It Was 20 Years Ago Today...

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." -- William Faulkner

In keeping with the tenor of our times, I'm not going to apologize in advance for what I am about to do. 

Apologies are so 2012.

Instead I'm going to focus on how perilous this post is about to become.  

Will it be as dangerous as the Triple Lindy?

Possibly.  Because today I'm going to try the rare 20th Anniversary Fundraiser Double Post, and feat which has driven men mad in the attempt.  Others have had to be hospitalized with severe leg cramps and loss of object permanence.  

But for you good people, I'mma give it a go.

First, some business.  This is part of my 20th blogiversary thing, so here's the tip jar if you feel so inclined.  

Burn The Lifeboats

With that out of the way, next up is this bit of prose.  If you're so inclined, let me know what you think of it down in the comments:

Every few years some new, soulless, ambitious goon clambers out of the moral sewer of the Party of Personal Responsibility to seize control of the vocabulary of Hate Radio and appoint himself the party's Demagogue-in-Chief for the moment, harvesting the ever-ripe-and-ready paranoia and rage of the GOP base and dragging us all a little further down the road the Hell.

Checks a lot of boxes, doesn't it?  The depravity of a party that just keeps spawning monsters.  Hate Radio vocab being the Mother Tongue of the party base.  The party's lust for an authorization strong man who would harvest the preexisting rage and paranoia the Republican voters.   

Pretty standard stuff these days, right?  Nothing you wouldn't hear on any given day in 2025 from any MSNBC Never Trumper, or in any essay at The Bulwark, or on any Lincoln Project podcast.  

Bold.  Edgy.  Truth-Telling.

Except its not from 2025.  And it's not from an MSNBC Never Trumper, or a Bulwark, or a Lincoln Project podcast.    In fact, it's from 2013.  That's two years before Trump even existed in the Republican firmament.  And it's from me.  And I can tell you that, back in 2013, such talk was not greeted as Bold, Edgy, Truth-Telling back by all those Republicans would later respawn and re-emerge as MSNBC Never Trumpers and Bulwark publishers and Lincoln Project advertising moguls. 

In fact, such talk was mockingly dismissed by such people as ... 

Liberal. Crackpot. Alarmism.  

In fact, many of those same people have blamed people like me for conjuring Trump into existence So you can maybe kinda see why actual Liberal voices are not welcome on the largest Liberal and/or Resistance media platforms.  Because we remember all the inconvenient things which those platforms are designed to erase of the memory of man.    

Back in 2013, the Republican thug de jure was a fella named Ted Cruz, and while he had been a darling of the moutbreathers and Khaki Klansmen who make up the base of the GOP, his doomed strategy of trying to filibuster and shutdown Barack Obama and Democrats into defunding Obama's signature health care reform flopped hard.  And almost overnight Republicans who had sworn fealty to Canadian-born Zodiac killer prime suspect, Raphael Edward Cruz began to bail:

Again, from 2013:

Now that Republicanism Personified Ted Cruz is starting to rot from the amygdala down, members of the still-batshit-crazy-but-not-quite-that-batshit-crazy sub-genus of the Stupid/Crazy Party are stumbling over each other to score their "I've Been Against Ted Cruz Since..." Red Badges of Political Courage.  For example, here is what confidence trickster Peter King -- a man who was perfectly happy tossing gobbets of red meat to the teabagger crocodile until it turned on him -- now has to say about his competition for the hearts and wallets of the rubes:

“I took a chance when Ted Cruz was the darling of the Republicans,” King added. “It was only two weeks ago, but he was the darling of Republicans. I was the only guy taking him on nationwide.” 

Brave, Brave, Brave, Brave Sir Robin...

But, as I warned back in 2013...

Of course, Cruz and King and all the rest of the Koch brothers' hired help are not the problems: they are merely the latest and most stomach-churning surface manifestations of the long, deep, Conservative rot that has been eating at the heart of the United States for generations:

...

Unfortunately, the calamity of a potential default has tempered neither judgment nor passion. On Saturday, Ted Cruz—the man who lit the match, won the Values Voters Straw Poll with 42 percent of the vote. Channeling her inner Glenn Beck, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) concluded that the President “committed impeachable offenses.” Bachmann also proclaimed that civil disobedience was a potential response to Obama’s “thuggery,” and compared the Obama presidency to Egypt’s deposed Muslim Brotherhood...

Yep.  Still more stuff which all of your favorite Never Trump teevee and podcasting celebrities dismissed at the time Liberal. Crackpot. Alarmism.  

In fact, you'll never guess what former Bulwark employee and frequent Bulwark returning guest Amanda Carpenter was doing for a living back in 2013 as I was writing this.  From Wikipedia:

In January 2013, Carpenter became senior communications advisor and speechwriter for Senator Ted Cruz

Wowsers.  

But hang on, because here comes the second part of the extremely difficult 20th Anniversary Fundraiser Double Post.  

Because that 2013 post warning about the rise of Republican demagogues and how Cruz very publicly screwing the pooch it was making life difficult (with the emphasis on "cult") for Republican quislings and collaborators who had gone along with Cruz, in turn referred back to a post I had written during my very first few days as a blogger.  

Back to April 1, 2005, to a post that had originated as a comment over at the late Steve Gilliard's News Blog as I believe was the impetus for Steve kicking me out and insisting that I start a blog of my own.  

Which, clearly, I did.  

From me, 20 years ago, back when the Republican thug de jure was a fella named Tom Delay:

Rep. DeLay Preps the Beds for the GOP's Big Sleep

(This particular bit started life as a comment in Gilliard's Shoppe but has been Repurposed to better serve You, The Customer :-)

The little-“p” politics of this is fascinating.  [The fact that] Over the long run that the GOP is demographically/electorally doomed to become the minority Thurston Howell Party again. Either when the Fundy Shining Path Rebels that make up their margin of victory make one too many batshit demands, or are are told “No” once too often.

(If you want to get a clear picture of how this will look, rent “Fatal Attraction” or “Play Misty For Me”. I’m not going to be ignored, George!)

So either they take their bat and ball and stomp disgustedly back to Mordor, or a handful of moderate Republicans get so freaked out by the Randall Terry Wing of the Party that they bolt or stay home.

But short run…Tom DeLay is now a Household Name. Been waiting 10 years for that to happen and always amazed that Republicans had no fucking clue who he was, even though you’d tell them five or a hundred times. Sheesh. All RAM and no Hard Drive with some people.

Every GOP Leader knows the Gingrich Lesson: No matter how much the membership owes you, they’ll go absolutely Lord of The Flies on your Piggy-ass the minute you becomes a measurable liability. Newt was so completely “I Am The Reich” that he would have been perfectly happy to go into the bunker and fight it out until the GOP was razed to rubble had he not been stopped by his own House Republicans.

And since the Suddenly Huge Liability named Tom DeLay is now just “Tell Tale Heart”--thundering away under the GOP floorboards, threatening to drown out everything else, the question is, will that same dynamic play twice?

Well DeLay ain’t Gingrich. He learned from that episode, and they don’t call him The Hammer for his shipwright skills. He spent a decade forcibly collecting GOP testicles and caching them in his private Crown Royal bag. At the slightest provocation he will to politically and personally destroy anyone who doesn’t bend a deep knee to His Gorgon Awfulness.

And both the Texas and National Republican parties have shown absolutely craven willingness to rewrite the Rules on the fly any time the Beast’s wet-bar needed to be restocked with virgin’s blood, or whenever a law or policy might make threaten to cinch-in the bottomless lust he and his stooges have for Power, Money, Trinkets and Perks, even a trifle.

So (hahah!) they’ve kinda disarmed themselves to accommodate him, and now they’re stuck very much up on that very windy gibbet with him. So if you were running in 2006 and playing How Do I Save My Pink Republican Skin while DeLay is holding your ass held hostage, what do you do?

Got to time it juuuust right. Jump away from Herr DeLay too soon and he’ll blow your head off. Jump too late, and your face will be morphed into Tom DeLay…into Randall Terry…into, I dunno, Osama Bin Laden? in every ad, every day, for the entire election cycle.

My simple suggestion for voters in 2006?

Shoot the hostage ;-)

I concluded my 2013 Ted Cruz post with this:

For the record, to my knowledge not a single Conservative politician, professional Both Sider or mainstream media creature who has ever even briefly awakened to the fact that the GOP is run by monsters has ever acknowledged that the Left was right all along.

And damn if it this isn't still 100% true.

Finally, a sincere "thank you"  for your readership, support and (mostly) kind words lo' these many years.

And if you missed the tip jar at the entrance, for your So convenience the staff has helpfully placed one nearby which you can see as you exit through the gift shop.  Sorta like ATMs at casinos: :-)

Write if you get work,

Your pal, 

driftglass

I Am The Liberal Media