A Pitch for the Angels

I know a sales pitch when I hear one.  Lord knows, across the span of my checkered past I've made dozens of them myself.  So I realize that, in the end, what I'm watching (below) is a long pitch for the Lincoln Project, where the tactical use of "we" during the pitch is meant to make you think that the Lincoln lads had anything to do with Trump losing in 2020.

Spoiler:  They did not.  What they did was sop up tens of millions of dollars from credulous Liberals  which they used to hire themselves and their friends to crank out very slick ads which one low-born wag referred to (repeatedly) as political Pornhub for credulous Liberals.   It tickled Liberal pleasure centers and got the Lincoln Lads lots of free publicity on MSNBC (which came back to bite them when various sexual and financial scandals came to light), but there is no evidence that any of that moved the electoral needle one iota.

However, when you subtract the product pitch that Stuart Stevens is making here from the story he is telling, I think you end up with one of the clearest and most honest personal, political inventories of anyone in the Never Trumper universe.  I have always respected his candor, and his book -- "It Was All a Lie" -- sits proudly on our bookshelf at home.  

The story he tells is miles and miles away from Tom Nichols' brittle, angry, and ultimately pathetic Jake Blues-like string of excuses and deflections:

His "None of what happened had anything to do with me/ No one could have seen this coming/ Whatabout Abbie Hoffman? Huh!  Huh! Smartass!  Liberals aren't blameless here!" reaction every time anyone manages sneak a little GOP history into his timeline (which is immediately followed by being blocked.)

Which is why, I think, media appearances by Stuart Stevens are so much rarer than virtually any other Never Trumper in the media, and when he is brought in it's usually to talk about what a monster Trump is (true) and strategies for going forward.  Not to expound on how the his former party came to be what it is now, and definitely not to debate any other recently-former Republican on that issue.

Because Stevens' unexpurgated history of the moral collapse of the Republican party exactly matches -- beat for beat and milestone for milestone -- the longstanding Liberal critiques/warnings about the trajectory of the Republican party (about which a lot more here.)   The inconvenient truth that Trump did not hijack the GOP, he exposed it for what it had been all along.  The Republican base was not suckered into supporting Trump, the base manifested Trump.

And all of that is diametrically opposed to the story that legacy media and the Never Trump media wants to tell.  In their tale, the base of the party were like unto the innocent child Maria in James Whale's 1938 masterpiece Frankenstein.    The base just read Edmund Burke, sang  little peasant songs and and toss flowers into the water.  And in their fictionalized history of the GOP, Trump is the destroyer.  Trump is the despoiler.  Trump is the lumbering monster, built in a lab by a mad scientist, who Maria foolishly trusts and who Trump ends up drowning.  And, to carry the analogy a little further, the Never Trumpers are Ludwig, shocked and saddened, bearing Maria's corpse through the town, believing that such an unbearable outrage will rouse the party leadership and the good people of the town to action.

However,  despite the fact that this "history" is the lie which the legacy media and the Never Trumpers have all agreed on, I am morally obliged to be the buzzkill guy who points out that isn't what happened at all.

Maria isn't the base of the Republican party.  Maria is the legacy media's and the Never Trumper's comforting delusion of what the Republican party was.  However, to quote Stuart Stevens, it was all a lie.  

The base didn't fear Trump as a destroyer.  They greeted him as a liberator.  He didn't have a bad brain.  He had an awesome brain!  Because his brain is just like their brain!

It turns out that real base of the party -- the peasants of the town -- had always hated Maria and Ludwig and their whole sanctimonious family.  They're glad that bitch is dead!  They danced on her grave singing Hallelujah!  It turns out, they were jubilantly pro-monster, so fuck that weepy old Ludwig, and fuck Jeb! and, while we're at it, Hang Mike Pence!

And, being politicians with their damp fingers forever testing the direction of the prevailing wind, the town's leading citizens, the mayor and the burghers (Republican elected officials), all figured this out real quick.  A few of them raised a few objections, but they were quickly chased out of town by peasants with pitchforks and torches.  And now, with the party base and the party leadership united in reverence of the monster, they made it their king and gave it the power of life and death over everything in the kingdom.  

And the terrible secret that dare not speak its name and that Never Trumpers carry in their hearts is that the monster wasn't built by some mad scientist in a faraway lab at all.   The truth is they built it.  It was Ludwig all along. It was all of them.  A group effort carried out by elite Conservatives, Republican leaders, Conservative media and the legacy media.  They created the monster, but in their hubris they thought they could control it.  And as long as they controlled it, no one objected to it.  

Consider that, just this very week, unreconstructed Conservative evangelical and New York Times op-ed guy, David French, spent an entire column explaining how Donald Trump bamboozled the otherwise noble and righteous Conservative evangelical movement into abandoning their faith in Republican Jesus, and investing it instead into an manifestly unchristian monster like Trump.

French spends the first 13 paragraphs (ominous biblical number, that 13) laying out the biography of one particularly odious Conservative evangelical preacher named Douglas Wilson.

Then two paragraphs of #NotAllEvangelicals

In a religious movement as large and multifaceted as American evangelicalism, you can — of course — find all kinds of people and pastors, from the most compassionate and kind to the most self-righteous, zealous and even violent.

To say that a pastor like Wilson exists no more condemns all of evangelical Christianity (indeed, Wilson faces vigorous opposition in the evangelical church) than to say that the existence of radical imams condemns all of Islam. A better question is to ask whether a person this cruel and extreme has real stature and influence — and whether his influence is on the wane or on the rise.

And then:

 There are many reasons for Wilson’s rise, but one of them is squarely rooted in politics. When Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, he inherited a recent Republican tradition: The Republican president isn’t just a political leader — he’s a de facto religious leader as well.

Yadda, yadda, yadda.  Dubya Bush was awesome.  Obviously no mention of Iraq.  Or Katrina.  Or Teri Schiavo.  Or running for reelection on a gay-bashing platform of which David French fully approved.  Or any of it.  Just Dubya Bush was awesome.

And then:

Bush is a devout Christian. Those words, to put it mildly, are not how one would describe Trump.

And yet, each election cycle, Christians were told it was a spiritual imperative to vote Republican, and that imperative did not change even when the party’s positions — and its people — profoundly did.

But while the policies of the Republican party may have shifted around, the basic themes -- the bones of the Reagan Revolution -- are still right there in the Trump regime for anyone with honest eyes to see.  From The Guardian:

Did Reagan pave the way for Trump? ‘You can trace the linkages,’ says biographer

...a critically praised biography of Reagan challenges these assumptions, balancing recognition of Reagan’s strengths with a close examination of his glaring weaknesses on inequality, race and the Aids pandemic. Its introduction poses a provocative question: “Did Reaganism contain the seeds of Trumpism?”

And the book comes not from a progressive Democrat but a former foreign policy adviser to the Republican presidential campaigns of John McCain, Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio. Max Boot is himself an immigrant: he was born in Moscow, grew up in Los Angeles, gained US citizenship and is now a senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank.
...

“Even more fundamentally, Reagan’s policies truly favoured the wealthy and increased income disparity in the United States. You can argue that those policies, whether it was the tax cuts, lack of anti-trust, anti-union activity, all the rest, by widening those income disparities opened the way for populism in America, both from the left and the rightwing populism that Trump exploits today.”

Ultimately, Boot argues, Reagan paved the way for Trump. “He was addicted to faux facts. He would often cite apocryphal quotes and anecdotes and statistics that weren’t really true but would keep citing them anyway, even when it was pointed out that he didn’t have any basis for doing so. You can argue that acclimated the Republican party to the fire hose of falsehoods that you see from Trump.

For the record, Boot does mention Reagan's chilling refusal to take the AIDS epidemic seriously (maybe it was God's will?) but doesn't mention Reagan's cynical use of racism to get himself elected.  

In the end it comes down to this:  Republican elites and donors believe in tax cuts, period, full-stop.  And all the culture war garbage -- from hating gays to hating women, to hating brown people, to hating Liberals, to hating science -- has been deployed tactically, election after election, as a means to get  enough pliant Republican meatheads elected to pass the massive tax cuts, which is all the Republican elite ever cared about.

Or, as one disreputable Liberal podcaster put it years ago, "We are not in the 3rd or 4th year of the Trump presidency.  We are in the 40th year of the Reagan Revolution."

And it worked: that culture war garbage was the hook that brought white, Conservative evangelicals squarely into the heart of the Republican party.  But right here -- where French says that both the "party’s positions — and its people" profoundly changed -- this is where he palms the card and hopes you will not notice. Because while Republican policies may have changes, the white, Conservative evangelicals at the dark heart of the GOP have not.

Having lived through the same history as you and me, David French should fucking well know better.  Which means, like so many other Never Trumpers, French is either lying outright about the history of the modern GOP to cover his own ass, or is so terminally delusional about the modern history of the GOP that his opinions are worthless.

We remember Ronald Reagan welcoming America's most hateful and bigoted white, Conservative evangelicals into the Republican party, back when Donald Trump was just another sleazy New York real estate crook. 

We even remember Falwell's slanderous attacks on Norman Lear all the way back in the 1980s.

We lived through clinic bombings and "Tiller the Baby Killer" becoming Bill O'Reilly's mantra on Fox News, until someone actually killed Dr. Tiller.

We remember Falwell and Robertson, in the hours after 9/11, blaming everyone the Right hates for the attack.  Because for white evangelical Christians scumbags like Falwell and Robertson, every catastrophe was ordered by God and therefor must be divine punishment for not hating women, minorities and the ACLU hard enough.

And yet, Republican leadership didn't grab these scumbags collar and belt and throw them out of the Party of Lincoln, because by then it was no longer the Party of Lincoln.  It was well on it's way to being the Party of Jefferson Davis: hateful, bigoted, White, stupid, superstitious and drunk on holy vengeance.  

Which is why, by 2004, we saw Bush the "devout Christian" getting out the Conservative evangelical vote by running an explicitly gay-bashing campaign in order to get himself re-elected.

Which is why, by 2008, we saw John "Maverick" McCain publicly reverse his scathing 2000 criticism of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance" who represented the "outer reaches of American politics" and head down to Liberty University to kiss Falwell's ass.  

Because McCain wanted to be president and he fucking well understood where the power center of the Republican party was located. 

And let's not forget that as late as 2019, Never Trump Resistance Hero #1, Liz Cheney, was out there blithely leveling the most grotesque lies against Democrats and calling people like you and me "the face of pure evil".   Because slander like that has been the Mother Tongue of the GOP since David French was in short pants.

This is the bamboozle that David French is trying to run.  The White Conservative evangelical base of the GOP didn't vote for McCain or Romney because they had joy, joy, joy, joy down in their hearts over the idea of a McCain or Romney administration.  They settled for McCain and Romney because the alternative was a Democrat, and they had been lectured -- over and over again by their pastors, for decades and from the sanctity of the pulpit -- that Democrats are all commie, baby-killing servants of Satan.  

That anyone on the Right is better than everyone on the Left.  

In 2016 we saw Donald Trump win them over by promising to deliver what both Bushes had failed to deliver and what everyone knew neither Romney nor McCain would ever have been able to.

These people firmly believe in a Heaven where they will live forever with Republican Jesus, and a Hell, where you and me and most everyone else will fry for eternity.  The thought of this delights them, but to get there they have to bring about the end of the world, which is why the elimination of Roe was never going to be enough.  Moving the American embassy to Jerusalem would not be enough, nor would terrorizing trans people or rolling back gay marriage, because as the  Henry Drummond says in Inherit the Wind, "Fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy and needs feeding."  

These people are shooting for a Year Zero.  The end of history.  A world cleansed of scum like us, and remade in the image of their radical perversion of Christianity.  

These are also people whose whole theology depends on dismissing objective reality, believing in giant, global conspiracies being run by Satan and a bone-deep certainty that they are a cruelly oppressed minority in an America which was designed to be an explicitly Christian country, but which has been stolen from them by godless Liberals.

In other words, as I wrote all the way back in June of 2015:

 ...in order to win elections and rake in vast fortunes, the Conservative brain caste has painstakingly created the perfect feeding-ground for con men and demagogues like Trump, the louder and more bombastic the better. 

And because we Liberals believe in facts, and not bullshit, self-absolving alibis, you are not obliged to just take my for any of this.  There are plenty of former evangelicals who have left the cult who will tell you the same.

You could check out Tim Alberta's "The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism."  

 Or you could check in with Frank Schaeffer, the author of "Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back"

Which is why, in a world of pious frauds like David French and grouchy charlatans like Tom Nichols, those of us on the side of the angels should cherish and celebrate the Stuart Stevenses and the Frank Schaeffers in this world.

I Am The Liberal Media.

They're Not Apologizing So Quit Asking

 

It is neither shocking nor even mildly surprising that the cranky "Me?  Apologize?  Fuck you.  What about  Abbie Hoffman?"  attitude that ol' Tom Nichols keeps in his everyday carry kit  (from August 3, 2025)...

... hasn't abated in the slightest over the years:

You will get no such contrition, because I think your party had plenty of matches and lighter fluid and is not free of responsibility here.

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) July 14, 2019

BTW, the reason you're getting the bare-bones text of this vintage Nichols' "Fuck you, hippies" Tweet is that Tom appears to have scrubbed his archives of such embarrassments.  And so they no longer exist... except in their plain-text form on this here blog :-)

 For example:

I’d say that the dumpster fire that is the modern Democratic party help create a decade of losses that made Trump seem plausible, but okay.

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 13, 2019

And 

I wish people on the left were *nearly* as introspective as Max is being, because mark my words, leftist friends: Trump saved you from yourselves. His emergence headed off some serious intra-left fights that you're still going to have. And you're not going to enjoy them. /4

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) October 13, 2018

And

Trying to mau-mau the Never Trumpers, or the apostates like Max, because we won't repudiate every single thought we ever had is the kind of Stalinism that helped keep people like me (I won't speak for Max) in place for longer than we should have been. /9

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) October 13, 2018

And

And when the crackup of the left comes - as it will - I look forward to the shake-out when good-hearted liberals realize that they, too, are sharing a bus with some cranks, traitors, conspiracy nuts, wanna-be totalitarians, and other creeps they ignored because of Trump. /10x

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) October 13, 2018

 I could go on, but the point is fairly made.  As I wrote back in 2018:

Tom Nichols Shall Leave No Logical Fallacy Unflung

In which Tom Nichols -- a professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College  -- somehow did not notice that his Republican Party had devolved into a shambolic racist treason factory literally right in front of him until it was 25 years too late and then gets mad at us Stalinist Libtards for not greeting him as a Liberator.

...Ad Hominem/Tu Quoque, Straw Man, False Dilemma, Slippery Slope, Causal Fallacy.

The Old Professor has 'em all, kids, so remember, Never Turn Your Back on a Never Trumper.

It is neither shocking nor even mildly surprising that virtually all Never Trumpers lie incessantly about the past, or go waaay the hell out of their way to avoid talking about it at all (except to gripe about Robert Bork, or light a votive candle at the shrine of Saint Reagan), or, like ol' Tom, go ballistic when the past is inflicted upon them.  After all, their whole deal is that they are smarter and savvier that all of us dirty hippies combined.  That their political advice and insights are  ne plu ultra ... which is ludicrous on its face considering that none of these people were capable or seeing what was happening right in front them, in their own political party, until it was 25 years too late. 

Which is why, in a different context, I wouldn't give the tiniest damn that these people want to live in bubble where they believe nothing before 2016 exists, that liberals are the absurd caricatures they have conjured out of some childhood trauma involving seeing "Hair", and that they're the smartest kids in the classroom.

I know lots of people with lots of delusions, most of which involve Chicago sports teams.  Doesn't bother me at all.

On the other hand, it bothers me a great deal that these people have now colonized the legacy media.  It bothers me a great deal their omnipresence there comes at the cost of actual Liberal voices who have actually been right all along. And it bothers me quite a bit that they have been able to leverage their  huge, free media presence into building their own Never Trump media enterprises, where actual Liberal voices who have actually been right all along are also unwelcome.  

If you live out here in flyover country, and you ask your Democratic friends who they watch, who they listen to or who they read to get the skinny on politics, I guarantee you they've never heard of this blog or the Professional Left podcast.  Never heard of Digby or Nicole Sandler or emptywheel or Tengrain or The Bradcast, or Charlie Pierce or Thom Hartmann.  Never heard of Bob Cesca or John Fuglsang or Hal Sparks.  They might have hear of Stephanie Miller and some of her guests, but I wouldn't bet on it since they're not syndicated out here among the cornfields.  

Who is syndicated out here among the cornfields?   Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Chris Plante, Larry Kudlow, Brian Kilmeade, Jeanine Pirro and, of course, Jesus.

So, if average Democrats (and, just for fun, let's throw in "independents" and "Centrists") are oblivious to our rag-tag team of Liberal talkers and writers who have been on this beat and dead-on accurate for decades, which writers and talkers do you suppose they could pick out of a lineup?

Odds are they'll know the faces and voices delivered to them from cable news and "respectable" publications.  They'll know Nicole Wallace and Joe Scarborough.  They'll know Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell.  They'll know David Brooks.  

They'll know all the usual suspects.  

And as you may have noticed, all those usual suspects are selling the same center-right, "Democrats must become Republican-lite" eyewash as our democracy's only path to salvation. 

Burn The Lifeboats

The George Will Homunculi That Lives in Their Heads

I was not going to write about old friend Tom Nicols today.  This was not the plan.

After all, these last few days have been so overstuffed with serious breaking news -- one story piling atop another, each trying to elbow the others aside -- why bother with some cranky old fart that our Never Trump friends crank out whenever us naughtybad Liberals need to be reminded that they're running the show now and we need to sit down, shut up and mind our manners.

I was going about my chores and errands business, listening to a selection of podcasts in the background much as  local reporter (back when we had such things) might listen to a police scanner, when suddenly I heard ol' Tom say this to Mr. Tim Miller on a recent podcast.

...but it does it really shows you the that this is... that the modern Republican party, whatever it's become now, not the thing that you [Tim Miller] and I knew 20 years ago...but it's become about power.  Just the raw exercise of power not about principle not about ideology not about conservatism...

Oh great.  Now I am contractually obliged to spend a few words on ol' Tom and the Misremembrance of Things Past forcefield that Never Trumpers have erected to keep themselves safe from the past, because, as it happens, I began this little blog of mine 20 years ago.

Wheeee!  

What's more, I've spent most of the past 20 years remembering and writing about all those terribly inconvenient things that Never Trumpers are so desperate to keep safely buried deep inside the memory hole.  

This Misremembering forcefield is not a physical thing.  It's more like a George Will homunculi that lives in their heads.  A homunculi conjured at the intersection of the past tense and a past perfect infinitive.  To wit:  Never Trumpers need the past to have been very different than it was.

It is no exaggeration to say that everything depends on this.  

They need their former party to have been a Disneyland of morally superior, Burke-quoting Conservatives.  

They need themselves to have been the only people wise enough and brave enough to sound the alarm about what was going on with the GOP... in 2016 or 2017 or as late as 2018. 

They need the rise of Trump to have been a Black Swan event which no one could have predicted and for which none of them are to blame.  

They need Liberals to have always been clueless idiots and political naïfs who are always wrong about everything.

And they need Democrats to have been so darn far to the Left and so besotted with snooty big words that, mayhap, they were actually responsible for the rise of Trump.    

Because if this pack of lies is not, once and for all, adopted as --

-- the whole thing risks falling apart.

Because if even a hint that the Left was right about the Right all along breaches the force field, the implications are catastrophic.  

It means that all of your favorite Never Trump celebrities were actually wrong all along.  

Wrong about the one subject about which they were being paid a whole lotta money for their supposed expertise.

So if it is true that they were not only wrong all along,  but that they mocked and ignored the people who were right all along...?  Well, you can see where this is going. 

If they truly failed to see what we Liberals clearly saw (and wrote about every fucking day) unfolding in plain sight, they why in the name of Jesus, Mary and Joe Scarborough are they still being paid a whole lotta money for their opinion?  Why are these people, whose resume top line reads "Never Saw Any Of This Coming",  being paid to consult on how the Democratic party -- my party -- should conduct its politics?

And that is the most charitable explanation.  The alternative is that they knew damn well what was going on inside their own party but were willing to ignore it and lie about it, because they also knew that pandering to their increasingly deranged base was their only hope of winning elections.  Which mean feeding them more and crazier lies to keep them spun up and watching Fox and voting the right way.  

And putting all of that in a box and sealing it behind a forcefield is what keeps the Never Trump movement propped up and us mouthy Liberals shut out.

So. allow me to interpret the Never Trumper's internal lament, with the help of The Shangri-Las from 1964, Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand):

Whatever happened to the boy that I once knew?
The boy who said he'd be true?
Oh, what will happen to the life I gave to you?
What will I do with it now?

What they are doing with it now is... pretty much the same shit they were up to before the monster they made drove them out into the cold, cruel world:  pretending to knowledge they do not have, shitting on Liberals, and dropping in a "Both Sides Do It" wherever they can.

TOM NICHOLS:  I suppose this is why I still bristle every time people say "Well they're conservatives and you're conservative." There is nothing conservative about this situation.  This right-wing... far right-wing radicalism is indistinguishable from... from the kind of left-wing radicalism that if, y'know, a bunch of y'know... like the president of my old school used to call them,  y'know a bunch of short pants communists, took over the government, they'd be doing the same thing. 

Except this "far right-wing radicalism" is something your party welcomed and pandered to and cultivated for fucking decades you colossal ass.  All right under your fucking nose.  There is absolutely no equivalent whatsoever in the Democratic party for any of this.  

Hell, it was so obvious that even Aaron Sorkin -- the guy who conjured imaginary "reasonable Republicans" out of thin are because The West Wing plot required them -- could see it coming back in 2012.

But Tom didn't see any of this coming, so why is he running his mouth now?  Because Never Trumpers are incapable of talking for more than eleven minutes without swearing that the Republican party somehow isn't the Republican party, that their Republicans party was so awesome that words fail.  Then they lob in a "But just look at those crazy Lefties!" because they have no other frame of reference, and obviously cannot admit that they were just loudly and wildly wrong for their entire adult lives.  

Ever the genial host, Tim Miller flails around looking for some scenario that would make Nichols' ludicrously false sound less stupid...but eventually trails off and changes the subject because it's all ridiculous.

TIM MILLER: Like, there's no apt comparison but just, like, just... just work with me here.  Let's say there's a red state somewhere that was you know uh discriminating against trans folks in a way where trans folks felt like they were, um, unsafe and President Kamala Harris had decided "I'm going to actually I'm going to actually nationalize the Arkansas National Guard and we're going to put troops on the streets of Little Rock to protect the trans kids at the high school ... at the local high school.  I mean it's a kind of a silly metaphor because it doesn't quite work in the reverse but...

But the heart of the matter is Nichols' deep worry about "the split screen".  You see, since we Liberals are such hapless idiots...

TOM NICHOLS:  When I when I used to teach strategy to military guys we had an expression that we used, um, for lucking out and getting a kind of a dumb enemy... um which is that he he chose LA because it also has a cooperative adversary in it. He has an adversary that that doesn't just take his bait but rushes into the traps that he sets um you know with open arms.

.... our "ally" Tom Nichols, was deeply concerned about how "Americans" would react to the No Kings protest.  

Except he couldn't quite quite explain who these "Americans" are.  Where they live.  What their mores and folkways are, or what influence they have over anything.

But even though Tom couldn't pinpoint exactly who these "Americans" are, he is apparently an expert in who these "Americans" are not, and what moves them to action.  And his most dire directive is that you and I need to sit down, shut our mouths and mind our manners lest these "Americans" will turn on us.  And yet, strangely, these same "Americans" never seem to give the tiniest shit about what the MAGA filth are up to.  From the White House to the trailer park, MAGA filth are free spew any insane, racist thing they please, and wipe their collective asses with the constitution, and the "Americans" simply do not notice or care.

But let a couple of anarchists throw some rocks or wave the wrong flag, and, according to Tom, these same Americans will do ... something?  He can never quite explain what it is these "Americans" will do or why we should give a shit, but by his scolding tone, it's clear that it would be bad!  So bad!

TOM NICHOLS:  His opponents have to take him seriously about this.  He does it because it works with a certain number of people and not just the MAGA base this is a war for public opinion it's a war of images.  You were a political consultant you know this better than anybody that that people don't parse words and spend you know read 1500  words to get through this.  They see those images and for most Americans the ... the image, y'know Marshall McLuhan was right the medium is the message...

Just look at all the filters that thought had to pass through to arrive in spoken form.

Nichols is not worried about the effect of the "split screen" on the MAGA base because they're already lost.  And he's obviously not worried about any such effect on us, because we're the sorts of snobs who "read 1500  words to get through this".

So having eliminated most of the active voting public from the picture, I am moved to ask who the fuck are these "most Americans" that all of us are supposed to be so terrified of that we all need to walk on eggshells at all times?

The exchange is littered with this stuff.  How Liberals will see events one way, but "America" will see them very differently, because, it doesn't occur to Nichols that Liberals are part of America.  

Also doesn't it seem kinda strange these "Americans" only seem to watch split screens where a few anarchists look bad, and not when, say, Republicans are storming the capitol and threating to hang Mike Pence.  By process of elimination, Nichols must be talking about the mopes who pay no attention whatsoever to anything.  Who'd resent having "Below Decks" interrupted by a special announcement that World War Three had begun, and who get their "news" by glancing away from "Love Island" once a week to catch whatever is flying by on the teevee between dick pill commercials.

Hey, it just now this minute occurs to me that, golly, this might not be a "Liberal" problem at all!

Maybe the problem with some assholes throwing bottles at cops running on an endless loop while millions of peaceful protestors go unacknowledged...isn't the handful of assholes or the millions of peaceful protestors.  Maybe the fucking problem is a media that will run endless loops of trivial side issues.  Tom is very big on telling his audience how foolish Liberals are for thinking thus and so and what Liberals will probably say... when, in fact, Tom knows fuck all about what Liberals are thinking, or what Liberals will say.  Wouldn't it be delightful if he could direct a fraction of his bile at the media that invents these bullshit juxtapositions instead of constantly berating imaginary Liberals on the basis of what they might say or do.

But of course he can't.  Because like most Never Trumpers, Nichols has that George Will homunculus that lives in his head, reminding him over and over again that the forcefield that keeps the inconvenient past at bay cannot be allowed to fail even a little. 

On a lighter note, these days every time Tom opens his mouth to lecture Liberals on our bad manners, this is what I hear.  And it cracks me right up.

Finally, Pro Tip for Tim Miller:  If you want to know what Liberals think or say about stuff, put an actual Liberal behind a microphone and ask them.

I Am The Liberal Media.

The World Was Never Meant for One as Histrionic as You: A Tom Nichols Adventure And More!

Tom Nichols' factory default setting has always been "Stuffed shirt with skin thin enough to read a Bret Stephens op-ed through".  His media brand is contrarian curmudgeon, and to keep the brand fresh, rain or shine, each day he must rise and and go hunting for something -- anything! -- about the Dems to bitch about.  

But every now and then he outdoes himself.  For example, here, where this fussy pecksniff proves --

I’m sorry, but I was not really inviting all of you to explain to me for the millionth time why a crass and disgusting lie is OK if Democrats make it. You have three months left to prove to people in several states that you are the adults. Start now. https://t.co/hfLi75uEZ9

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) August 6, 2024

--  he has never been to a Cubs game in his life.

Honestly, who the fuck does Nichols think he is?

He's just another fleck of political flotsam from wreck of the Party of Reagan.  Dead wrong for decades in his political choices and beliefs until the day his own party ran him out.  And now here he is, a charity case, crashing on our couch, eating our food, and instead of showing a little humility or grace or even gratitude, he spends his time constantly whining that Democrats need to run the Democratic party to suit his tastes.

Truth be told, it is starting to damage my calm.

UPDATE:  And of course this kind of ersatz pearl-clutching and synthetic fantodery is fast catching on with various Beltway bottom feeders who never gave a shit about *decades* of inexcusably grotesque Republican behavior.

No need to invite it. They've been doing it for years and nobody seemed to think it was worth calling "middle school bullying" or admonishing them for doing it.

Ship sailed long ago because you never gave a shit. Until now. It's a little too late for Miss Manners lessons. https://t.co/ZZtFvpiiCA

— digby (@digby56) August 7, 2024

cry harder bitch https://t.co/r0CLwcRDwE

— Roy Edroso (@edroso) August 7, 2024

For years now, Democrats have been involved in organized pedophilia emanating out of a DC pizzeria, and the Clintons have left a trail of murdered bodies. The election was stolen from Trump by ballot-stuffing immigrants and the J6 rioters were a peaceful tour group. If we want… https://t.co/vWLhUJ4wRk

— David Simon (@AoDespair) August 7, 2024

*Walz makes a couch joke*

Wise, grown-up pundit: “the couch stuff is untrue and shameful”

*Trump and Vance spray a firehose of lies every time they open their mouths*

Same pundit: “oh well, what can you do?”

— Andy Richter (@AndyRichter) August 7, 2024

@Mr_Electrico @bluegal Look out! Sheriff Tone Police is issuing citations! They are so mad when Democrats punch back (Figuratively, ofc. He is MN nice after all) ;) https://t.co/eeFJn0yCXg

— WalzStanNV (@nomalarkeyD) August 7, 2024

The Harris campaign has spent Walz’s first day on the trail retailing him to voters as the “folksy” education professional who all but personifies “Midwest nice.” How, then, is this man, the very model of conviviality, supposed to **explain the joke?** https://t.co/kQa3TqspgF

— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) August 7, 2024

If you’re touchy about Walz’s couch joke, you’re telling lots of voters you don’t get them. Pundits should be careful about telling their audiences they don’t get them.

— The Editorial Board (@johnastoehr) August 7, 2024

jokes are disinformation now https://t.co/WW6jG796lY

— Atrios (@Atrios) August 7, 2024

Yes, Trump has said worse. But that was bad for the country. And so, to a lesser degree, is this. To close this horrible chapter for our nation, we need to rise above Trump's disgusting, unpresidential behavior, not emulate it. https://t.co/1i1wiX4Tuq

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) August 7, 2024

Democrats, please drop the couch crap. It’s a lie. We aren’t the liars. They are.

It’s juvenile. It’s dishonest. It’s off brand. And we don’t need it.

Be better

— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) August 7, 2024

He’s so proud of this disgusting, vile joke — which is based on an internet fabrication— he tweeted it out.

No class. https://t.co/5qjrpiozdd

— Marc Thiessen 🇺🇸❤️🇺🇦🇹🇼🇮🇱 (@marcthiessen) August 7, 2024

Fuck off, @jaketapper. https://t.co/zNlS0ntJCy

— Kimberley Johnson (@AuthorKimberley) August 8, 2024

I Am The Liberal Media

Then There Was Tommy Nichols, Who We Called Tommy Both Sides...

....because he was pathologically incapable of talking about any Republican atrocity without it reminding him of something that he remembers some lefties did that was equally atrocious.  

In fact, this week he did it twice in one podcast.  On Mona Charen's Bulwark podcast where Tom was safe from the peril of  some Liberal popping up and asking him inconvenient questions

First example, speaking about how effortlessly Republicans profess to believe two things at the same time which completely contradict each other:

Nichols:  ...no matter what happens it's always the Deep State and, y'know, Bidens are super villains. I mean I love this idea that Joe Biden is this, like, doddering old uh fossil who also is,  y'know this this James Bond super villain...

All of which is true, and could have been left right there, no argument.  But since Tom apparently always has to be an asshole...

Nichols:  ...it's kind of the flip side of the way people used on the Left used to talk about George W. Bush, right? He's a complete idiot.  He's...he can't tie his shoes, and he masterminded 9/11 and the Iraq [?] hoax. 

Charen:  Right!

Nichols: And, y'know, I mean it it shows you that we have become as a culture childlike in our inability to perceive...

And thus the specific depravity of Nichols' recently-former political party, and his complicity in turning that party into the shitpile it is today, is magically transmuted into a "we" problem.  A cultural problem, which Nichols had no part in creating.  Instead he wraps himself in the pundit's cloak of Olympian, above-it-allness and scowls down at us grubby mortals on the Right and the Left who have ruined everything.

You can see why no actual Liberals are allowed within a country mile of this neocon circle-jerk.  

But the fun doesn't stop there.  Just a few minutes later...

Nichols:  [Trump] is completely off his rocker.  And, you know all these prominent Republicans keep stepping forward and saying this is a deep danger.   The guy's unfit!  He's terrible! Of course I'm not going to, y'know...  And and it's especially galling when you think, um, there's been an argument made now that Virginia is a swing state...but, y'know, if you're John Bolton and you live in Virginia yeah your vote could matter .  Paul Ryan, Wisconsin, your vote's gonna matter! 10,000 votes could make the difference.  And... and all these guys saying well, y'know, I have deep concerns but...

So far, so good, right?  He's made his point and could have stopped right there and moved on.  

But since Tom apparently always has to be an asshole...

 Nichols: ... they all remind me of Bill Clinton, um, talking about preserving his viability.  And I just find it really cowardly...

Yes, Nichols is actually comparing the public decisions being taken here-and-now by John Bolton, the 75-year-old former National Security Advisor to Donald Trump,  and former Speaker of the House and current Fox News board member, Paul Ryan, to a tortured letter that Bill Clinton wrote as a deeply conflicted 23-year-old college student, during the height of the Vietnam War in 1969.

The letter itself hasn't been the subject of anyone's conversation for more than 30 years, since Ted Koppel dredged it up for a Nightline hit-job back in 1992.  But when it came to discussing grown-ass Republican men with real power and influence choosing to hide under a rug rather than take a position on voting to keep a monster out of the White House, somehow this 55-year-old letter was top-of-mind for Tom Nichols. 

Because they can never let this shit go.  Just as they can never stop fictionalising their own past until fuck ups become noble causes and the Bush administration becomes the story of a great and decent man who was cruelly slandered by us dirty despicable hippies.

Oh the humanity!

One suspects this is actually a mental condition -- a glitch -- that is endemic among Never Trumpers.

One suspects that decades defending their indefensible party by automatically Both Sidering all the horrible shit their party was getting up to,  rewired the brains of Republicans like Tom Nichols so completely that now they just can't stop.

Or maybe he's just a really petty asshole.  

I Am The Liberal Media

First They Mock You, Then They Block You...

...then they rip you off and pretend you never existed

Ol' Tom Nichols really, really hated it when I'd pop up on social media to remind him of the Republican Party's incredibly problematic past.  After all, you know the rule:

So he called me a few names and might have invoked Angela Davis or 1970 or some such and,  inevitably, he blocked me.  

Hey, here's a Fun Fact:  Tom Nichols was nine years old in 1970 and yet he seems to have an encyclopedic "memory" of the alleged horrors of the hippie years as they had been were masticated and spit into his mouth mama-bird style by Conservative media for decades.  But Tom was a grown-ass man in his early 30s when lying, racist, demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich became the powerbrokers of his beloved Republican Party, and yet he seems to have had no reaction to his party being taken over by proto-Trump monsters at the time, nor any memory of that at all since.

Man, these Elite Republican Experts on American Politics sure do live in a funny, lucrative little world.

However, as was bound to happen, the post-Trump memory hole itself eventually got to be such a yawning chasm of lost moments that the same Never Trumpers who excoriated us dirty hippies for having the temerity to remember their pasts are now opening up their own Little Shoppe o' Inconvenient Recollections.  

The difference being The Atlantic had no interest whatsoever in publishing us dirty hippies dredging up the long, depraved and very inconvenient trajectory the GOP has been on for decades that led, at last, to Trump.

On the other hand, in The Atlantic just yesterday...

The MAGA Memory Hole
Many Republicans continue their collective amnesia about Trump.

By Tom Nichols

For years, leading Republicans have chosen to let their memory lapse about things they once said about Donald Trump. It’s a disingenuous forgetting that has deepened since Trump went on trial in New York.

Ahh!  It's caveat like "about Trump" and "things they once said about Donald Trump" and "since Trump went on trial" that make it pure, Never Trumper art.

Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, works for the totalitarian Ministry of Truth, where his assignment is to produce lies. He rewrites history so that whatever the regime says today cannot be contradicted by something it might have said yesterday. (He ensures, for example, that Big Brother’s “Order for the Day” announcements about the regime’s achievements match up with everything the leader predicted in previous statements, and he excises any untidy references in the state media to people who have been arrested and disappeared.) Once history is fixed, Winston drops contradictory materials into “the memory hole,” a small opening near every desk that leads to a furnace, where the inconvenient past is quickly incinerated...

For me, the article cut off there because the rest is behind a paywall.  And I will be goddamned if I'm going to dip into my very shallow tip jar to pay money to read a poor cover-band version of what I've been writing at this blog for 20 years by a guy who shit on me and my readers and then blocked me for daring to vivisect the Republican Memory Hole before he was through using it.  

 This is why I said we needed to...

Burn The Lifeboats!

The Mighty Power of Yadda Yadda

Well, I was walking down the street just a-having a think
When a snake of a guy gave me an evil wink
He shook-a me up, he took me by surprise
He had a pickup truck and the devil's eyes
He stared at me and I felt a change
Time meant nothing, never would again   -- Time Warp

Pull up a chair and watch in amazement as Atlantic magazine in-house columnist and Never Trump about town, Tom Nichols, "yadda yadda"'s 35 extremely inconvenient years right out of existence.

From The Bulwark podcast:

Tom Nichols: I mean, Ronald Reagan leaves office talking about the importance of immigration and the American ideas, shining city on a hill.    And now we have this Republican Party that says, that basically, you know, we are a hard core of anti democratic cranks who refuse to lose an election because only we understand what’s best for the country and our opponents are criminals and communists...

Ronald Reagan's last day in office was January 20, 1989.  

That was 35 years ago.  

That was an entire human generation and a half ago.   

But in ol' Tom's mind the timeline goes, there was St. Ronald Reagan...and then, suddenly, inexplicably, this "modern Republican party" appeared.  Then comes the chest thumping about how awful "they" all are, and the aggrandizing of the genius of the Never Trumper who were right all along!  

As long as we all agree that "all along" means five minutes ago.

No Half Measures

No Country For Old Memories

This is not a literal transcript of this conversation between Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson and Atlantic writer and MSNBC contributor Tom Nichols.

It does, however, reflect the spirit of the exchange:

Wilson:  Welcome Tom Nichols.  You have a new book out repeating what Liberal bloggers have been saying for +20 years.  It is a work of genius and people should buy it.

Nichols:  Thanks.  And speaking of Liberal bloggers, you know what the entire Republican party reminds me of?

Wilson:  I think I know, Tom, but you tell us what you think.

Nichols:  They remind me of the radical Left during the 1960s.

Wilson:  That is so true.  They are in every way exactly as awful the Weathermen.  

Nichols:  Remember the 1960s?  Remember how stupid the Left was?

Wilson:  So stupid.  And so wrong.  

[COMMERCIAL FOR HANGOVER REMEDY] 

Nichols:  And the 1970s?  Remember how stupid the Left was during the 1970s?

Wilson:  I'm glad you mention that because the are so much like the crazy Republican party that just sorta happened and that we had nothing to do with manifesting.

Nichols:  True.  None of this is our doing, so let us dwell further on how clownish and wrong the Left was in the 1960s.

driftglass:  Rick, you were born near the end of 1963, right?

Wilson: Birthday's coming up soon!

driftglass:  And Tom, you're just a couple of months younger than me.  December 1960, right?

Nichols: So?  

driftglass:  So I'm fascinated by how both of you front as if you had diamond-sharp memories of events that happened before you had finished 4th grade.  And furthermore, you had both been so deeply, politically scarred by those events that you flung yourselves into the arms of Ronald Reagan.

Wilson: Speaking of Reagan, wasn't he awesome!

Nichols: Y'know, a few years ago my daughter's grades at college in her political science class went from "meh" to pretty good, so I asked her what happened?  Was she studying harder or something?

Wilson: Studying harder is awesome!

Nichols:  She told me no She just figure out that if she said bad things about Reagan every now and then, her professor would give her better grades!

Wilson:  She broke the elite Liberal college code!

Nichols:  Yeah, elite Liberal colleges are the worst.  As bad as the Extreme Right!  Like the Weather Men!  But don't worry, she didn't become an America hating communist or anything.   Just did it for the grade.

Wilson:  Whew.  That was a close one!

driftglass:  You know what else is fascinating?  How both of you talk as if the 1960s happened last week and you can remember it all in horrifying, Technicolor detail.  How every discussion of what is happening now in your recently-former political party, always veers into your seething hatred of shit that happened back when Walter Cronkite was on teevee and America was still sending men to the Moon.

But your memories of what was going on in Republican party -- your own political party -- in all the decades since the 1960s are somehow always very hazy.  Nichols has even said repeatedly that, since he grew up in Massachusetts, he had no real awareness of what was happening to his own political party until five minutes ago.  To to him, the past is hippies... Reagan... yadda yadda yadda... OMG, Trump!

You wanna know the difference between the SDS and the GOP, other than the 2.5 human generations that separate them?

[ANOTHER COMMERCIAL FOR HANGOVER REMEDY]

Wilson: Where were we?

Nichols: Reagan.  And how awesome he was.

Wilson: He sure was, wasn't he?

Nichols: He sure was.  And how wretched and spoiled these kids today are.

Wilson:  Elite Liberal colleges are ruining them.

Nichols:  And another thing.  Liberals are alla time dinging us for saying "Gummint is the Problem."

Wilson:  I know, right!

Nichols:  But we never said that!  Never!  All we ever said was we wanted gummint small-ER, and more efficient.

Wilson:  Where do these Liberal get these crazy ideas?

Nichols:  I dunno, brother.  The Utne Reader or someplace.

"My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." -- Grover Norquist, whose insane anti-tax pledge was at one time virtually mandatory for every Republican running for national office.

Nichols: And you know what else?  Mike Johnson sure seems like a creepy weirdo.

Wilson:  He does seem like a creepy weirdo.  You knows what he reminds me of?

Nichols: The Left in the 1960s?

Wilson: Exactly!

Nichols: Also, what the hell happened to the Republican party of our youth? 

Wilson:  It's a giant mystery, brother.  Well, thanks for coming in, and everyone within the sound of my voice should buy his book.  What's the title?

Nichols:  Thank Rick.  The working title is called "Everyone But Us Are Morons."

 

[ONE MORE COMMERCIAL FOR HANGOVER REMEDY]

I Am The Liberal Media

No Notes

Glad you finally came around to say the exact thing I told you, to your face, six years ago that you got real mad about six years ago, @RadioFreeTom. https://t.co/7PmERVFov0 pic.twitter.com/6e9Nzj4XFg

— Patrick S. Tomlinson (@stealthygeek) September 30, 2023

Burn The Lifeboats

Now Watch This Drive: At The Very Serious Conservative Flea Market of Very Bad Ideas

Armed with the hammer of the boundless certainty of their dogma, and the anvil of their sneering contempt for the Left, Republicans like Bret Stephens and Tom Nichols continue their life's work from their respective sinecures -- 

20 Years On, I Don’t Regret Supporting the Iraq War

By Bret Stephens [New York Times]

-- at their respective, respectable publications.

Just War.  

by Tom Nichols  [The Atlantic]

I supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I have changed my mind about some things but not everything...

Now I'm going to do something unfair.  I'm going to interleave selected quotes from both articles by both men among my comments and not tell you which is which.  

But since both men are highly paid writers-of-opinions for national publications, you surely shouldn't have any trouble distinguishing one from the other by their mighty words alone, right?

Right?

Anyway, here they both are -- 

The record provides ample evidence of the justice of a war against Saddam Hussein’s regime. Iraq has shown itself to be a serial aggressor led by a dictator willing to run imprudent risks, including an attack on the civilians of a noncombatant nation during the Persian Gulf War; a supreme enemy of human rights that has already used weapons of mass destruction against civilians; a consistent violator of both UN resolutions and the terms of the 1991 cease-fire treaty, to say nothing of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions before and since the Persian Gulf War; a terrorist entity that has attempted to reach beyond its own borders to support and engage in illegal activities that have included the attempted assassination of a former U.S. president; and most important, a state that has relentlessly sought nuclear arms against all international demands that it cease such efforts...

Any one of these would be sufficient cause to remove Saddam and his regime(and wars have started over less), but taken together...

-- doggedly pound away at history -- 

The question now was whether even Saddam Hussein was worth the cost. Twenty years ago, I would have said yes. Today, I would say no—but I must add the caveat that no one knew then, nor can anyone know now, how much more dangerous a world we might have faced with Saddam and his psychopathic sons still in power...

But if there was one indisputably real W.M.D. in Iraq, it was Hussein himself. Until his downfall, he put everyone and everything he encountered at risk...

Ultimately, the choice for the United States and our allies in early 2003 wasn’t invasion or containment. It was invasion or, over time, the quasi-rehabilitation of Hussein’s Iraq...

-- excising inconvenient impurities -- 

And yet, for a few years more, I stayed the course. I believed that Iraqis, like anyone else, wanted to be free. They might not be Jeffersonian democrats, but they hated Saddam, and now they had a chance at something better...

Still, there’s too much revisionist history about the Iraq War... 

Critics of the war now make the point that the intelligence fiasco wrecked America’s credibility. It’s true. But no less damaging was the never-ending “Bush lied” charge that, 10 years later, morphed into the “Obama lied” charge when it came to Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Syria or the suggestion that President Biden is lying about last year’s sabotage of the Nordstream pipeline. One conspiracy theory tends to beget another, in ways that are destructive to all sides... 

-- and adding in retroactive justifications --

In 2003, I was far too confident in the ability of my own government to run a war of regime change, which managed to turn a quick operational victory into one of the greatest geopolitical disasters in American history...

The problem in Iraq wasn’t simply a matter of faulty decisions, of which — as in every war — there were many. It was of faulty systems. Around the 10th anniversary of the invasion, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction painted a devastating picture of our efforts. Billions of dollars were wasted on projects that were rarely, if ever, completed. Uncle Sam, whose cruise missiles could destroy Iraqi targets with astounding precision, couldn’t keep the lights on in Baghdad...

-- until they have reforged the past into a shiny story of the nobility of their idols, the folly of their enemies and in which they, somehow, have been right all along.

Today, there is not a word of this I would take back as an indictment of Saddam Hussein or as justification for the use of force. But although I believed that the war could be justified on these multiple grounds, the George W. Bush administration chose a morally far weaker argument for a preventive war...

Readers will want to know whether, knowing what I know now, I would still have supported the decision to invade. Not for the reasons given at the time. Not in the way we did it. But on the baseline question of whether Iraq, the Middle East and the world are better off for having gotten rid of a dangerous tyrant, my answer remains yes...

And having hammered an irredeemably vile past into a gleaming mathom (look it up) that no Very Serious Conservative need be ashamed to display on their mantle, both men rush off to sell their trinkets at their respective booths, side-by-side, at the never-ending Very Serious Conservative Flea Market of Very Bad Ideas.  

Behold, a Tip Jar!