...if I were to suggest that most Republicans should be eliminated?
Most, but not all.
Would that kind of eliminationist rhetoric ignite the fury of the Moderates and Centrists?
Denunciation from corporate Dems?
Would it get me a stern lecture from our Never Trump supervisors to propose that, after we save this country from the Right, we might want to leave some Republicans alive, but in a safe enclosure. Like a zoo. So that we will never forget what these people were like?
Perhaps keep one MAGA and a couple of America Firsters on the staff of every university as living fossils that you can show your children?
Pretty horrid shit...except I'm not the one who said it, and that language of annihilation was not directed at Republicans.
That, with the poles reversed, is essentially what Rush Limbaugh said in a speech to the victorious Republicans after they swept to power in both houses of Congress in 1994.
From The Los Angeles Times, December 11, 1994:
It’s Rush Night for GOP’s Lawmakers-in-Waiting : Republicans: Congress’ incoming conservatives enjoy red meat, apple pie at orientation dinner. But main course at love feast is talk show host Limbaugh.
The orientation for incoming freshman Republican members of the 104th Congress culminated Saturday night with an oratorical dance by the man they said helped get them to Washington: conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh.
In a remarkable display of appreciation and loyalty, they first made him an honorary member of the House of Representatives and declared themselves part of the “Limbaugh Congress,” saying he had given the Republicans “the courage to take back our country.” He responded by suggesting that after they change the country, they might want to “leave some liberals alive.”
'So you will never forget what these people were like ... keep one Marxist and two liberals on the staff of every university so you can show your children ... living fossils. Living fossils.'"
Remember, this was deep, deep into the Before Time. More than a generation ago. An entirely different century. An era which both the legacy media and Never Trump media have repeatedly portrayed as a lost age of civility and comity between the parties, with Donald Trump treated as some freak anomaly who came out of nowhere.
Such frankly exterminationist language by the most popular talk-show host in America should have stood out even more starkly than it would today.
So, did the Tone Police come out in battalions to issue ringing denunciations
of Limbaugh? Was this such headline news that the normies and Centrists
and Moderates and "independents" were collapsing into the fainting couches in
their millions? Did demands that every single Republican publicly
denounce Hasan Piker Rush Limbaugh become a media
ritual? Did Republican party leaders flee Limbaugh in horror?
Oh fuck no. Instead...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.
A little more history. By 1994, Limbaugh commanded a massive multimedia empire and operated as one of the most powerful political forces in the United States. You will recall that, in 1992, the President of the United States -- George H. W. Bush -- was so thirsty for Limbaugh's support in the coming election that he invited him for an overnighter at the White House and personally carried Limbaugh's baggage for him
By 1994, The Rush Limbaugh Show was syndicated on roughly 659 radio stations. According to industry reports at the time, his program brought in an estimated 20 million unique listeners weekly, making it the most dominant talk-radio program in the country. And beyond AM radio, Limbaugh hosted a late-night television show syndicated on 225 stations that pulled in competitive ratings. His books, The Way Things Ought to Be (1992) and See, I Told You So (1993), remained massive national bestsellers throughout 1994.
And yet, despite the overwhelming evidence that Limbaugh was becoming the future of the GOP, and of how incredibly dangerous and destructive that future could be, all of the savviest pundits in the land continued to pretend that Hate Radio and Fox News either didn't exist or barely mattered.
All these clowns knew of America was what they could glimpse from the windows of the Acela corridor express, or what they could glean from their fellow savvy pundits as they passed around legends and fairy tales about America as they wished it would be, n the belief that, if they all used their privileged positions in the media to mythologize hard enough, they could manifest the America they wanted to believe existed.
Very Straussian.
And fifteen years later, the same basic argument was still being made by one of the most prominent conservative voices in the American media establishment. Of all the wildly overpaid, savvy pundits playing Hide The Salami with the real state of the Republican Party, no one worked the salami harder than...
The Wizard of Beck by David Brooks (from October 2, 2009):
So what is the theme of our history lesson? It is a story of remarkable volume and utter weakness. It is the story of media mavens who claim to represent a hidden majority but who in fact represent a mere niche — even in the Republican Party. It is a story as old as “The Wizard of Oz,” of grand illusions and small men behind the curtain…
Over the years, I have asked many politicians what happens when Limbaugh and his colleagues attack. The story is always the same. Hundreds of calls come in. The receptionists are miserable. But the numbers back home do not move. There is no effect on the favorability rating or the re-election prospects. In the media world, he is a giant. In the real world, he’s not.
But this is not merely a story of weakness. It is a story of resilience. For no matter how often their hollowness is exposed, the jocks still reweave the myth of their own power. They still ride the airwaves claiming to speak for millions. They still confuse listeners with voters. And they are aided in this endeavor by their enablers. They are enabled by cynical Democrats, who love to claim that Rush Limbaugh controls the G.O.P. They are enabled by lazy pundits who find it easier to argue with showmen than with people whose opinions are based on knowledge. They are enabled by the slightly educated snobs who believe that Glenn Beck really is the voice of Middle America.
So the myth returns. Just months after the election and the humiliation, everyone is again convinced that Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and the rest possess real power. And the saddest thing is that even Republican politicians come to believe it. They mistake media for reality. They pre-emptively surrender to armies that don’t exist.
They pay more attention to Rush’s imaginary millions than to the real voters down the street. The Republican Party is unpopular because it’s more interested in pleasing Rush’s ghosts than actual people. The party is leaderless right now because nobody has the guts to step outside the rigid parameters enforced by the radio jocks and create a new party identity. The party is losing because it has adopted a radio entertainer’s niche-building strategy, while abandoning the politician’s coalition-building strategy...
...it is now painfully clear that Mr. Brooks is engaged in a long-term project to completely rewrite the history of American Conservatism: to flense it of all of the Conservative social, political economic and foreign policy debacles that make Mr. Brooks wince and repackage the whole era as a fairy tale of noble Whigs being led through treacherous hippie country by the humble David Brooks.
And odds are he'll get away with it too...
Spoiler: He did, in fact, get away with it, and continues to get away with it.
So fine. Brooks' strategy for dealing with the explosion of racism, fanaticism and conspiracy mongering was to bury his head in the sand and pretend that none of it really mattered because Rush's "millions" were just imaginary, and not "real voters."
Well history has shown that, like virtually everything else, David Brooks was completely wrong about this very important fact of American politics. That he had no fucking idea what he was talking about...and continued spouting absolute delusional nonsense year after year until Donald Trump slapped Brooks' toxic Pollyannaism right out of his mouth.
For about five minutes.
However, that does not negate the fact that the rhetoric from the Right during this time had become increasingly unhinged, conspiracy-addled and bigoted, and if there is anything the Tone Police profess to hate above all else it is unseemly language.
So how did that vigilant league of linguistic-propriety enforcers react to the explosion of madness and racism that the Right directed at Barack Obama every goddamn day?
I'm glad you asked. This is from the late Michael Gerson (Dubya's "smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" speechwriter and advisor) writing in The Washington Post on April 7, 2009. Which, if you do the math, you will notice is barely three months into the Obama administration:
The Most Polarizing President
Barack Obama is the most polarizing new president in recent history.
In fact, like the rest of the Tone Police, Gerson spent the Obama administration complaining about how snobbish and foolish Obama was — everything right up to, and sometimes including, the word “uppity” — and about what louts and potty-mouths Obama's supporters were.
I wrote a whole long thing about it here if you're interested.
The most darkly hilarious aspect to frantic denialism about the true condition of the Republican base (bigots and imbeciles) and their obsession with piling on Obama and the Left for any slight misstep, whether real or just invented out of thing air...was how absolutely slobberknockered they were by the rise, nomination and election of Donald Trump.
How overnight they became a mass of groping blindworms, flailing around for a theory -- any theory -- about how this could have happened...as long as that theory met two vital criteria.
First, it could not contradict all the bullshit they'd spent decades spinning about the noble, yeoman-farmer base of the GOP who all cared deeply about the deficit and read their kids stories about Edmund Burke before bed every night.
Second, and of paramount importance, it absolutely could not even hint at the fact that the Left had been right about the Right all along.
And thus the Never Trump Entertainment Industry was born.
Whenever you write about David Brooks I feel soothed. Grounded. In accord with reality. At one with Goodness and Truth. The left has been right about the right all along. Thank you.
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