatorial primary -- is being attack-ad bombed by his opponents because he once said something positive about Black Lives Matter.  Between screeching that the  Squad's Socialist Green New Dead is "killing us at the gas pump" and mocking Joe Biden as mentally out to lunch, area nutjob Mary Miller repeats that she is "the Trump-endorsed candidate" for IL15 at every opportunity.  And all of them bend the knee to the Big Lie by emphasizing their unstinting support for "election integrity".  

And it's only going to get worse.

So you will not be surprised to learn that, having hit the bottom of the barrel long ago, the Sangamon County Republican Party has once again brought in the heavy equipment to excavate some more room in the filth below the bottom of the barrel to accommodate this year's Lincoln Day dinner keynote speaker, Charlie Kirk.

Who will definitely be played by Johnny Pemberton -- 

-- in a future Lifetime Movie Network biopic, "Cretin: The Short Rise and Hilariously Spectacular Fall of Charlie Kirk."

If you've already read what I wrote last year charting the Sangamon County Republican Party's long, ugly slouch into the political sewer by tracking who it pays to come and angry-up the rubes -- 

No  decent human beings would want to be in any way associated with scum like [Ted] Nugent and [Laura] Ingraham and {candace] Owens, and sure as shit no actual "conservative, mainstream” outfit would ever in a million years hire them and give them the center stage at their most prestigious annual event named in honor of Abraham Lincoln.

But the Sangamon County GOP does.  They hire grifters and lunatics to publicly enact Republican rituals of rage, racism, paranoia. This is ancient stuff -- the theater of pity and terror -- but with no resolution.  No catharsis,.  Just endless whining about their 1000 imaginary grievances, and endless screeching monologues about the demonic, commie Left, hoping -- praying -- to goad and sneer and ridicule a few Liberal tears out of us.

Because feeding on the misery they can inflict on others is all these vampires of the Big Taunt Party have left.

-- then all you have need to do is swap out the name "Candace Owens" and swap in the name "Charlie Kirk" to understand what went on last night at at the Bank of Springfield Center.

If you have not already read what I wrote last year on this topic, well go and do so.  Now.  We'll wait.

Waiting...

Waiting...

Welcome back.

The one detail I can add to this year's account which was unavailable to me last year is exactly how mush the Sangamon County Republican Party shelled out to put Charlie Kirk on stage for an hour or so.

$30,000.  Plus expenses.  

That tidbit was part of this letter from the chair of the Sangamon County Republican Party abjectly apologizing to (wait for it) South Dakota's batshit governor Kristi Noem for inviting her and then having to disinvite her because Kirk said "yes" first.  

$30,000.  Plus expenses.  For an hour of calling people like me scum, and a few grip and gripe and grins with local wingnuts who want to bathe in the reflected glory of Charlie Fucking Kirk.

Who says crime doesn't pay?

No Half Measures