Boom Times At The Absolution Factory Redux

And one or two of you might remember, I wrote a waaay TL:DR post back in '21 about how, now that our Never Trump "allies" had successfully colonized the mainstream media and rewritten the history of the GOP to valorize themselves once again, the next item on the menu would be to...well, let me just repost the last few paragraphs.

As it was explained to me slowly and repeatedly as if I were a child, we were gonna let the Never Trumpers temporarily join our team, because "All hands on deck!" and so forth.  However, since bringing up their bloody, complicit past made our new Never Trump allies feel icky, we were also going to agree not to rudely mention their bloody, complicit past or hold them accountable for any of the horrible things they had said and done. 

Then, after we had disposed of the existential threat that their party had inflicted on us,  we would somehow take control of our national political narrative back from the Never Trumpers and all of that pre-2016 stuff would be litigated.

Which was such a criminally foolish thing for otherwise sensible adults to believe that it sometimes left me breathless with despair.

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 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.

And here is The Bulwark's own Charlie Sykes today, taking a rare break from appearing on MSNBC every five minutes:

Happy Monday.

As I’ve warned you before, the new anti-Trump coalition will require a healthy gag reflex because it could include many of Trump’s worst enablers. But we don’t always get to pick the army we go to war with, do we?

In case you missed Bill Barr’s takedown of DJT on Sunday, the former AG has followed up in the Free Press with a scorching critique of the Trumpian defenses, rationalizations, suck-ups, and spin surrounding the indictment...

It goes on like that.  And on.  And on. Various Trump suck ups and scumbags who now think maybe Trump is naughtybad (of course, they don't rule out voting for him.)  And because they opened their yappers and called Trump naughtybad they instantly became despised, sellout, RINO filth in the eyes of Republican voters who, as I may have mentioned once or twice, are nothing more than reprogrammable meatbags.

From Sykes again:

A caveat: Despite their prominence, it is unlikely that any of these officials have the political juice or media influence to break Trump’s hold on the MAGAverse. Some of them (FFS) refuse to rule out voting for him if he wins the GOP nomination.

But that does not mean that they are irrelevant, because — unlike other critiques from the Resistance or Never Trumpers who have essentially become Democrats — these voices are coming from inside the house. In theory, they could create what we euphemistically call a “permission structure” for other Republicans to say out loud what they claim to be saying in private.

Also the title of Sykes' Bulwark podcast today is:

Will Saletan: Welcome to the Resistance, Bill Barr

And so we arrive at the place where I warned we would end up and I never wanted to be.  Smack in the middle of Monty Python's The Visitors sketch.

First, Never Trumper Arthur Name ("Name by name but not by nature") bulldozes his way into the party and begins rearranging things to his liking.

Then the doorbell rings and...

Arthur Name: I'll get it.  That'll be friends of mine  I took the liberty of inviting them along.

And hey look!  It's Chris Christie!  And right behind him, Bill Barr!  

And so on, and so on, and so on.

And before you know it, we Democrats aren't calling the shots anymore.  In fact, we've become  unwelcome guests in our own fucking home because this is now the "Never Again Trump" Republican Reputation Rehabilitation and Normalization Project.

And if you Liberals have a problem with that, well then go ahead and scribble about it on your silly little blogs.  

There are still blogs, right?  

Because now that the American political media has been completely colonized by a handful of Never Trumpers, well golly kid, there doesn't seem to be any room left at the Adult's Table for whiny Liberal dissenters like you.

Or I suppose you could plead your case directly to those Never Trumpers who have colonized the media.  You could ask them why the Liberals who have actually been right about the Right all along -- who were right long before Bill Kristol told us it was OK -- have no place in the Never Trumper's own "We Told You So" Hall of Heroes.

Go ahead and ask them, and then watch what happens:

No Half Measures