Libtards Made My Party Do Fascism! An Absurdly Long Post About The Multifarious Villainies of David Brooks

"Democratic friends, let’s try a thought experiment. Imagine you woke up one morning and all your media sources were produced by Christian nationalists. You sent your kids off to school and the teachers were espousing some version of Christian nationalism. You turned on your sports network and your late-night comedy, and everyone was preaching Christian nationalism.

That’s a bit how it feels to be more conservative in the West today — to feel drenched by a constant downpour of progressive sermonizing..." -- David Brook, August 21, 2025

And so begins yet another David Brooks sermon in The New York Fucking Times about how the rise of the fascist Right it is entirely the fault of you and me and all of our snooty, elitist friends.

From the same column:

Smothering progressivism produced a populist reaction that eventually descended into a nihilist surge.

And from whence does Brooks derive this sweeping theory of American political devolution?   From the same colum:

In 2018, I happened to watch the Super Bowl at a sports bar in West Virginia. President Trump was about a year into his first term, and the corporate advertising world was churning out ads with vaguely progressive messages. I watched the guys in the bar...

Yeah, pretty much the same conditions under which Brooks derived his sweeping theory about why "Americans think the economy is terrible."  

A restaurant at Newark Airport has had the last laugh after New York Times columnist David Brooks claimed to have been charged $78 for a burger and fries - but failing to mention the alcoholic drinks that made up much of his bill.

Earlier this week, Mr Brooks posted a picture of his meal at New Jersey-based 1911 Smoke House Barbeque on X, formerly Twitter, with the caption: “This meal just cost me $78 at Newark Airport. This is why Americans think the economy is terrible.”

1911 Smoke House later clarified that “80 per cent” of Mr Brooks’ tab came from multiple shots of whisky.

But, since Brooks opened the doors of "downpour", "drenched" and "smothering" media, rather than using my mad kinesics skills to concoct agreeable theories while sipping whisky at Floyd's Thirst Parlor and stealing furtive glances at fellow patrons -- 

-- how about I just factually report on the state of the media here in the Middle of Middle America.  And seeing as how, over last several years, the Sangamon County Republican Party has hired this Murderer's Row of degenerates and liars to keynote their annual Lincoln Day Dinner and fundraiser -- Tom Homan, Kelleyanne Conway, Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens, Jason Chaffetz,  Jeanine Pirro, Corey Lewandowski, Laura Ingraham and on and on and on -- it shall not surprise you that the media which is actually drenching and drowning Middle Murrica reflects these debased tastes.

If this is too much for you to digest in one sitting, go ahead and scroll on past.  I won't be offended, but I may use it as the basis for a 3,000 word, all-encompassing theory about human nature.

This is the OutKick blurb at OutKick:

Clay Travis is the founder of the fastest growing national multimedia platform, OutKick, that produces and distributes engaging content across sports and pop culture to millions of fans across the country. OutKick was created by Travis in 2011 and sold to the Fox Corporation in 2021. One of the most electrifying and outspoken personalities in the industry, Travis hosts OutKick The Show where he provides his unfiltered opinion on the most compelling headlines throughout sports, culture, and politics. He also makes regular appearances on FOX News Media as a contributor providing analysis on a variety of subjects ranging from sports news to the cultural landscape.

And here’s more about them.  

He and Buck Sexton host The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, a three-hour weekday conservative talk show which debuted on June 21, 2021 as the replacement of The Rush Limbaugh Show on many radio stations. 

Ah!  Ideological continuity!  So important in keeping the reprogrammable meatbags from getting all confused and cranky.

And sure enough, for decades, from 11AM - 2 PM every day, you could find Rush Limbaugh or one of his lackeys on local radio station WMAY right here in Springfield, Illinois.  But Limbaugh is dead now.  Dead and buried in what I believe may have become the largest impromptu public urinal in St. Louis, Missouri.  

So now, where once you would find Limbaugh, you can listen to the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show right here in Springfield, Illinois on WMAY.  And on any of hundreds of other radio stations across the country, because the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show is part of a national syndication package, so that hundreds of thousands of Republican base voters are all hearing the same message at the same time.

As part of that syndication package, Before them on WMAY, from 9 AM to 11 AM,  you’ll find Fox News' very own Brian Kilmeade.

After them, from 2 - 4 PM, comes The Dana Show.  That's Dana Loesch.  And after her, for three more hours, The Erick Erickson Show.

But wait!  There's more!  

Within the OutKick platform you'll find the OutKick Show with Clay Travis.  No surprise.  But you'll also find 13 other shows.  There are gambling tips.  Sports news.  Politics and culture with Tomi Lahren!  

Dan Dakich has a show called "Don't @ Me" and he is billed as "an American basketball sportscaster. He is a former player, assistant coach, interim head coach for the Indiana University Hoosiers 

American basketball player".  But here he was on Twitter yesterday. "NPR's Katherine Maher admits outlet failed to cover Hunter Biden laptop"

Then there's the Ricky Cobb show.  Here's that blurb:  "Ricky Cobb show will offer fans that magical blend of insight and humor into current sports topics along with his deep passion for sports, culture and humor from the 70’s and 80’s."  Recent topics were, let's see, "Tesla terrorists attempt to go mainstream,” and "Tim Walz Fans The Tesla and Elon Hate", "DEI officially done at Disney, are there any masculine Democrats?" 

There's Gaines for Girls With Riley Gaines.  From the blurb:  "Riley Gaines has emerged as one of the most powerful voices in the fight to save women's sports and spaces, but the fight is far from over!"

Three episodes from last year:  "She Was FAILED For Using 'Biological Woman", "Protecting the integrity of women's sports with Tommy Tuberville" and "Josh Hawley Confronts NCAA About Trans Athletes In Women's Sports"

FOX59 Sports anchor/reporter Charly Arnolt now has her own show.  Recent episodes include  "DOGE Superstar", "Have Any Woke Companies Actually Bounced Back?". "The Woke Push To Keep Men In Women’s Sports". "Canadian Sports Fans Continue To Boo The US National Anthem!", "Can Men In Women's Sports Have Enough Impact To Flip Democrats"

The latest episode of Hot Mic w/ Hutton & Withrow is "No Woke Basketball"

Fox News' Tyrus has his own place there.  Recent episode asks "Can Wrestling SAVE America From DIVISIVE Politics?!"

Then there is the Will Cain Show.  That's Fox News' Will Cain.

Are you noticing the pattern here yet? 

The lead sentence coming out of Will Cain's mouth on his show yesterday was literally, "Why are women so woke?"  

After that it was on to the "so called" war plans with lots of scowling and air quotes around everything.  Then he brought on some obscure visiting professor named Gad Saad from Northwood University who blathered on about two French philosophers who wrote books about how human reasoning didn't evolve to find the truth, but just to win arguments.  And that somehow proves that Jeffrey Goldberg clearly wrote his Atlantic article just to hurt Republicans.  

Gad Saad:

"He's not a true journalist.  He's not pursuing objective truth.  He simply wants his team to win an argument by making the other team look bad.”

For the record, Northwood University is "a private university focused on business education".  Its most popular undergraduate majors according to 2021 records were things like Business Administration and Management, Marketing/Marketing Management, Vehicle & Vehicle Parts & Accessories Marketing Operations and Sport & Fitness Administration/Management, so I have no idea what a visiting philosophy professor has to do there, except that whatever he does leaves him with enough spare time show up on The Will Cain Show when summoned.

Late breaking news from Gad Saad on Twitter -- 11:40 AM · Mar 27, 2025 "My appearance tonight on Jesse Watters is going to be rescheduled to another date."

Oh.  He's that guy!

And then we're off to, as promised and no kidding, Hegelianism.  You know, sweeping, big-word musings on what even is knowledge?  How can anyone really know anything?  All of which amounted to nothing but a job-lot of big smarty pants words from a Real Philosopher to reassure the MAGA meatheads that they’re really the smart ones and the Signal scandal is really some kinda Liberal plot against the Dear Leader.

For the record, today’s top essays at OutKick are

Some Environmentalists Could Give A Rip About The Environment by Tomi Lahren

Trump Pokes Fun At Reporter For Still Wearing A Mask by Ian Miller

Yes, Red State Voters Helped Tank 'Snow White' Box Office by Ian Miller

And do you know who advertises on OutKick?  Everybody.  In fact, I might have missed the crucial 99th Lifetime teevee episode, about Gypsy Rose, Life After Lockup if I hadn't been tooling around over there.  And this was Season 2, Episode 99:  The Unseen Footage!!!

This is the universe in which MAGA Republicans live all day, every day now.  It’s safe there.  Reassuring.  And the bargain they’ve made with their media is their eternal financial and electoral loyalty in exchange for protecting them from ever feeling stupid or wrong.  And for that reason, those people are now permanently lost to reason and unreachable, and it is a waste of time and energy to continue to try. 

From Greg Sargent at The New Republic: 

In Signalgate, Trumpworld is demonstrating exactly what's wrong with authoritarian populism: Refusal to admit error, walling out of constructive criticism and the cult-like defense of the leader at all costs...  

What most people don't realize is that, for decades, the greatest  double act in Conservative politics was Rush Limbaugh and David Brooks.   

On hundreds of radio stations across the country, Limbaugh and his imitators spent all their time pumping out the racist, misogynist, Liberal-stomping poison that Republican bigots and imbeciles craved, whipping them into a frenzy, and then aiming at the ballot box.

Limbaugh was so effective at being the Republican party's National Ward Boss Without Portfolio, that when Republicans took over both houses of congress in 1994, party leaders made a very public show of personally thanking him for the victory.  They threw him a parade.  They made him an honorary member of congress.  The invested him with the title of "Majority Maker".

And there is a straight line -- plain and clear -- from that day to this.  From the rise of Limbaugh to the election of Donald Trump.

This is how Rush Limbaugh spent his precious time on Earth..

For his part, David Brooks spent his entire career serving the Republican elite and credulous Americans of all stripes by reassuring his millions of readers that men like Limbaugh didn't really exist or were, at best, marginal political actors. 

Brooks' job was to act as America's tour guide through a sanitized, Disneyfied, Potemkin Republican party.  A happy land where the animatronic peasants spent their days rhapsodizing about the joys of supply side economics, and spent their evenings out on the porch, reading Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution In France" to the animatronic young 'uns, while their animatronic son, a strapping lad of twenty named Joey Tabula Rasa, was off with animatronic friends, earnestly pondering the question of why antiwar protesters were such ill-mannered, shouty, anti-American fools.  

You think I'm kidding?  Wrote a long thing about Joey Tabula Rasa, Brooks' Magic Patriot Dream Kinder  if you're interested.  The original text has long since vanished from history along with the rest of the now-defunct Weekly Standard archives, but since I have outlasted the Weekly Standard, selections from Rupert Murdoch's high-end Conservative rag can still be found in my archives.  

You're welcome.

The point of which is that Brooks told reassured his millions of New York Times readers, and the millions who saw him on Meet the Press nearly every week, and the hundreds who saw him on PBS every Friday, and the dozens who heard him on NPR every week...that there was no need for them to look behind the curtain.  No need to visit the political abattoir where the filthy work of revving up the Pig People to vote to cut their own economic throats because Guns, God and Gays took place.  

All was well!

Everything was fine, running smoothly and in the hands of able men and women who were steering a true course.  

And every time the public caught a glimpse of what was really going on behind the Republican electoral curtain and were horrified by it, well, Brooks had a ready answer for that too.

If the Republican monster that got out of the lab and started to stink up Brooks' fairy tales was Tom DeLay, then obviously the problem was Both Sides!  O tempora, o mores!  From David Brooks in 2006:

...

There are two major parties on the ballot, but there are three major parties in America. There is the Democratic Party, the Republican Party and the McCain-Lieberman Party.

All were on display Tuesday night.

The Democratic Party was represented by its rising force — Ned Lamont on a victory platform with the net roots exulting before him and Al Sharpton smiling just behind.

The Republican Party was represented by its collapsing old guard — scandal-tainted Tom DeLay trying to get his name removed from the November ballot. And the McCain-Lieberman Party was represented by Joe Lieberman himself, giving a concession speech that explained why polarized primary voters shouldn’t be allowed to define the choices in American politics.

The McCain-Lieberman Party begins with a rejection of the Sunni-Shiite style of politics itself. It rejects those whose emotional attachment to their party is so all-consuming it becomes a form of tribalism, and who believe the only way to get American voters to respond is through aggression and stridency.

The flamers in the established parties tell themselves that their enemies are so vicious they have to be vicious too. They rationalize their behavior by insisting that circumstances have forced them to shelve their integrity for the good of the country. They imagine that once they have achieved victory through pulverizing rhetoric they will return to the moderate and nuanced sensibilities they think they still possess.

But the experience of DeLay and the net-root DeLays in the Democratic Party amply demonstrates that means determine ends. Hyper-partisans may have started with subtle beliefs, but their beliefs led them to partisanship and their partisanship led to malice and malice made them extremist, and pretty soon they were no longer the same people...

If the Republican monster that broke containment and started to stink up Brooks' fairy tales was the Fake Tea Party, not to worry.  Brooks went on Meet the Press, flashed his PhD in Knowing Racism Stuff, and right there, in front of God and everybody, extrapolated from his single, jog-by observation of a Fake Tea Party Rally and a Black family reunion going on near each other that didn't result in a riot, that the Tea Baggers were the goddamn salt of the goddamn Earth.  The best kind of people!  And not at all racist!

If the Republican monster that got out of the lab and started to stink up Brooks' fairy tales was Sarah Palin, not to worry.  Just a tiny glitch in the matrix that has been taken care of and everything was fine now.

The big Republican accomplishment is that they have detoxified their brand. Four years ago they seemed scary and extreme to a lot of people. They no longer seem that way. The wins in purple states like North Carolina, Iowa and Colorado are clear indications that the party can at least gain a hearing among swing voters. And if the G.O.P. presents a reasonable candidate (and this year’s crop was very good), then Republicans can win anywhere. I think we’ve left the Sarah Palin phase and entered the Tom Cotton phase. 

--  David Brooks, November 5, 2014.

If you're doing the math at home, yes, this was just seven short months before Trump oozed down the escalator, slipped right past David Brooks' animatronic Republican voters and into the hearts of the actual Republican base.  And Trump did this relatively easily by speaking the the base in their native tongue: Limbaugh-ese.  Named after the #1 Republican king-maker and power broker who Brooks had spent the previous 20 years pretending either did not exist, or was just a clown to whom no Serious Person needed to pay any attention.

And speaking of Il Douche...if the Republican monster that got out of the lab and started to stink up Brooks' fairy tales was the possible nomination of Donald Trump, not to worry, because "the governing wing of the Republican Party" would soon swing into action and save them from both Donald Trump and Ted Cruz by rocketing Marco Rubio to power.

And when that failed to materialize, not to worry, because (and I'm betting you all forgot about this particular very short con)... a veritable 

...League of Extraordinary Whig Gentlemen were ready to spring into action! ("The Lincoln Caucus"):

Or they could choose the collective path.

This is the path that recognizes that the situation we’re in now is more like a parliamentary process than a presidential process. Even very small groups can have an amazing influence over big candidates who are trying to build a majority coalition. Think of the way small Israeli religious parties extract concessions from the much larger Israeli parties.

So I’m suggesting some number of delegates organize themselves into a caucus called the Lincoln Caucus. The Lincoln Caucus would not be an explicitly anti-Trump caucus or an anti-Cruz caucus. It would just be a caucus made up of delegates who are not happy with the choices currently before them.

...

Earth's mightiest imaginary Conservative heroes who would remake the GOP exactly as David Brooks wished it to be:

The first thing the Lincoln Caucus would do is plant a flag for a different style of Republicanism. Members of the caucus would remind the country that there still are Republicans who believe in prudent globalism, reform conservative ideas to lift up the working class. There are still Republicans who believe in certain standards of polite behavior in public and pragmatic compromise.

And either save the party from ruin:

This process would bring the Trump and Cruz campaigns back toward the Republican mainstream. It would create a road toward party unity after one deal or another was reached. It might go some way toward heading off a general election debacle.

It would also create a democratic path toward a Republican nominee who is not Trump or Cruz...

Mostly, members of the Lincoln Caucus would stand up for the legitimate rights of the party. In our republican system, it is parties that choose nominees; not primary voters. Parties are lasting institutions that manage coalitions, preserve historical commitments, protect us from flash-in-the-pan demagogues and impose restraints on the excessively ambitious. The Lincoln Caucus would embody these legitimate institutional responsibilities.

Or, wait out the Trumpocalypse in David Brooks' Justice League World Headquarters and emerge from the rubble to lead the survivors towards a brighter, Whiggier tomorrow: 

 If the Republican ticket gets devastated in November, members of the Lincoln Caucus could say, “We stood for something different,” and they’d be in a good position to lead the rebuilding process.

And when Brooks had piled up so much failure on top of failure on top of still more failure as to make a mountain of failure so high that its peak reached beyond the Stratosphere, the Mesosphere, the Thermosphere, and the Exosphere, Brooks coped by conjured up a new fairy tale.   Maybe Trump winning was actually a good thing because it was definitely going to usher in a New Conservative Intellectual Renaissance -- a Conservative Intellectual Renaissance so powerful and catchy that it would sweep aside stodgy oldster political thinking and by next summer all the rock and roll kids would be dancing to it in their raves and discotheques and sock hops.

Just like in Footloose!

I wrote about it at the time and you can read the whole thing here (".....And a Doughy Pantload Shall Lead Them") if you're so inclined.  This is the key passage: 

A Renaissance on the Right 

By David Brooks

What’s bad for the gavel is good for the pen. The Republican Party is in the midst of a cataclysmic transformation. But all the political turmoil is creating a burst of intellectual creativity on the right...

And who was going to lead this Imaginary Conservative Renaissance Which Was Definitely Just Around The Corner?  A bunch of toddlers you have never heard of, and...(emphasis added)

...Other conservatives are rising to defend that order, including National Review’s Jonah Goldberg, who later this month comes out with his epic and debate-shifting book, “Suicide of the West.”

Yes, the field marshal of Mr. Brooks' New Conservative revolution was going to be the same shitbag who wrote "Liberal Fascism".

Because as history has shown again and again, Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times still retains one fundamental characteristic common to all Conservatives, from Brooks to Donald Trump: revulsion at the idea of admitting that they are wrong which is wired into them at the metabolic level.   

In Brooks' case, only after events have very publicly pulverized one of his marquee opinions will he allow that maybe he needs to go have a lil' think on the matter.  Then he dashes out to the "country" for a minute, and returns with his initial idiocy transformed into Fresh!New!Idiocy! 

But of course, any Fresh!New!Idiocy! must be built upon the bones of the Stale!Old!Idiocy because, as I might have mentioned, all Conservatives -- from Tucker Carlson to Tom Nichols, and from Charlie Kirk to Charlie Sykes -- share a common horror at the idea that not only have they been wrong all along, but that the Left has been right about the Right all along.  

And any hint that such a heresy is treated as a monstrous aggression which cannot be allowed to stand.

Which is why, whatever treason, depravity and madness the Republican party gets up to, in the end, it must have been our fault all along.

Which is why, while David Brooks may not be the single most ubiquitous and toxic force in modern American political history, he is fucking well up on that podium.

I Am The Liberal Media

Just a Harmless Little Bunny

Because memory is such a rare commodity these days many of you  may not remember that some of the very loudest Never Trumper voices weren't exactly storming the barricades in 2016 and fighting like the life of the republic depended on Hillary Clinton defeating Donald Trump.

Instead, in the language of The West Wing, they mostly went "Uncle Fluffy".  And what does Uncle Fluffy do?  Uncle Fluffy tries to split the difference.  Uncle Fluffy never commits.  Uncle Fluffy dangles his feet.

Leo McGary: You said -- No! You said, let’s dangle our feet in the water of whatever the hell it is 

we dangle our feet in, when we want to make it look like we’re trying without pissing 

too many people off!

And that's what the very loudest Never Trumpers were doing four years ago.  Dangling their feet, playing footsie with doomed third party candidates or protest write-ins and generally outsourcing the hard work of saving the country from yet another Republican catastrophe to the Democrats...after which these Never Trumpers could enjoy a very profitable four years of beating Hillary like a piñata and rising to power in their now-fractured and demoralized Republican Party as the "We Told You So" caucus in exactly the same way the neocons like Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and David Frum and rest of the noecons moved to the front of the line after the attacks of 9/11.

We know that Charlie Sykes of Wisconsin -- a state which swung for Trump in 2016 by less than 23k votes -- could not bring himself to vote for that icky Hillary Clinton in 2016 (via Wikipedia):

Sykes did not support the Donald Trump presidential 2016 bid, campaigning against him and instead choosing to cast a write-in vote for independent conservative candidate Evan McMullin.

Nor did Rick Wilson, who has lied so often about revealing who he actually did support in 2016 that even his friend Ana Marie Cox eventually gave up asking.

And these are excerpted from The Atlantic's November 6, 2016 cheat sheet, with emphasis added: 

Michael Steele:  The former RNC chair and lieutenant governor of Maryland told an audience at a dinner honoring Mother Jones (seriously), “I was damn near puking during the debates,” adding that Trump had “captured that racist underbelly, that frustration, that angry underbelly of American life and gave voice to that.” He says he will not vote for Trump or Clinton. (October 21, 2016)

Bill Kristol: The editor of The Weekly Standard threw his lot in with the #NeverTrump crowd with gusto, and he’s been a leading advocate for a third-party alternative. But these days, he seems a bit confused about what exactly the word “never” means: “I mean, I guess never say never. On the one hand, I’ll say #NeverTrump, and on the other hand, I’ll say never say never. I'll leave it ambiguous.” (May 2, 2016)

Erick Erickson: The radio host, editor of The Resurgent, and former RedState editor writes: “Hillary Clinton is unfit for the Presidency, but so is Donald Trump. Some Republicans may decide it is time to be a team player, but I will put my country before my party and decline to help the voters in this country commit national suicide.” (May 4, 2016)

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: The editors of the nation’s most powerful conservative editorial board are not fans of Trump’s, but they are resigned. “Mr. Trump wasn’t our first choice, or even the 15th, but the reality is that more GOP voters preferred him to the alternatives,” they wrote. “Yet GOP voters made the ultimate decision, and that deserves some respect unless we’re going to give up on democracy.”

Joe Scarborough: The MSNBC host and token network conservative was among the friendliest voices in the media toward Trump during the Republican primary. He has been more critical since then. Referring to Trump’s attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel, he announced to Republicans, “You have to start calling him out and saying you'll retract your endorsement of him today or else the United States Senate is in danger.” A day before, he compared Trump’s remarks to the Nazi Nuremberg race laws.

Bret Stephens: The deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, says he will not vote for Trump, but will probably not vote for Clinton. “Probably none of the above,” he told Hugh Hewitt. “I will never vote for Donald Trump. I have a very, very hard time voting for Mrs. Clinton.” But Stephens added: “I think that for the United States, Hillary Clinton, as awful as I find her, is a survivable event. I’m not so sure about Donald Trump.” 

John Podhoretz: Among those younger neocons with whom Norman Podhoretz has parted on Trump? His son John, the current editor of Commentary. In May, he wrote in that magazine that he couldn’t support either nominee: “Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are both devils we know. And because the GOP has become unfit, we will not be able to avoid the choice between them, except by literal avoidance—by staying home. Many, many millions of us will surely do so.”

Ari Fleischer: The former White House press secretary under George W. Bush says he will note vote for Trump. “If my ballot contained a box for whom I was voting against, my choice would be easy,” he writes in a Washington Post column. “Never Clinton. But voting means deciding whom to vote for. I will vote for Republicans up and down the ballot. But when it comes to the presidency, I’m going to leave my ballot blank.” (November 6, 2016)

Fleischer previously said he would hold his nose and vote for Trump, and joined a coalition of Bush administration veterans backing the Republican nominee. (September 27, 2016)

Since Clinton's victory was obviously inevitable, the plan was leave it to Democrats to do the hard. necessary work of limping Hillary over the finish line (even as Never Trumpers slagging her relentlessly), while Never Trumpers preserved their professional and political viability as Stompers-of-Democrats for the forthcoming Failed Clinton Presidency and burnished their bona fides as the heirs presumptive to the Crown of Reagan after Trump crashed and burned.

But 2016 did not go to plan, did it?  And the Never Trumpers, trapped by their own unequivocal rhetoric during the run-up to the election, found themselves out in the cold.  Who was going to hire these supposedly-savvy political mercenaries and opinion-havers after they had fucked up this badly?  What Republican political outfit was going to throw money at these crackerjack operators after they had spent months braiding their own nooses out of their own words?

Thank goodness for MSNBC -- which cleared a huge space for them at the table -- and for those credulous, deep-pocketed Liberals who were willing to throw rose petals at their feet.  Overnight, the dispossessed aristocracy of the GOP found they could make an excellent living and enjoy a much wider media profile calling their former employers evil and their former voters morons.  

Across the board, media conglomerates of every description -- cable news companies, newspapers, magazines, book publishers, etc. -- made the decision to give every Never Trumper who already had heavy connections in the media tens of millions in free, glowing media attention.  And quicker'n you could say "Rat run over the roof of the house with a piece of raw liver in his mouth", their collective histories as the creators of the monster factory that gave birth to Trump were whisked down the Memory Hole.  

And how was this miracle accomplished? By doing nothing more than saying exactly the same things about the GOP in 2016 which these very same Never Trumpers just had spent decades mocking and slandering Liberals for saying since the 1980s.  

What a country!

But you know what?  I could maybe let all of that go.  Or at least some of it.  I am not unaware that I'm fighting uphill in a dumb brawl that even my allies think is a waste of time.  A tussle that I'm going to lose, or maybe have already lost and I'm just too stubborn get it through my head.  

Meh.  Won't be my first lost cause.  Won't be my last.   But now that yet another Republican administration has damn near wrecked the country and doomed itself by its own hand -- and now that Republican rats are once again scrambling for the lifeboats -- our Never Trumpers are crossing a line that I can't ignore.  

In virtually every Never Trump podcast and newsletter there is now a section reserved for Never Trumpers valorizing each other for having "seen this coming" in 2016...and for sneering contempt for the "cowardly, ignorant, reviled scum" who refused to heed their warning!

Charlie Sykes' newsletter last week:

What were you thinking? You cowardly, ignorant, servile scum?

It’s not like you were not warned. Again and again.

It’s not as if it wasn’t obvious from the very beginning who Donald Trump was. You had to know it would come to something like this.

Now look at you. You have Trump.

You’ve dragged this country into this place: more than 323,000 dead Americans, a president plotting to steal an election, whispers of military coups, pardons for crooks and war criminals, a potential constitutional crisis, and a possible government shutdown. And, after four interminable years, a nation that is dumber, crueler, and more divided.

For what? What the fuck are we doing here?

Let me repeat this: none of this is new. As far back as August 2015, I wrote that Trump was “a cartoon version of every left-wing media stereotype of the reactionary, nativist, misogynist right.”

Back then there was still time to say no. Some of us desperately made the case that he was a disaster... 

So don’t pretend you are really surprised. You may be appalled by what you are seeing, but nothing that is happening now — the reckless attacks on constitutional norms, the flood of lies and conspiracy theories, the bullying, insults, or chaos — is inconsistent in any way with what you have known for years...

Indeed.  Nothing that is happening is inconsistent in any way with what Liberals have been warning you about for decades. 

From Mona Charen's Bulwark-adjacent podcast, with Sarah Longwell, founder and publisher of The Bulwark:

Mona Charen: ... um it is i mean you know you've got Rich Lowry and some others, y'know, saying well the president's behavior trying to overturn this election is really regrettable. It's really not good.  But you know, every single republican and, um, conservative thought leader -- right? -- who, until a few weeks ago was saying "Yep, we should definitely re-elect this guy."  Um, y'know, it would be nice, wouldn't it, to hear at least some contrition?  At least some, uh, comment along the lines of y'know, I... I... underestimated just how crazy he could behave?

Yes, Mona, some contrition would be fucking awesome!

Sara Longwell: You know, Mona, it's the holidays so i want to not indulge in too much schadenfreude, but there is a part of me -- and Charlie [Sykes] quotes me in his newsletter -- because I had a piece, and this was back in the summer, saying y'know. "What did you think was gonna happen?  Folks, uh y'know, you elect somebody of extraordinarily low character who is... who constantly lies.  And is corrupt.  Uh,  y'know, who who wanted to be the chaos candidate. Who said he was going to burn it all down.  Why would you be surprised that things are now on fire?"

Longwell: ...This part of you that says,  there you go guys!  This is what you get.  You have to ride this tiger, now you accommodated him, until the very last breath.  You have watched him turn on everybody, burn down people's careers, and what you thought he wasn't gonna come for you too? Of course he is.  And then, to your point, there are the folks, uh, who... there's a little bit of Twitter action right now that's kind of like, uh, well I guess... I guess those Never Trumpers might have been on to something ... now that we see how this this guy is acting, y'know, post-election... um ... in refusing to concede.  Because of course we were all called hysterical.  We were called unhinged for suggesting that he might behave like this...

Golly gee Ms. Longwell, pull up a stool and tell this tired old Liberal even more of the terrible pain you all have had to endure being ignored and slagged as "hysterical" and "unhinged" for a little while by the mighty Conservatives propaganda machine.  

A propaganda machine with no "Off" switch.

A propaganda machine which you fuckers built even as we hysterical, unhinged Libtards warned you that it would bring the nation you claim you love to tears and ruin.

And here we find Charlies Sykes on his podcast last week commiserating with fellow Resistance Hero Bill Kristol over not being sufficiently appreciated for having warned Republicans that Trump would be a poopy poop head:

Sykes:  I'm looking over this clusterfuck of American Conservatism today, y'know, as as we wake up amid all these crises and  y'know, whispers of coups and everything and I kind of feel a kinship with [a character from a the HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers] because, y'know I mean,  y'know what were you thinking, y'know... you cowardly ignorant reviled scum.  

It's not like you were warned again and again and again.  It's not as if we didn't know who Donald Trump was from the beginning.  Nothing that is happening right now is inconsistent with everything that we've known about Donald Trump from the beginning.  

And y'know, Bill [Kristol], you... you and I have been banging our heads against this for years and years and years and we've had to deal with the anti-anti-Trumpers, "Oh, it's no big deal.  Don't worry about it." Y'know they can rationalize it... they can play the games of whataboutism...

And as he was saying this, here's what was going though my mind as I ran the Never Trumper's basic thesis through my internal translator:

I'm looking over this clusterfuck of American Conservatism today as as we wake up amid all these crises and whispers of coups and everything and I, too, want to scream at the "cowardly ignorant reviled scum" who brought us to this place

People who were warned by exhausted, old Liberals again and again and again that what they were doing would lead to disaster.

I mean, it's not as if we didn't know what a shitpile of bigots and imbeciles your Republican Party has been for decades, right?  So absolutely nothing that is happening right now is inconsistent with everything that we've known and been warning about Conservatism, not  since Trump showed up, but for my entire adulate life.

And y'know people like me have been banging our heads against for decades ever as we've had to deal Conservatives with huge media platforms like, say, Charlie Sykes and Bill Kristol, mocking us and blowing us off as alarmist crackpots

"Oh, it's no big deal," David Brook has written over and over again, decade after decade.

"Don't worry about it,"  Michael Steele smirked over and over again back when he getting paid to run interference for a white nationalist cult.  

All these Conservatives who now style themselves resistance heroes spend most of their careers rationalized the madness into which their party was sinking.  Many of them built very profitable cottage industries out of playing "whataboutist" and "Both Sides Do It" games as each new Republican atrocity rolled off the assembly line of the monster factory they helped to build.

Never Trumpers believe that it was heroic of them to a) finally notice four short years ago that their GOP had lost its mind and b) speak out about it using the huge platforms with which large media corporation immediately gifted them.

Cool.

So how should we treat those who a) have been warning that GOP had lost its mind for decades except b) both the mainstream media and the "respectable" conservative media treated them as kooks and pariahs and so thoroughly embargoed them that they had to invent the Liberal blogosphere to carry their message?

Also, before they trust 'em, Never Trumpers don't believe it is too god damn much to want to hear some god damn contrition from these 11th-hour, Trump-fleeing lifeboat seekers.  

Cool.

So what about all of us vindicated alarmist Liberals who also believe it is not too god damn much to ask for a little god damn contrition from life-long Republican Never Trumpers like Tom Nichols --

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

-- who made it perfectly clear that they have no intention of apologizing, don't believe they owe anyone a god damn thing and think that we petty, carping peasants should just shut the fuck up, get out of their way and let them get back to the important job of lecturing everyone on the proper way of running everything.

Sigh.

There are a lot of different paths I wind down to button this post up, but the hour grows late, so on the final day of this annus horribilis, I'll just leave you with this:

The Lincoln Project raised $4.8 million between November 24th and December 16th hyping the Georgia Senate runoff elections.

Since then, it has spent $1.1 million on independent expenditures in those races and paid Steve Schmidt $1.5 million. https://t.co/BT5roJBmCt pic.twitter.com/mCS1B7wsxF

— Rob Pyers (@rpyers) December 30, 2020

No, You Move

Ewick son of Ewick Continues His Creepy Obsession with Goats...

-- the Supreme Court --

When Amy Coney Barrett is nominates to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Avenatti will reveal she was the Judas goat who led the girls into Kavanaugh’s rape gang train.

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) September 26, 2018

-- and violent sexual imagery:

In a 2008 blog post, he dubbed Michelle Obama a “Marxist harpy.” In a 2009 tweet, he called the retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter “a goat fucking child molester.” Later that year, Erickson argued that President Obama won the Nobel Prize because of an “affirmative action quota.” The 2014 Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Texas, Wendy Davis, was, in due time, “Abortion Barbie.”

In all seriousness, it is long past time for someone -- friends, family members, fellow congregants at his church -- to intervene and get this tub of berserk fundy rage some "Jesus Clozapine Christ, what the fuck is wrong with you?" help.

Absent that, I recommend a rigorous course of dropping houses on his head like this until he shuts up and goes away:

You mean like:
•Emmett Till's Mother?
•Trayvon Martin's Mother?
•Michael Brown's Mother?
•Tamir Rice's Mother?
•Philando Castile's Mother?
•Stephon Clark's Mother?
•Botham Jean's Mother?
•Hundreds of Mothers whose innocent immigrant kids are caged in Concentration Camps? https://t.co/g46FOsU2DT

— Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@MuslimIQ) September 24, 2018

Behold, a Tip Jar!

Today In Both Sides Do It: Ewick Son of Ewick

So who is Ewick Son of Ewick?

Well until very recently, lots of people referred to him as "The Most Powerful Conservative in America" without giggling:

Is the Most Powerful Conservative in America Losing His Edge?

Erick Erickson built his career on stoking populist rage. But now the man who steers the Tea Party says conservative anger has grown toxic and self-defeating.

And how did he build his CV as Top Kick of Racist Asshole Mountain?

...Erickson is famous for saying things that are not polite. There was the time, in 2009, when he called retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter a “goat fucking child molester.” During the Occupy protests, he said his heart was gladdened by “watching a hippie protester get Tased.” He nicknamed Wendy Davis, the Texas state senator, “Abortion Barbie.” And in a blog post considering whether President Obama was “shagging hookers,” he called Michelle Obama a “marxist harpy” who “would go Lorena Bobbit [sic] on him should he even think about it.” (The press, Erickson wrote, wouldn’t care: Obama “could be a serial killing transvestite and the media would turn a blind eye.”)

His attacks sting most when aimed, as they often are, at fellow Republicans he sees as too ready to compromise. In 2009, for example, he claimed that then–Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had “lost his testicles” and called on his readers to send the senator “balls.” Erickson later reported that more than 100 toy balls had been sent to the senator’s office using the Amazon link he’d provided...

In other words, Ewick has spent literally his entire career building a fact-averse, racist, rage-drunk, Libtard-media-scapegoating, Fundamentalist-flex-fueled bulldozer that turned out to be the perfect vehicle for a lying, racist, rage-drunk, Libtard-media-scapegoating demagogue like Trump to drive straight through the Republican primaries and into the White House.

And what does Ewick think of President Stupid now that he has rage-jacked Ewick's movement and driving it and the rest of the country right off a cliff?

He thinks...Both Sides are just terrible!

And -- bonus! -- Mr. "goat fucking child molester” also just cannot fathom how our public discourse ever got so bad!

I need to get this off my chest. ~19% of Arizona GOP voters voted for Arpaio, a man who actually framed an innocent person for an attempted assassination that caused that man to spend 4 years in jail. Another 28% voted for Kelli Ward and her insanity.

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) August 29, 2018

People believe the lie and side with truly morally corrupt people b/c we can no longer just agree to disagree. We just, when we disagree, presume the other person is evil, bad, immoral, corrupt, or an enemy.

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) August 29, 2018

And for his myriad sins against God and American democracy, what penalty has society meted out to Ewick Son of Ewick?

Erick Erickson re-ups three more years with WSB

Conservative talk show host Erick Erickson has signed a new contract with News AM 750 and 95.5 WSB for three more years until 2020...

Sigh.

What is there left to say...but to repeat once again what we Liberals already knew and were already saying long before the Rise of Trump:

Dear Democrats


Stop trying to reason with these people.

You can't.

Stop pretending they have points of view worth respecting.

They don't.

Quit bringing metaphorical knives to gunfights, and at the next town meeting when the Cash For Wankers crew shows up to run in circles and scream "Hitler" until they shut the place down (or until their corporate sponsors have enough footage to use for the next news cycle)...do not stand there looking like a brace of tharn bunnies.

Because these people are not joking around, and they are not going away. Sara Robinson brings her eloquence and scholarship to bear on the antics of GOP's Insane Clown Posse and their corporate ringmasters here, and what she finds isn't funny or harmless at all:

...
It's so easy right now to look at the melee on the right and discount it as pure political theater of the most absurdly ridiculous kind. It's a freaking puppet show. These people can't be serious. Sure, they're angry -- but they're also a minority, out of power and reduced to throwing tantrums. Grown-ups need to worry about them about as much as you'd worry about a furious five-year-old threatening to hold her breath until she turned blue.

Unfortunately, all the noise and bluster actually obscures the danger. These people are as serious as a lynch mob, and have already taken the first steps toward becoming one. And they're going to walk taller and louder and prouder now that their bumbling efforts at civil disobedience are being committed with the full sanction and support of the country's most powerful people, who are cynically using them in a last-ditch effort to save their own places of profit and prestige.

We've arrived. We are now parked on the exact spot where our best experts tell us full-blown fascism is born. Every day that the conservatives in Congress, the right-wing talking heads, and their noisy minions are allowed to hold up our ability to govern the country is another day we're slowly creeping across the final line beyond which, history tells us, no country has ever been able to return.

...

Behold, a Tip Jar!

Fundraiser Day Two: They Made a Desert and Called It Journalism*

In the grand tradition of Mr. David Brooks. ace professional journalist person, Ron Fournier, is busy, busy, busy rewriting history (again) to comport with how he wishes things to have been.  Sure he has blocked me on Twitter, but I'm clever that way:

you've spent years saying issue after issue had two perfectly equal sides. you helped build this. https://t.co/e2SVhp8fuN

— Oliver Willis (@owillis) October 15, 2016

Nothing equal about the incompetence, arrogance and corruption of both parties. https://t.co/5m6edN0pRv

— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) October 15, 2016

and yet you've written thousands of words based on that flawed premise. https://t.co/t35PbXyLpm

— Oliver Willis (@owillis) October 15, 2016

@ron_fournier @AriCostello ron all you do is name call. you can't ever be honest and take a critical look at your work. be. honest.

— Oliver Willis (@owillis) October 15, 2016

In the grand tradition of Bloody Bill Kristol, noted Conservative Cabbage Patch Idiot, Erick Erickson is -- for no explicable reason -- suddnely respectable enough to be invited to the Serious People's Table.  In this case, we find Ewick Son of Ewick opining piously in the New York Times (about which much more later.)

Erick Erickson: The G.O.P. After Donald Trump

And in the grand tradition of Michael Gerson, Mr. Charlie Sykes of Milwaukee Conservative talk radio is quitting his job to spend more time with with hi family appearing on MSNBC panels saying things with Breathless Five-Alarm Shock which Liberals have been saying for 25 years:

Charlie Sykes on 'darker forces' and his own complicity in the GOP's unraveling

When Charlie Sykes announced that he was stepping down from conservative talk radio after 23 years, he said that his decision wasn’t driven by the bizarre political season that gave rise to Donald Trump.

But in an interview with Sean Illing published on Wednesday on Vox, the 62-year-old talk radio mainstay conceded that the “dark forces” unleashed by Trump’s candidacy had a lot to do with his departure.

“Well, it made it a lot easier,” Sykes said. “You basically feel the world kind of shifting under your feet and you look around and say, OK, I’m a conservative talk radio host in a world in which the conservative media is basically setting itself on fire. Do I really want to still be part of this?”

The mid-day host on WTMJ radio in Milwaukee, Sykes was a leading voice in the #NeverTrump movement, which culminated in Ted Cruz’ victory over Trump in the Wisconsin primary. But now Sykes is questioning the support his more traditional brand of conservatism has from listeners.

...

In the Vox interview, Sykes admitted being surprised by Trump’s rise, something he thought unthinkable a year ago, even though conservative talk radio for years has been voicing many of the same views that have mobilized Trump’s base.

Illing noted, “Conservative media has been flirting with these darker forces for decades. Trump is the culmination of something, not the beginning.”

...

Sykes’ response: “If you and I had this conversation a year ago, I would’ve disagreed with you vigorously. I would’ve said, ‘There you go again with the darker forces garbage.’ Conservatives have been accused of this for years. But obviously there’s some truth to what you’ve just said.”

And he conceded his complicity in the conservative movement’s embrace of those darker forces.

“I’m different than Rush Limbaugh, but there’s no question that we got caught up in certain word salad, certain narratives that perhaps we did not fully understand how they were playing among our base"...

When you have been so flagrantly and toxically wrong for so long -- when your professional accomplishments amount to either setting the fire or shredding the fire-hoses and kneecapping people who have been trying to sound the alarm -- the only honorable thing for you to do now that the blaze has consumed everything you once claimed to care about is to go away.

Put down the microphone, back away from the keyboard, delete your Twitter account and go away,

But people like this are not going to go away are they?

In fact, after Trump, people like this -- the "Wrong All Along" caucus -- will be the future of political journalism.

Just you wait and see,

* (h/t Publius Tacitus, "To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.")

Postgame: The Philly Festival of Optimism and Faith vs. The Craven Cleveland Clusterf#ck

Back in April (remember April?) before the rough winds of objective reality finally blew the last of the darling buds of #NeverTrump to ash, you might recall that Donald Trump was having big big fun mocking the RNC for running such dumb, boring conventions. What they needed was a little Trump-brand show biddnizz! (emphasis added):

Compounding the challenges facing organizers are the expectations of Donald Trump, who asserted in an interview that he should have at least partial control over programming, stagecraft and other issues by virtue of his front-runner status — even if he does not have the delegates to secure the nomination beforehand.

Trump blasted the GOP’s last convention, in Tampa four years ago, as “the single most boring convention I’ve ever seen.” The billionaire real estate mogul and reality-television star said it was imperative that this year’s gathering have a “showbiz” quality — and he cast doubt on the ability of the Republican National Committee, which oversees the convention, to deliver.

“It’s very important to put some showbiz into a convention, otherwise people are going to fall asleep,” Trump said in a 45-minute interview here last week in his Trump Tower office. “We don’t have the people who know how to put showbiz into a convention.”

And so it should come as no surprise that,  like every other failed Trump enterprise, now that Donald Trump's Nuremberg on the Cuyahoga* is in the books as a catastrophe -- an entirely avoidable catastrophe -- Don the Con wants to jet the hell away from the disaster he created and leave it to other poor schmucks to clean up his mess (emphasis added):

It might have been a less notable contrast if Mr. Trump’s show had not been such a break from the tightly scripted performance that has come to typify these conventions. In Cleveland, an important endorser, Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, started speaking after the broadcast networks had already moved on to local news (Republican Party officials argued Thursday that they should have shown her instead); Mr. Trump called in to “The O’Reilly Factor” while Patricia Smith was speaking emotionally onstage about her son’s death in the Benghazi attack; and one night’s program ended prematurely, leaving precious prime-time minutes unused.

Asked about the differences, Mr. Trump said he could not speak to them with much specificity, because “I didn’t produce our show — I just showed up for the final speech on Thursday.”

Meanwhile as the Democrats enjoy the warm afterglow of the most brilliantly staged, humane, optimistic, generous and inclusive convention in memory, the usual suspects are doing the usual things.

Counterprogramming Khizr Khan's moving tribute to his fallen son with one more shitty little Benghaaazi hit job:

Fox News Plays Benghazi Commercial Over Khizr Khan's Anti-Trump Speech At The Democratic National Convention

Fox News Plays Katy Perry Song After Khan Leaves Stage

Obsessing over allegedly missing flags:

Don the Con Talks To Murrica About Flags (And Other Scary Wingnut Bedtime Stories)

Obsessing over allegedly missing flag pins:

NC Gop Gets Tim Kaine's Flag Pin Horribly Wrong [UPDATED]

Even more obsessing over allegedly missing flag pins:

The woman who wants to be the next President of the United States is not wearing an American flag lapel pin tonight. #DemsInPhilly

— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) July 29, 2016

America's premiers crackpot reverse-mortgage hero whispering darkly of the Terrible Sekrit Liberal Media Conspiracy that keeps the ALL CAPS TRUTH away from the Murrican People:

MSM will try to promote and persuade for Hillary. Best not to even watch or listen. They are all in the tank. Even some at FOX.

— Chuck Woolery (@chuckwoolery) July 29, 2016

And projectile vomiting Republican-brand racism all over everything:

You know what this convention really needed? An angry Muslim with a thick accent like Fareed Zacaria.

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) July 29, 2016

To his marginal credit, even a shitbag as capacious as Erick son of Erick finally could not supress his gag reflex any more:

What a terrible thing to say about a man whose son died for this country. https://t.co/h9Zp4x3j6v

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) July 29, 2016

Perhaps someone could scare up the address of the cave in which Erick son of Erick has been living and writing horrid things on the wall in his own poo for the last decade and start forwarding to him some of the email I see every fucking day.

Meanwhile, despite his temporary shock at how deranged the Republican Party suddenly became 10 minutes ago, The Sad Clown of Centrism clearly knows which side his bread is buttered on (spoiler: It's Both Sides!)

I don't do equivalences. I do compare things tho. https://t.co/XEop4T2Gv0

— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) July 29, 2016

*I checked and found that I probably lifted this Melania Trump-style from bowtiejack in my own comment section, who was passing it on from somewhere else.

Erick Erickson Asks Reality for a Divorce

Specifically, of those ouchless, no-fault divorce in which neither side takes any blame or is liable for any broken furniture or years

In documents filed with the court, the party of the first part (Mr. Erickson) says he is willing to stipulate that while he was out subbing for Rush Limbaugh on the radio, somehow, millions of bigots snuck into his Decent and Respectable Republican Party ten minutes ago and elected an openly racist asshole as their nominee for president --

I am a talk radio host. I am a political commentator. I am a writer. I was once a lawyer and once an elected official. I have always voted Republican. I have tried my best at times to justify those things I thought I could justify or ignore those things that should be ignored in the spirit of helping my team and my side. But I have met the proverbial bridge too far with Donald Trump and I am ashamed and horrified at friends of mine and party leaders who will look the other way to justify Donald Trump.

...

And damn the GOP for its unwillingness to speak up on this. The leaders of the party, confronted by Todd Akin, abandoned ship for his stupid statements on rape and abortion. But the Party of Lincoln intends to circle the wagons around a racist. Damn them for that.

-- provided Reality is willing to stipulate that all previous charges of racism leveled against his Decent and Respectable Republican Party were products of the baseless, partisan chicanery of the Liberal Media Conspiracy:

...The American political press whipped people into a frenzy over Ferguson and Baltimore and Trayvon Martin. We saw press outlets altering or distorting 911 audio to make it sound like words were said that were not said. We had the national press play up aspects of Ferguson to shape opinion while ignoring other aspects. We saw the same with Baltimore.

The press loves to create racists from whole cloth...

Mr. Erickson would also like to add that the Liberal Media Conspiracy which made up all those mean, untrue stories about racism within his Decent and Respectable Republican Party is also, for some inexplicable reason, now to blame for not calling out the clear and present racism of Donald Trump which -- Mr. Erickson would like to repeat -- appeared out of nowhere and with no warning within his otherwise Decent and Respectable Republican Party just ten minutes ago:

No, I am not talking about Donald Trump and his African American. I am talking about Donald Trump trying to get a federal judge to recuse himself from a legal case by attacking his Mexican heritage.

...

These were not racially tinged or racially charged attacks.

This was racism plain and simple.

The partisan press has long muddied what is and is not racist in this country and now confronted by actual racism cannot bring itself to use the word lest it be judging Trump.

To fizz up his post a little more, Ewick Son of Ewick chose to lead it off with this graphic --

-- which I think is a desert too rich to cut with the normal tools of mortal men.

Because Mr. Erickson is (as The Atlantic described him just last year):

...a driving force behind the Tea Party. In addition to serving as RedState’s editor, he is a paid contributor to Fox News, a syndicated newspaper columnist, and the drive-time host on Atlanta-based WSB, the nation’s fourth-largest talk-radio station. He was a CNN contributor from 2010 to 2013, and he occasionally guest-hosts Rush Limbaugh’s syndicated radio show. Limbaugh, in turn, often cites RedState.

See I'm old enough to remember when the only people who would dare use a Klan graphic in a post to accurately underscore the state of the GOP were reviled Liberal bloggers:

The same, strident Liberal bloggers who were were cast out of polite society for sounding the alarm about the GOP's headlong flight towards fascism (from me in April, 2009):

Dear Democrats

Stop trying to reason with these people.

You can't.

Stop pretending they have points of view worth respecting.

They don't.

Quit bringing metaphorical knives to gunfights, and at the next town meeting when the Cash For Wankers crew shows up to run in circles and scream "Hitler" until they shut the place down (or until their corporate sponsors have enough footage to use for the next news cycle)...do not stand there looking like a brace of tharn bunnies.

Because these people are not joking around, and they are not going away. Sara Robinson brings her eloquence and scholarship to bear on the antics of GOP's Insane Clown Posse and their corporate ringmasters here, and what she finds isn't funny or harmless at all:

...

It's so easy right now to look at the melee on the right and discount it as pure political theater of the most absurdly ridiculous kind. It's a freaking puppet show. These people can't be serious. Sure, they're angry -- but they're also a minority, out of power and reduced to throwing tantrums. Grown-ups need to worry about them about as much as you'd worry about a furious five-year-old threatening to hold her breath until she turned blue.

Unfortunately, all the noise and bluster actually obscures the danger. These people are as serious as a lynch mob, and have already taken the first steps toward becoming one. And they're going to walk taller and louder and prouder now that their bumbling efforts at civil disobedience are being committed with the full sanction and support of the country's most powerful people, who are cynically using them in a last-ditch effort to save their own places of profit and prestige.

We've arrived. We are now parked on the exact spot where our best experts tell us full-blown fascism is born. Every day that the conservatives in Congress, the right-wing talking heads, and their noisy minions are allowed to hold up our ability to govern the country is another day we're slowly creeping across the final line beyond which, history tells us, no country has ever been able to return.

...

I anxiously await my call from CNN apologizing for waiting so long to put me on the payroll :-)

Today In More Conservative Than Thou: Ewick Son of Ewick

Now that the illusion of Conservatism is dead and we can talk about the real motives and attributes of the con men, seditionists and demagogues who kept it going all this time walk, let us continue to amuse ourselves by observing how the application of Prime Directive #1 of actual American Conservatism -- 

American Conservatism is an ideological and political system which believes that Liberals are the most dangerous existential threat to America... 

-- by various freaks and frauds on the Right yields hilariously and diametrically opposed results depending on the predisposition of the freak or fraud involved.

For example, earlier today we noted how  Piyush "Bobby" Jindal decided that he must support Donald J. Trump "warts and all" because the alternative would be Hillary Clinton, who is a Liberal and therefor History's!Greatest!Monster!

Well comes now Very Famous Conservative Person, Erick Erickson, who has decided he must oppose Donald J. Trump at all costs, because Donald J. Trump is a Sekrit Librul and therefor, just like ISIS, is truly History's!Greatest!Monster!

Right out of the gate, Mr. Erickson's article opens with -- no kidding -- this picture take moments before an ISIS beheading --

and it's off to the fucking races...

“Convert Or Die” Won’t Win the White House

By Erick Erickson  

Donald Trump, reflecting the secular leftist he actually is, is modeling his campaign on secularists and Islamic radicals. He has no use trying to persuade conservatives to join him. He is not trying to build a coalition through outreach. Instead, he demands we convert or die...

I have recently been advised that I will never make it into "legitimate" print (or any other medium) because of my "stridency".

Yep.

That is obviously the problem.