Mr. Republican

Since the beginning of recorded history, Republicans have always faced the same problem: putting an affable, camera-ready mask on their horrendous, barbaric policies.  

For decades they solved this problem with what I think of as the Two Face Solution.  While their raging racists on Hate Radio and Fox News got the meathead base all fired up and ready to vote to roll back the Enlightenment -- 

-- their tapioca-bland Beltway apologists would spread the gospel in the nations respectable newspapers and Sunday morning public interest shows and PBS and NPR and so forth that we should all ignore the the Conservative bigots bellowing at 120 decibels on mass media from coast-to-coast.

That wasn't the real Republican party.  

Those weren't real Conservatives.  

Real Conservatives cared about high-minded concepts like Laffer Curves and Cat-Food Commissions and implementing a flat-tax system in Iraq --

-- not grubby, bloody-minded gossip about Vince Foster and Bill Clinton the drug kingpin and flag-pins and birth certificates.

Long after leading Republicans made it explicitly clear that the reason they managed to take power in 1994 was Rush Limbaugh and Hate Radio (from The New York Times, December 12, 1994) -- 

The freshman class, which included not a single "femi-Nazi," one of Mr. Limbaugh's favorite epithets for supporters of women's rights, whooped and applauded, proving itself one big fan club of the man it believes was primarily responsible for the Republican avalanche in November.

Mr. Limbaugh was made an honorary member of the class as its members tonight finished a three-day orientation here sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and Empower America, two conservative Washington research organizations.

Barbara Cubin, an incoming freshman from Wyoming, told Mr. Limbaugh that because 74 percent of the nation's newspapers had endorsed Democrats, "talk radio, with you in the lead, is what turned the tide." On behalf of the women in the class, she gave him a plaque that said, "Rush Was Right." He also received a pin like the ones the freshmen wore, saying, "Majority Maker."

"Rush is as responsible for what happened here as much as anyone," said Vin Weber, a former Representative from Minnesota, now of Empower America. Citing a poll taken after the election by Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, Mr. Weber said that people who listened to 10 hours or more a week of talk radio voted Republican by a 3-to-1 margin. "Those are the people who elected the new Congress," he said...

-- the elite, teevee-friendly Conservatives who dominated (and still dominate) the "respectable" media continued to hand-wave away any suggestion that any of the filthy, bomb-throwing garbage that was vomiting from right-wing radio and television was anything other than a fringe sideshow.  Or that the increasingly deranged mob that watched and listened to such tripe were anything other than a tiny fraction of the otherwise sane, sensible and patriotic Republican base.

And anyway, as bad as that tiny minority of right-wing blowhards were, wasn't the Left always worse?

Of course, for those of us who were not members of the complicit mainstream media and who were actually paying attention, what was going on inside the GOP was both obvious and terrifying.  If you're interested in my credentials, here's a link to what I was writing about the fate and future of the GOP +18 years ago: "Little Red State Fundy sez..."  

But that's the point, isn't it?  The general public (the Great Wad, as my friend Harlan Ellison used to refer to them) doesn't pay any attention to any of this.  They don't want to be bothered with politics:  99% of the time, to them politics is nothing but a confusion of loud, garbled voices shouting in a room down the hall.  They have no fucking idea who is saying what about anything: they just want Both Sides to pipe down so they can watch The Voice or football or whatever.  

This was the status quo...right up until Trump ripped the last shreds of the Respectable Republican mask off the GOP and showed the world the Republican's true. leering, bug-eyed-crazy face,  And the mainstream media hates this brave new world of out-and-proud madmen and cowards running the Party of Lincoln because as long as the GOP keeps waving its syphilitic political dick around in public, it's hard for them (not impossible, but definitely a strain) to continue writing the "Democrats in Disarray" and "The Extremes on Both Sides" fairy tales that are their stock-in-trade.

The Great Wad hates it too.  All they want is to remain undisturbed by whatever's going on in politics.  To go back to sleep forever.  And should any political event threaten to rouse them from their civic stupor, they want to be able to hit the "Both Sides Do It" snooze button and fall right back into dreamland feeling smart.  And the current state of the Republican party makes that very hard.  Lord know the Great Wad is trying their damndest to ignore the Republican peril that is a knife to the throat of the country they still pretend to care about, but it's like trying to sleep through an earthquake that never stops.

But in the new Republican Speaker, Mike Johnson, the media, the Republican party and the Great Wad may have all found a temporary liniment to sooth their collective agonies: a new, affable, camera-ready mask for their horrendous, barbaric policies.  

A public presentation as mealy and inoffensive as David Brooks.  Behind which lurks a savage ideology straight out of the Dark Ages. 

From Politico:

‘He Seems to Be Saying His Commitment Is to Minority Rule’

A Q&A with historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez on the Christian nationalist ideas that shaped House Speaker Mike Johnson.

From the Washington Post:

House Speaker Mike Johnson used faith in campaign against gay rights

From the AP:

New US House speaker tried to help overturn the 2020 election, raising concerns about the next one.

From the AP again:

Christian right cheers new House speaker, conservative evangelical Mike Johnson, as one of their own

Evangelical Christian conservatives have long had allies in top Republican leadership in Congress. But never before have they had one so thoroughly embedded in their movement as new House Speaker Mike Johnson, a longtime culture warrior in the courthouse, in the classroom and in Congress.

From Rolling Stone:

New House Speaker Blamed School Shootings on Teaching Evolution and Abortion

Mike Johnson is a Christian nationalist with extreme views on guns, reproductive rights, and more. He's now second in line for the presidency

From Bloomberg News:

House Speaker Mike Johnson’s First Big Bill Cuts Biden’s Climate Change Funding

From HuffPo:

New House Speaker Thinks Creationist Museum Is 'Pointing People To The Truth'

An ark replica with dinosaurs "is one way to bring people to this recognition ... that what we read in the Bible are actual historical events,” Mike Johnson said.

Burn The Lifeboats