Meet The New Mess

Same as the old mess.

The New MAGA Establishment

Trumpism will outlast Trump. Possibly for a very long time.

by WILLIAM KRISTOL  JUNE 2, 2022 5:29 AM

A couple of weeks ago, looking at the Republican primaries so far this year, Tim Miller discerned the rise of “the new MAGA establishment”:

But across the GOP landscape another trend is beginning to surface: the power of the new MAGA establishment.

The MAGA establishment is the collection of old guard GOP consultants who submitted to Trumpism, conservative media outlets, and Trump hangers-on who are using their power to try to guide that party towards candidates who are loyal to Trump and squashing two other types of candidates: 1) those who dared oppose him, and 2) the anti-establishment MAGA wild cards they can no longer control...

 So the Bulwark crew have crunched the numbers and peered deeeeeep into their tiny Kristol Balls and "discerned"...what Liberals have been saying all along.

Well, not everything that Liberal have been saying all along.

For example, almost none of them would be caught dead admitting that the base of the modern GOP has always been a mob of reprogrammable racist meatheads.

Or that the success of the modern party has always depended entirely on who was steering that mob of reprogrammable meatheads and in what direction.

Or that one of the primary functions of the modern Conservative media machine and the complicit mainstream political media has been to insure that rumors of that the mob of reprogrammable meatheads on whom the party depended so utterly were either A) dismissed outright as the product the fevered imagination of a few crackpot Liberal alarmists or, B) laughed off as a few fringy outliers which no Serious Person could take seriously.

Or that the party Brain Caste only began to grudgingly acknowledge the existence of  their reprogrammable mob once it became clear that Donald Trump was succeeding in prying the reprogrammable mob's joystick out their hands. That Donald Trump was winning over the GOP's reprogrammable mob fairly quickly and easily by doing little more than speaking to them in their native programming language.  The language of rage and racism.  The language grievance and paranoia. Language of Limbaugh and all of his imitators.  The language of Gingrich and all of his imitators.  The language of Fox News.  The language the Right had been using to keep that mob at a continuous low boil for decades.  The language GOP ad-men had been using right along to spin that mob up and get 'em to the polls every couple of years.

Or that the party Brain Caste only became suddenly interested in the corrosive toxicity of their reprogrammable mob and the permanent damage that mob was doing to the country once Donald Trump was fully in control of that mob and began turning that mob on them. 

But bow howdy did the GOP Brain Case wake up quick once that mob and the machinery of the Conservative media started relentlessly tearing into the GOP Brain Caste .  Began treating the GOP Brain Caste like -- gasp! -- Liberals.  Then, suddenly, it was time to Take Action!  Time to Speak Up!  Time to Hold People Accountable!  

But of course the time to speak up had long passed.  The time to take action was back when their party gave the keys to the kingdom to scum like Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh.  And as for holding people accountable, well, let's just say that, mirrors are as scarce over at The Bulwark as they are in Dracula's castle.

In the balance of the article, Kristol incants the magic word "establishment" something like 30 times.  Reagan, Reagan, Reagan...you know kids, back in the day the establishment... Reagan, Nixon, Reagan Reaganity, GHW Bush, Reagan  Which is no surprise, since creatures like Kristol -- arrogantly certain of their own terrible ideas and safely cocooned away from the consequence of those terrible ideas -- are entirely the creation of the complicit Beltway media establishment, and the Conservative media establishment and the Conservative political establishment.  

For decades, his status within the establishment left Kristol free to dismiss, with his trademark sniff and his deaths-head smirk, all the dire warnings about what was really going on inside the real Republican party.  Arrogantly certain that there would never be a day of reckoning for him and his kind. 

And then the day of reckoning came.  Because it always does. And suddenly all the buttons Kristol's establishment was used to pushing to get things moving weren't working and now Kristol fears that a new establishment is settling in for the duration.  As well he should.

But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.  The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. -- Matthew 7:26-27

But the fallen establishment Kristol pines for wasn't built on sand.  It was an outwardly imposing structure full of Bill Kristols who talked a lot about deficits and tax cuts and deregulation and Burke and slashing Big Gummint programs and the superior moral character of Conservatives and Buckley and the Evils of Socialism and how Liberals hated Murrica, built on a toxic waste dump of seething Republican base voter rage, racist, resentment and paranoia.

It was a sham built on a shitpile.

From Leonard Pitts:

Conservatives appalled by the ‘crazy’ were too silent for too long. Now, it’s too late

...

There was a moment when every traditionally conservative voter, pundit and politician could have stood up against what conservatism has become, the rot it has inflicted. There was a time they might have even stopped it had enough of them simply spoken out. Almost none of them did. 

We didn’t reach the current state of things overnight, after all. To the contrary, this has been a 30-year train wreck, a slow-motion disaster that mangled conservatism into the moral monstrosity it is today. And it’s not as if nobody saw it happening. What with Newt Gingrich’s hostage-taking approach to government and Fox’s truth-optional approach to news, it was pretty obvious. 

Indeed, right-leaning pundits tacitly acknowledged the shift years ago when they began finding it necessary to use the term “thoughtful conservatives” to distinguish themselves from the demagogues and flame throwers increasingly populating their side. Yet “thoughtful conservatives” were nevertheless all too willing to make common cause with unthoughtful ones in exchange for the jolt of energy and enthusiasm the latter brought to the cause...

 

In a very real way, the new Republican establishment is shaping up to be a much more honest representation of the real Republican party than Kristol's establishment ever was.  Because rather than having to exert itself endlessly trying to hide its roots -- indignantly insisting that their base wasn't a shipile of bigots and imbeciles when it very obviously was -- the new establishment will be in in tune with that base because it is quite consciously quarrying that toxic waste dump of seething Republican base voter rage, racist, resentment and paranoia for its building materials.   

The new Republican political establishment will exist in harmony with its fascist propaganda machine and its depraved base precisely because the old establishment spent decades pandering to that Republican base; refining and honing their rage, racist, resentment and paranoia in order to win elections.  

Meanwhile, the Bill Kristols of the old regime will never miss a meal.  They will continue to find a comfortable home within the Beltway media, where they will continue to carp and complain that we Democrats need to jettison our most energetic and reliable voters and instead go all-out to attract the non-existent Center.  

I Am The Liberal Media