Listening to Rick Wilson Chat With Stuart Stevens...

...is a lot like alternating cups of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee with shots of Jeppson's Malört.

First, we find Stuart Steven breaking the first commandment of the Beltway media:  Thou shalt not remember the inconvenient past:

Stevens:  When Clinton increased taxes in 1993 we predicted that it would be the end of the economy.  This was going to throw us into recession.  Instead it ushered... it helped usher in the greatest period of post-war expansion to-date, and one of the big, substantive [issues[ in the 2000 presidential debate between Gore and Bush was what to do with the surplus.  So, we were wrong!  And let's admit we were wrong. 

Holy shit.  The last person I know of who dared to mention the fate of the Clinton budget surplus was [checks notes] me.  Dozens of times.  Maybe hundreds.  Like this post from more than a decade ago cleverly entitled, "What To Do With Our Budget Surplus".

I had video and everything.  

So hearing that from Stuart Stevens while Wilson squirmed uncomfortably in the background went over with me like a hot cuppa Jamaican Blue and a shot of pure oxygen after floating in the icy vacuum of official media memory holing for so very long.  

A little later came a long  disquisition on George W. Bush and No Child Left Behind, and how a picture of Bush with Ted Kennedy would be presented as evidence of a war crimes tribunal today in the Republican party.

Rick Wilson:  George Bush couldn't get arrested at a Republican primary today.  He would be in the single digits. 

I'm sure, like me, you have many thoughts on why this is so, which neither Wilson nor Stevens are anywhere near ready to discuss.

Then came this shot of Malört.which, if you are unaware, has been described as "infamous" and "the worst booze ever".  Something that Chicagoans dare out-of-towners to try.  

Stevens:  And... what... uh...  I think just baffles you and I is, "Why didn't they fight?"  When Donald Trump entered the primary... Look, I'm talking to the guy [Wilson] who saw this more clearly than anybody else.  Whose book, Everything Trump Touches Dies, is going to be the governing statement of the truth of this era... Your book and [Adam Serwer's] book will define this era.

 And the thing is, he's probably right.  

Once leading voices on the Left decided that making nice with the Rick Wilsons of the world  -- granting them ouchless absolution for all that they had said and done prior to 2016 -- was worth the price for their temporary and grudging allyship, it was probably game over.  Our new "allies" stepped right on over us, colonizing cable teevee and the op-ed pages, collecting book contracts and creating brand new media companies where they could more efficiently separate credulous Liberal from their money.

And that's how, through sheer force of numbers, their version of history -- the "It all began in 2016, and only we had the savvy the see it." version of history -- is now becoming, more or less, the version of history.    

And the rue history of the long, despicable Republican path that brought us to this moment?  A path which was surveyed, graded and paved by the Never Trumpers?

Burn The Lifeboats

Make S'Mores On The Coals