Little Red State Fundy For Speaker!

Nearly 20 years ago, I wrote a post using a well-known children's story, The Little Red Hen, to explain in the simplest possible terms the trajectory the Republican party was on and exactly where that trajectory was leading.  

And I wasn't alone or in any way unique.  

There were hundreds of members of the brand new "Liberal blogosphere" (from digby) -- 

If you can believe it, it’s been 20 years this January that I published my first post on this old blog. Oh my dear God, where has the time gone?

-- waving our arms and using all of our words to try to warn the country of the terrible danger it was in.  

But since that warning came in the form of pointing out that the Republican party -- and only the Republican party -- was racing down the road to fascism, that warning was, by turns, mocked, sneered at and ignored by all the Very Serious People in the media who were supposed to be in charge of breaking zee glass and ringing zee bell in case of danger.

Here is blogger "publius" writing about the Dean of the very Serious People all the way back in 2005.

“As soon as I stood up, the stream started bubbling more intensely, forming a white foam on its surface. Up from the foam of the waves, a giant seashell emerged with David Broder on it — naked — with ivy wrapped around his head. (…)

“What is this place, naked David Broder?”

“This is the Washington Post editorial board room. Everything is in balance. All is in harmony with the universe.”

But just then, the peaceful musical bliss was interrupted by a voice echoing across the sky. It said:

Bush’s Social Security plan is a bad one. . . bad one . . . (echoing)

Suddenly, I heard a terrible grinding of metal. It sounded like a car was being crushed and digested by a trash compactor. At first, I couldn’t tell where the awful screeching and grinding was coming from, but then I saw. To my amazement, I looked up and saw a massive set of scales — the type of scales that statues of blinded women outside courthouses hold. And the set of scales was huge — probably the size of an urban skyscraper. When the voice in the sky spoke, the scales had started moving, causing the screeching sound. Then I heard another voice coming from somewhere close. It was equally loud:

The Democrats have no plan. They are equally to blame. (echoing)

With that, the scales stopped moving and returned to a state of balance. Long-haired women resumed their music. Children laughed again. All was calm in the Washington Post editorial board room.

“What was that, naked David Broder?”

“This is why I have brought you here — to reveal my wisdom and our burden. You see, we here in the Washington Post editorial room are the guardians of the Great Scales of Objectivity. They must remain balanced at all times. Equally balanced.”

“Or what?”

“Or everyone’s head will explode.”...

Because After all, if that nice Mr. Broder and that wise Mr. Brooks both agreed that the problem with out politics is the Extremes on Both Sides (Brook from 2006) -- 

The flamers in the established parties tell themselves that their enemies are so vicious they have to be vicious too. They rationalize their behavior by insisting that circumstances have forced them to shelve their integrity for the good of the country. They imagine that once they have achieved victory through pulverizing rhetoric they will return to the moderate and nuanced sensibilities they think they still possess.

But the experience of DeLay and the net-root DeLays in the Democratic Party amply demonstrates that means determine ends. Hyper-partisans may have started with subtle beliefs, but their beliefs led them to partisanship and their partisanship led to malice and malice made them extremist, and pretty soon they were no longer the same people. 

-- who cares that a handful of disrespectful, Cheetoh-smeared dirty, hippies could believe otherwise.

From Ruth "David Brooks in a Dress" Marcus' obit for David Broder in 2011:

In the age of the Internet, Broder became a favorite target for left-wing bloggers who disdained his willingness to see both sides’ point of view, his aversion to invective and his instinct for moderation. “High Broderism” was their term of derision. Over the years, a few snarky bloggers applied it to me, intending insult. It could not have been a higher, if undeserved, compliment.

But by 2018 it slowly began to dawn even on the extremely dim Marcus that, just maybe, the Republican party has a voter problem:

...the main factor in [Mark Sanford's] defeat was that the Republican base was turning on him in favor of Trump.

 Sanford says he tried to explain why he had his differences with the president, but South Carolina’s Republican voters had no interest in hearing them.

“The idea of some allegiance not to the Constitution, but to the president, was not what I signed up for,” Sanford said.

In the era of Trump, that has become the only loyalty that matters. 

And just last week Marcus wrote about her truly Herculean capacity for ignoring what was happening right in front of her:

There was a time, in the naive spring and summer of 2015, when I deemed Donald Trump beneath my notice and refused to write about him: Why soil myself, I thought, and also: Surely he will fade away.

I finally caved, in July 2015, with this prescient sentence: “Do not worry about Donald Trump becoming president.”

And then, with a mighty flip:

There was a time, in the increasingly appalling months and years that followed, that I deemed Trump too dangerous to disregard...

And then, with a mighty flop...

Even a columnist gets tired of repeating herself. And so, during his final stretch in office, and in the years since, I mostly averted my gaze... But I mostly thought: Why bother? Shaming targets and convincing readers are the columnist’s goals. With Trump, no minds will be changed, and neither will his behavior.

But then with another mighty flip:

And yet, there are times when attention must be paid — if only to lay down a marker, if only (grandiose as this may sound) so historians will understand: This went too far. This cannot be allowed to stand without being denounced.

And so, at last:

Trump’s call for suspending the Constitution is too dangerous to ignore.

Let's pour one out for the terrible agonies of the High Broderites, who only require the services (metaphorically) of a 2x4 smacking them upside the head with dozens and dozens of times to prod them, tearfully, into doing the bare minimum of what used to be called "journalism".

So where was I?

Oh yeah.

I was remembering a time long before Trump, even long before Obama, when we disrespectful, Cheetoh-stained wretches of the Liberal blogosphere used every tiny platform available to us -- every tiny platform we we able to nail together out of thin, digital air -- to warn day after day, year after year,  about the madness on the Right that was barreling down the pike straight at us.

We, who never took a Ruth Marcus "Even a columnist gets tired of repeating herself. And so, during his final stretch in office, and in the years since, I mostly averted my gaze... But I mostly thought: Why bother?" hiatus from fighting the encroaching darkness even as Ruth Marcus and all the other Very Serious People did their best to shut us up and shut us down.   

Back to David Broder, September 21, 2006, and the phrase for which he shall be known among Liberal bloggers until the End of Days:

Now, however, you can see the independence party forming -- on both sides of the aisle. They are mobilizing to resist not only Bush but also the extremist elements in American society -- the vituperative, foul-mouthed bloggers on the left and the on the right who would convert their faith into a whipping post for their opponents.

The center is beginning to fight back. Michael Bloomberg, the Republican mayor of New York, is holding a fundraiser for Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Democrat running as an independent against the bloggers' favorite, Ned Lamont.

But we never shut up.

And we were never shut down.

And worst of all, we went right on remembering things.  Inconvenient things.  Embarrassing things.  Scary things.  

For instance, I remember writing "Little Red State Fundy" a year before Broder scorned us in print.  Twas back in April of 2005, and the story is about Little Red State Fundy who does all the dirty work of planting the seeds of Republican party hatred, watering them, harvesting the crop, grinding the grain and baking the bread, while all the Moderate Republicans, Undecideds and Libertarians decline to help.  

Ah, but when it comes to feasting on the bread of Little Red Fundy had baked...

...And Little Red State Fundy delivered the margin of victory and was featured in many, many magazines: without Little Red State Fundy, the Republican Party could never, ever, ever win anything. 

And now everybody knew it. 

Then she said, "Now who shall help me Rule the Earth." 

"We will!" said Moderate Republicans, Undecideds, and Libertarians. 

"I am quite sure you would," said Little Red State Fundy, "but see, now you are all my bitches."...

Now lets jump ahead nearly 20 years and...take it away No More Mr. Nice Blog from today:

THE GOP: GULLING THE RUBES FOR SO LONG THAT NOW THE RUBES ARE IN CHARGE

When I started blogging twenty years ago, I believed that the right-wing propaganda machine was a cynical means to an end: The people who said that Democrats want to turn America into a communist dictatorship after stealing multiple elections through widespread voter fraud with the help of a monolithically left-wing media didn't actually believe what they were saying -- it was disinformation intended to stir up the rabble and keep them voting Republican. 

Now, as I read the Talking Points Memo series based on text exchanges after the 2020 election between then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and other coup plotters, I'm reminded that a large number of Republican officeholders are high on their own supply. They're part of the rabble that believes the nonsense their propaganda outlets peddle...

Some time during the first month of the new year, Little Red State Fundy will either be elected Speaker of the House, or will be holding the Republican Speaker of the House on a very short leash, because Republicans don't have a policy problem or a messaging problem, they have a voter problem.  

The base of their party is exactly that shitpile of reprogrammble bigots and imbeciles that we on the Left have tried to warn Very Serious Hacks like Marcus about for decades, and which Very Serious Hacks like Marcus aggressively ignored for decades until the threat marched through the front door and kicked her veneers right down her throat.  

This being the case,  it seems only fitting that I wrap this up the same way I ended that post nearly 20 years ago:

And in the end -- just as they had been warned for the past twenty years -- there was nothing whatsoever left at all for Moderate Republicans, Undecideds, and Libertarians. 

No Half Measures