Professional Left Podcast Episode 1002: It’s Still the Republican Party

“Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.”  -- Ron Swanson

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Allies, Allies Everywhere

All lies.  All lies.  Everywhere.

I love this story.

I love everything about it.

Not just because it's an old story, but because, since form follows function, it's always the same old story: one we've heard from dozens of grifters dozens of times. The words and pauses as well-worn by repetition as Mark Antony's funeral oration.

From NBC San Diego, June 22:

Tucker Carlson says he'll no longer support the Republican Party

Longtime conservative commentator Tucker Carlson said on a podcast that “there's no chance I would support the Republican Party" ahead of the November midterm elections, dismissing the political affiliation he's defended as a pundit for decades, including as one of Fox News Channel's most popular hosts.

“Not gonna support the Democratic Party,” Carlson was quick to add, speaking late last week on the show “Can't Be Censored.” “I don't know what I'm going to do.”

Carlson, who has amassed a large following on his own podcast since being fired from Fox News in 2023, has more recently diverged from the party, a disillusionment supercharged by President Donald Trump's decision to go to war with Iran in February.

Carlson supported Trump in 2024. After the war began, he apologized for supporting the then-presidential candidate and “misleading people," saying it wasn't intentional.

He’s repeatedly criticized the war as being at the behest of Israel at the expense of Americans, and attacked the party for failing to represent its own voters, citizens and nation.

“They are making decisions on the basis of other criteria, what’s best for this company, what’s best for Israel, what’s best for our donors,” he said. “That’s not just, like, they are off in the wrong direction, like, that is unacceptable, that’s treasonous, it’s immoral, it can’t continue."

“I’ve been a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican Party, I mean very consistent defender, but there’s no defending this," he said. “So no, I’m out. And if I’m out, then I think a lot of other people are out.” 

It wasn't my fault.

I was misled.

I was bamboozled.

Sorry!

But Dems suck too so...

Hey, look who's angling for a spot in Tucker Carlson's future freakshow!

From The Hill:

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Monday joined another prominent ex-supporter of President Trump in pulling back their support for the Republican Party.

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said he “would not support” the GOP following his split with the Trump administration over the U.S. military operations against Iran. 

“Tucker is not the only one who is done supporting the Republican Party,” Greene wrote in a social media post.

“There is A LOT of us that are absolutely fed up and will not support a party that betrays its voters and country,” she continued. “That does not mean we are turning into Democrats either. But we are DONE with the America LAST Republican Party.” 

To bookend this little puppet show, you might remember this entry from the 'Same Tune, Different Decade' file."   Its from way back in 2016 when this racist scuttlefish leaped off what he believed to be Trump's sinking ship back.    

From CNN, October 11, 2016:

Glenn Beck: Opposing Trump is ‘moral’ choice — even if Clinton is elected

Conservative political commentator and media personality Glenn Beck said opposing Donald Trump is a “moral, ethical” choice — even if that results in Hillary Clinton becoming the next president.

The outspoken opponent of the GOP’s presidential nominee wrote on Facebook over the weekend that every voter had to decide for themselves what constitutes “a bridge too far,” after the release of footage last week in which Trump can be heard making lewd and sexually aggressive comments about women.

“It is not acceptable to ask a moral, dignified man to cast his vote to help elect an immoral man who is absent decency or dignity,” Beck wrote on Facebook in reference to Trump. “If the consequence of standing against Trump and for principles is indeed the election of Hillary Clinton, so be it. At least it is a moral, ethical choice.”

You might also remember that everybody covered it as if it were actual news instead of a con man trying to fold his tent and skip town ahead of John Law. 

You may also remember this same cockroach scuttling right back onto the deck of the USS Trump once it turned out that there were, in fact, just enough bigots and imbeciles in just enough of the right states to elect Donald Trump.  

It stops being tortured-conscience fence-straddling once you've torn down the fence and installed a turnstile so you can change sides any time it's convenient.

Burn The Lifeboats

And Then One Day You Find, Ten Years Have Got Behind You.

No one told you when to run. 

You missed the starting gun.

Burn The Lifeboats

Just a Stop-The-Steal Town Girl On a Saturday Night

 

..She has danced into the danger zone
When the dancer becomes the dance

It can cut you like a knife, if the gift becomes the fire
On a wire between will and what will be

She's a maniac, maniac on the floor
And she's dancing like she's never danced before...

And being the #1 MAGA maniac on the House floor for five years has been a very profitable enterprise for Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose net worth went from a pre-Congressional total of around $700k to a soon-to-be-post-Congressional total of between $22.5 million and $25 million.  

But now Madge has seen the edge of the mighty cataract over which her lunatic movement is about to plunge.  And with the low, animal cunning that brought her to the House in the first place, she has chosen to beat the rush and cut and run while the cuttin' and runnin' is good.

First, she selected a venerable and proven blueprint of "How To Build a Political Lifeboat".

Then CNN provided the lumber.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Gushes Over ‘Courageous Politician’ Marjorie Taylor Greene

Then The View helped her assemble all the structural elements.

Then 60 Minutes helped her plank the hull.

Also, in case you missed it, WSB-TV (Atlanta) assisted with installing the seats, oarlocks, and whatnot.

And just this very morning, The New York Fucking Times lent a hand by waterproofing the whole thing for her.  Then they let her christen it by giving her control of the headline.

‘I Was Just So Naïve’: Inside Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Break With Trump

This is a very long and mostly flattering profile that is a complete waste of your time.  Some stuff you already know.  Some stuff that's new.  But all of it lashed together by the same excuses floated by every Never Trumper since Day One of the Trump era.  Charlie Sykes, Tom Nichols, Adam Kinzinger, Bill Kristol, David Brooks, Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson...and on and on and on, including every Republican who has had their career rehabilitated by the MSNBC Reputation Laundromat. 

I didn't know.  I wasn't aware.  No one could have predicted.  I was misled.  And on and on.

From the Times' column:

...it began to dawn on her that when it came to the president

 ...realized that she had suddenly lost all appetite for vengeance

But perhaps even to her own surprise, Greene was not that person any longer. “Everyone’s like, ‘She’s changed,’” Greene said to me. “I haven’t changed my views. But I’ve matured. I’ve developed depth.” 

...she spoke longingly of the day when she could walk unnoticed into a restaurant or a grocery store.

I was just so naive.

Which, for some reason, puts me in mind of this from Rick in Casablanca:

Yes, it's very pretty. I heard a story once - as a matter of fact, I've heard a lot of stories in my time. They went along with the sound of a tinny piano playing in the parlor downstairs. "Mister, I met a man once when I was a kid," it always began.

Thus, with the same predictability as the rising of the sun, the legacy media has now furnished Madge with her very own lifeboat.

So lets wrap this thing up with a bit from something I wrote a few years ago, "Boom Times At The Absolution Factory Redux":

...Also the title of Sykes' Bulwark podcast today is:

Will Saletan: Welcome to the Resistance, Bill Barr

And so we arrive at the place where I warned we would end up and I never wanted to be.  Smack in the middle of Monty Python's The Visitors sketch.

First, Never Trumper Arthur Name ("Name by name but not by nature") bulldozes his way into the party and begins rearranging things to his liking.

Then the doorbell rings and...

Arthur Name: I'll get it.  That'll be friends of mine  I took the liberty of inviting them along.

And hey look!  It's Chris Christie!  And right behind him, Bill Barr!  

And so on, and so on, and so on.

And before you know it, we Democrats aren't calling the shots anymore.  In fact, we've become  unwelcome guests in our own fucking home because this is now the "Never Again Trump" Republican Reputation Rehabilitation and Normalization Project.

And if you Liberals have a problem with that, well then go ahead and scribble about it on your silly little blogs.  

There are still blogs, right?  

Because now that the American political media has been completely colonized by a handful of Never Trumpers, well golly kid, there doesn't seem to be any room left at the Adult's Table for whiny Liberal dissenters like you.

Or I suppose you could plead your case directly to those Never Trumpers who have colonized the media.  You could ask them why the Liberals who have actually been right about the Right all along -- who were right long before Bill Kristol told us it was OK -- have no place in the Never Trumper's own "We Told You So" Hall of Heroes.

Go ahead and ask them, and then watch what happens:

Burn The Lifeboats