"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do" -- Probably Karl Rove, circa 2004
We're gonna do some math today! But don't worry. This is easy math. Stuff that anyone who has learned their guzzintas, their takeaways and their fractions can do in their sleep.
Ready?
How many Republicans are there currently in the House of Representatives?
Answer: 210.
Now how many of those House Republicans voted to impeach Trump the second time?
Answer: Ten.
And what percentage of 210 is 10?
It's 4.76%, but we'll round it up to 4.8% just to be nice.
And what has been the political fate of that 4.8% of the GOP.*
Well...
Representatives Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois have both quit amid death threats from voters and hostility from colleagues.
Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming has been run out of GOP leadership on a rail.
Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington's leading primary opponent is a former Green Beret who scored Trump’s endorsement by repeating the claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged by massive fraud.
Now that his primary opponent has gotten Trump's endorsement and a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser, it looks like Peter Meijer is about to get stomped in the August Michigan primary.
Fred Upton of Michigan was redistricted into what was effectively a forced retirement.
John Katko of New York is quitting.
Dan Newhouse of Washington has gone radio silent since his vote to impeach, and may survive his primary due to internecine squabbles among the other wingnuts in the race.
Tom Rice of South Carolina now has a Trump-endorsed opponent.
And David Valadao of California remains the only representative who voted to impeach Trump who hasn't been driven out of the party, or doesn't have a Trump-endorsed primary opponent.
So let's you or I were to start up a podcast.
And on this podcast we regularly obsessed over the state of the GOP. But almost the only Republicans we ever talked about as representative of the general state of the party was that tiny, beleaguered faction of ten. Over and over we would to insist that the vast majority of the GOP was in the thrall of Liz Cheney, supported the January 6th committee and had been fully on-board with the impeachment Donald Trump.
If you and I started such a podcast, it would be immediately obvious to even the most casual listener that we were talking out of our asses. That we clearly had some entirely other agenda, like, say, deliberately misrepresenting the general state of the GOP over and over and over again in an attempt to convince our audience of something that was patently untrue.
Now, more math.
How many Democrats are there currently in the House of Representatives?
Answer: 225.
And how many of those House Democrats are members of "The Squad"?
Answer: Six.
And what percentage of 225 is 6?
It's 2.67% , but we'll round it up to 2.7% just to be generous.
Now, based on our previous word problem, what would your opinion be of a podcast -- a very popular podcast, well-funded podcast with a big staff that enjoyed millions of dollars with of free publicity from the cable networks every year -- which focused obsessively on the terrible, doomed state of the Democratic party, but almost the only Democrats they ever talked about as representative of the general state of the party is this 2.7% of House Democrats?
This tiny of faction of six.
And what if this podcast just happened to be hosted by a former Hate Radio host? A guy who spent 30 years on the air bashing Democrats as crazy, Commie monsters out to destroy Murrica? A guy who specialized the same despicable sleight-of-hand that is still the stock-in-trade of Conservative Hate Radio and Fox News trolling: trawling the whole wide world until they find one, small example of something that would enrage their audience...and them obsessively pounding away at that thing, insisting that it represented the entire Left? The entire Democratic party?
Well kiddies, welcome to The Bulwark! Hosted by Conservative Hate Radio veteran Charlie Sykes: a man who is sad and outraged and takes it as a sign of Democrats losing our minds that there are so few forced-birth advocates remaining in the party. This is from his podcast yesterday:
Lucy Caldwell (Joe Walsh's campaign manager): I think in general if Democrats could get into a headspace of nominating more moderate candidates that would be a good thing. Because Democrats are bound for their own reckoning. They have avoided their own reckoning because the reckoning happening on the Republican side is just so very very bad.
Sykes: So, um, I'm going to get much more flack than you're going to get from for it, okay, because, um, let's go back to the beginning of our conversation where you made a really good point about, y'know, if we were a rational and reasonable political universe how we would resolve issues like abortion and guns. That there would be some sort of reasonable compromises. I would like to see that kind of a debate. Unfortunately in Texas what's going to happen, though, is that, uh, Republicans and Greg Abbott are gonna run, y'know, as supporters of the Second Amendment. They're not going to apologize. They're not going to back off. They're not going to move. But Beto O'Rourke has gone pretty far in saying that, yes, he would take away guns from people...
This is glib Hate Radio veteran Charlie Sykes doing that old, reliable Both Sides Do It dance.
This time he is trying to Both Sides the string of mass shootings that his former party's policies have enabled.
On one side are the GOP Extremists who won't budge one inch and have chosen schoolhouse slaughters as the hill that America's children will just have to die on.
Scary!
But on the other side are Democratic extremists like Beto O'Rourke who want to "take away guns from people."
Also scary!
And right there, in the Imaginary Sensible Center, sits Mr. Sykes, shedding glycerine tears for a better world where "reasonable compromises" could be had.
Mr. Sykes continues: This is the thing. There's a montage out there that I...I played a couple of years ago where all of the supporters of gun control said, well, no we're not talking about taking away your gun. We're not talking about taking away your gun. We're not talking about taking away a gun.
Had he been alive in 1867, I have no doubt that Charlie Sykes would've carried around a little booklet full of quotes by Lincoln saying, "We're not talking about equality for freed slaves. We're not talking about the vote for freed slaves."
Mr. Sykes continues: ... and then there's Beto O'Rourke saying, yes, yeah, I know goddammit we are going to take away your guns...
So Beto is planning on seizing every gun in Texas? Really? Because that sure as shit sounds like what Mr. Sykes is telling his listeners. So before we go any further, maybe we should take a look at Beto O'Rourke's actual position is on this specific issue. A position which I'm sure Mr. Sykes knows full fucking well because Beto said it loud and clear, in 2019, on the presidential debate stage:
“If it’s a weapon that was designed to kill people on a battlefield, if the high-impact, high-velocity round when it hits your body shreds everything inside of your body because it was designed to do that, so that you would bleed to death on a battlefield not be able to get up and kill one of our soldiers. When we see that being used against children … hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”
In their opposition to gun control, Republicans in Congress clearly are prioritizing the sentiments of gun owners in their party over any other perspective, even that of other Republican voters. The Pew polling found that significant majorities of Americans support background checks (81 percent), an assault-weapons ban (63 percent), and a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines (64 percent); a majority also opposes concealed carry of weapons without a permit. Majorities of Republicans who don’t own guns shared those opinions, as did Democratic gun owners, by even more lopsided margins.
Wow.
So, far from being a crazy/Lefty/extreme idea hatched in the bowels of Soros, Incorporated, it turns out that banning assault-weapons is whatchacall a very popular idea. A very popular bipartisan idea. One might even call it -- along with background checks, banning high-capacity ammunition and banning concealed carry of weapons without a permit -- one of those "reasonable compromises" that Charlie Sykes is so fondly and weepily remembers from days gone by.
So if this idea of an assault-weapons ban is, in fact, broadly popular with the American public, what possible motive could Charlie Sykes have for slagging it as some doomed nutty, Leftist dream and a fundamental reversal of what gun control advocates have been saying for years?
Because Charlie Sykes is still, at heart,a glib Conservative Hate Radio veteran who has spent his professional life loathing people like you and me for a living. But he no longer has a home on the Right either. So now he spends his time and energy lying about the Extremes on Both Sides, while trying to create the illusion that there exists some vast Sensible Center, and that he is one of it's elite representatives.
But what about all that math we just did?
What about The Squad?
Glad you reminded me:
Caldwell: [Hawley, Cruz, DeSantis, etc.] are competent autocrats... They're competent. They have impulse control. They present better. They don't have so much of the personal baggage. They're what we should be focused on. We should ...we should we should be more frightened of Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz or Ron DeSantis than we are of Donald Trump.
Sykes: Well I'm... I'm not wild about any of them. Okay so let's switch over to the Democrats. The Squad Progressives had a mixed record last night...
There ya go.
*Thanks for the catch!
2 comments:
A very dear friend who is as liberal as they come on literally every other issue but super-far-right when it comes to Israel, informed me last night that The Squad® -- whom (s)he deeply, passionately, fervently hates because they are anti-Israel anti-Semites -- had introduced a bill in Congress saying "Israel has no right to exist."
Of course, if you read the actual resolution, which will never go anywhere, it says nothing of the kind. Indeed, every time my friend accuses The Squad® of saying that "Israel has no right to exist" and/or "should be wiped off the map" I go home and research whatever (s)he's talking about, and find the same thing every time: none of them has ever said that, or anything like that.
That's laying aside the fact that these are Congressional back-benchers with no power, which I have to keep reminding my friend who is clearly getting this information from right-wing sources both here and in Israel, which have made these women out to be monsters, with tremendous power, and representative of their entire Party. This while treating the Cawthorns and Greenes and Boeberts and Gaetzes and Jordans and Gosars and Gohmerts and Johnsons and Hawleys and Giulianis of the world as outlying kooks.
"Lucy Caldwell (Joe Walsh's campaign manager): I think in general if Democrats could get into a headspace of nominating more moderate candidates that would be a good thing. Because Democrats are bound for their own reckoning. They have avoided their own reckoning because the reckoning happening on the Republican side is just so very very bad."
This person is a moron. A moron who sounds likes they're making threats. Very, very polite threats.
Gotta love it when Republicans threaten Democrats for not keeping our side of the street clean when their side of the street looks like Bucha after the Russians retreated.
Please remember, you are all fascist collaborators, regardless of your attempts to publicly downplay that fact. Don't worry, we'll never believe you aren't! But other, "purer" fascists might. Like "Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz or Ron DeSantis". Ergo, I'd be very discreet about using that word "reckoning" if I were you.
See? I can lecture you, too.
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