C'mon Joe, The Rethugs Aren't Your Buddies

Campaigning in Concord, NH yesterday, former Vice President Joe Biden commented that once sociopath and would-be autocrat Donald "Not Exonerated" Trump (a.k.a. "Individual-1") leaves office that Republicans would have "an epiphany" and work together with Democrats to govern by consensus. While Biden is clearly trying to offer a political "safe space" for those elusive Trumpers he thinks may join him, we'd have to wonder where he was during the eight years of President Obama's term in office facing the total obstruction of Rethugs in Congress, or for that matter if he remembers President Clinton fighting rabid right-wing bomb thrower House  Speaker Newt "Poot" Gingrich in the '90s. We remember President Obama's belief that after the 2012 elections that "the fever may break, because there’s a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense than that." How did that turn out?

Trump is not an aberration of Rethuglican politics, he's the product of it. Decades of stewing in the toxic mix of culture warfare, hate radio and Fux, and racism made Rethuglican voters crave an unfit, hate-spewing demagogue like Trump to lead them. Now that their their monster's in the Oval Office, the Rethuglicans that Biden thinks he can work with are lined up in monolithic support of Trump (see Graham, Lindsey) fearing his base. And if he thinks that the far-right Rethug base that's been cultivated over many years will experience an "epiphany," he's living in the distant past with a Rethug party that doesn't exist anymore. If Biden's elected, you can be certain that Rethugs will give no quarter and will obstruct him from day one. "Grim Reaper" Mitch McConnell has already vowed to do so.  Believe him.