Over at MSNBC, the Turds Are in Full Bloom

This is a written reprise of some of the stuff we covered on this week's episode of The Professional Left podcast.  It happens sometimes.  I get on some subject, start outlining it for a post, then comes podcasting time, and what I'm writing about is current, interesting and top-of-mind, so it makes its way into the show.  

My understanding is that Sophocles did this all the time on his podcast.

So...

Of all the things that can and have been said about MSNBC, one thing remains clear.  There is absolutely no fucking shortage of current and recently-former Republicans on that small, leaky lifeboat.  They Republicans them coming and going and waiting in the green room or in the comfort of their camera-ready living room, just waiting for their turn to tell Democrats how we should be running their party.

And given all the recent layoffs at NBC, you might have have thought, well, they even though they have no ethical qualms about colonizing their network with Republicans, they have obviously reached some kind of financial boundary on their Republican shopping spree and now there's just had no more money in the "Put More Republicans On The Air" jar.  But you'd have been wrong.  The ransacked the sofa cushion in Cesar Conde's office and what'd ya know!  They found they had just enough skrilla to wedge in one more GOP douchebag into their lineup.  

Ronna McDaniel. 

But for reasons other than financial, she proved to be just one, wafer-thin Republican too many and it all went *boom*.

But despite all of this supersaturation of NBC/MSNBC with so many current and recently-former Republicans that you'd think there is just no more room for even one more, Ari Melber managed to find space for not one but two Republicans, who are each, in their own right, the worst kinds of insufferable scumbags.

Karl Rove and Reince Priebus.

Here's the video, which you are under no obligation whatsoever to watch.   

Allow me to interpret.  Rove makes it clear that he does not want a "Democrat" president, but that Trump's embrace of January 6th "thugs" makes him problematic as well.    However, being a completely amoral creature, Rove frames Trump's depravity as merely tactical.  A campaign problem, not an existential threat.  That this is the fault of Trump's campaign staff being unable to manage Trump's public behavior better.  That Trump would have been smarter if he had done this or that.

Next up was Rinse Pubis who appeared to be both drunk and bitter, with a real, Wrath of Khan, "No, you can't escape!" vibe.  

However, some of what he said was 100% right.  

Not the stuff about about "the independent voters in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina".  That's all bullshit, because those aren't "independent" voters. Because for all practical purposes, there are no independent voters.  It's just the Tea Party scam all over again.  "Independent" voters are just Republicans who don't want to take any shit for being horrible human beings.  

However what he says about "this is not the 1990s electorate" is quite correct.  And what the panel never got to -- and what Ari Melber never asked -- was, well, why is the 2024 electorate completely different than the 1990s electorate?  

What changed?

Because that is a subject that current and recently-former Republicans dare not discuss, and teevee goofs like Melber will not pursue.   But over here in what remains of the Liberal blogosphere we are under no such corporate restrictions on our lines of inquiry.  In fact, all need to do is dare to remember the past.   Simply look at the public record and answer the question,“What happened to the Republican party over the last 40 years?”

Lee Atwater happened.  Rush Limbaugh and Hate Radio happened.  Newt Gingrich happened.  Mitch McConnell happened.  Michael Steele happened.  Fox News happened.  Glenn Beck happened.  The Fake Tea Party happened.  George W. Bush happened.  Dick Cheney happened.  Tom DeLay happened.   The Federalist Society happened.  The whole, multi-billion dollar infrastructure of Citizens United enabled  think tanks and SuperPACS, and media spinoffs and book deals and National Review cruises and white nationalist evangelicals happened.  

It is a long and ugly list, all of it aided and abetted by a complicit mainstream media.

And that guy up there on stage bleating about how awful and uncivil the MAGA thugs are? Karl Rove?  He happened.

Because the reason those “thugs” that Rove is so troubled by attacked the capitol on January 6th is because they believed what a lying Republican scumbag named Donald Trump told them.  That Democrats had stolen the election.  That the diabolical Liberal conspiracy that secretly ruled everything had colluded to rob them of their democracy. 

So then the question becomes, how did the Republican base ever come to believe such nonsense?  Believe that Democrats were devils, so monstrously evil, well organized and ruthlessly efficient that we could and would do such a thing?

Because that is exactly what men like Karl Rove told them.  Over and over again.  For decades.  This was Rove in 2005:  

Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.

14 years later, in 2019, here is Hero of the Resistance, Liz Cheney, calmly calling Democrats baby murdering monsters.  The "face of pure evil".  

For decades, lying about Democrats is the most horrific terms has been the everyday vocabulary of Right.  They have been steeping in this filth for decades, so is it any surprise that they had no trouble believing that those vile, terrorist-loving, baby-murdering Democrats would steal an election?

But what about all the election court cases Trump lost?  All the so-called election fraud evidence that proved to be nonsense?  All of the wild election conspiracy theories that came to nothing?  Who taught these people to simply ignore inconvenient reality?

This is a quote from journalist Ron Suskind’s 2004 article in the New York Times Magazine.  The source is widely believed to have been Karl Rove: 

The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [...] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'.

This is what happened to the electorate of the 1990s.  

This kind of fascist propaganda, echoed by every Conservative media platform over and over again for decades by propagandists like Rove and Priebus, is what happened.  

And this is where that relentless and well-funded tidal wave of lies and conspiracy mongering has taken them:

Texas Supreme Court Justice John Devine, who rules on election disputes: “Do you really think the Democrats are gonna roll over and let Trump be president again? You think they’re just gonna go away, all of a sudden find Jesus and be an honest election?” pic.twitter.com/1mh35KDjDJ

— Robert Downen (@RobertDownen_) April 4, 2024

Step-by-step Republicans built a doomsday machine with no "off" switch.   

Now they pretend to be shocked that there's no way to turn it off.

I Am The Liberal Media