Today's Cartoon - "It's Alive!"

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(Ruben Bolling, via Daily Kos)

Fox "News" Roger "Dr. Frankenstein" Ailes and his creation.  He's adorable!  And fearless and brash!  Let the makeover begin!

Sunday Cartoon - "Make America White Again"

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(Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Timothy Egan in the New York Times on The Mussolini of Manhattan, Donald "Rump" Trump:

Well, he’s got the Hitler vote. The neo-Nazi website, Daily Stormer, was out and proud earlier this week: “Heil Donald Trump — the Ultimate Savior.” After endorsing the Republican presidential front-runner earlier this year for his call to deport 11 million Mexican immigrants, the fomenters of American fascism have now added an apt twist to his slogan, one not far from the truth of the campaign: “Make America White Again.”  [snip]

And sure, all the little Hitlers probably don’t amount to a hill of beans. But what about the 35 percent of Republican voters, in the New York Times/CBS News poll, who say they’re all in with the man sieg heiled by aspiring brownshirts and men in white sheets?

It’s a very ugly political moment, but there it is: The Republican Party is now home to millions of people who would throw out the Constitution, welcome a police state against Latinos and Muslims, and enforce a religious test for entry into a country built by people fleeing religious persecution. This stuff polls well in their party, even if the Bill of Rights does not.  [snip]

Which gets us back to his base and their awful bedfellows in the neo-Nazi bunkers. Who are these people? His supporters, most of them, do not see the shadow of the Reich when they look in the mirror. They are white, lower middle class, with little education beyond high school. The global economy has run them over. They don’t recognize their country. And they need a villain.

As we and others have noted for some time now, Rump merely is the Republican id with the volume turned up and the filter off.  The rest of the field have essentially the same policies but are still using the same old pusillanimous Republican dog whistles.

Today's Cartoon - Republican Id-iocy

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(Tom Toles, once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle)

Man And Movement: Trump And The Stupid Party

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(Tom Toles, once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle)

Mirror- and long-term-memory-deficient neo-con Likudnik Republican Jennifer Rubin has a moment of partial clarity occasioned by the demise of Rick "Oops" Perry's (Secessionist-TX) candidacy:

It is not hard to see how we got here. The MSM obsesses on trivial matters, almost priding itself on political coverage that ignores the substance of candidates’ messages, and fixates on a self-promoting mogul running a campaign about himself. The right-wing media bubble is part of a crass political culture excusing (promoting, even) ignorance, anger and paranoia. This serves to dumb down our politics and turn the electorate into a mob. Flagship conservative weeklies irresponsibly fan anti-immigrant sentiment and celebrate frivolous candidates. The result is debased political discourse and a sense of victimhood bent on attacking Republicans who dare to govern responsibly. Voters surely shoulder their share of blame. They run to embrace bad causes, gobble up a steady diet of political junk food,  celebrate rotten behavior and buy into the notion that insufficient conservative extremism is the root of our troubles. If President Obama has done more than Republicans could have hoped to do on their own to unify the GOP and re-instill proper concern for national security, then the right wing has done more to undermine conservatism than any Democrat could have done. They are converting a serious party of ideas into an unattractive, angry racket for snake-oil salesmen.  (our emphasis)

We can't improve on Charles Pierce's rejoinder:

Conservative politics has been a fever swamp since long before our Jen began fulminating in Commentary. Once, the serious people in the party were able to rein in the flying monkeys. Then, the Goldwater campaign happened. Then the Southern Strategy happened. Then Ronald Reagan launched his presidential bid in Neshoba County, Mississippi, so that happened. Then Fox News happened. Newt Gingrich happened. Then impeachment happened. Then Bush v. Gore happened. Then 9/11 happened so the Iraq bungle happened, and all the other things happened that keep happening right unto this hour. Then the 2010 midterms happened. Then the 2014 midterms happened. Then Louie Gohmert, and Steve King, and Mark Meadows and Darrell Issa and Trent Franks and all the rest of the worst Congresses in the history of the Republic happened. I rise, Mr. Chairman, in defense of The Media, even the Right Wing Media. They didn't infect the party with the prion disease that is currently eating away its higher functions. They merely broke down the party's immunity to it. Rick Perry's presidential hopes always were as completely symptomatic of the disease as are the Trump, Carson, and Jindal campaigns. The party has not descended anywhere. The party is the fever swamp.  (our emphasis)

Meanwhile, the party "establishment" (as represented by the "emptiest suit in politics" Reince Priebus) thinks Republicans merely have to use gentler rhetoric to mask their ugly policies.  We don't think Trump and the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid Party base is down with that, Reince.  Enjoy the fruits of your party's labors.

BONUS:  Paul Rosenberg expands on the role played by the skewed "balance" of the "mainstream media" in getting us into this mess.

BONUS II:  Ana Marie Cox piles on.

Quote Of The Day: Shaky Legs Frank Luntz (Updated)

Here's Republican pollster and "word doctor" Frank "Dunce" Luntz (described by Donald "Rump" Trump as a "low class slob") after conducting a focus group that Luntz said, "left my legs shaking":

“I want to put the Republican leadership behind this mirror and let them see,” he added. “They need to wake up. They don’t realize how the grassroots have abandoned them. Donald Trump is punishment to a Republican elite that wasn’t listening to their grassroots.”

No,  actually low class slob Frank, Trump is punishment to a Republican elite that wasn't telling the truth to their grassroots for the past, oh, forty years.  It's called "reaping what you sow."

And low class slob, Frank, you can take a lot of credit for pulling the wool over the sheeples' eyes, on Obamacare, climate change, etc.  Whenever there was an opportunity to tell the hard truth, you counseled using weasel words, lies and misdirection to maintain the anger and ignorance of the Republican  "grassroots."  Looks like your methods haven't changed.

BONUS:  Charles P. Pierce notices the same cognitive dissonance:

Luntz is chief among those in what is laughably referred to as a "Republican establishment" who are terrified of The Libidinous Visitor [i.e., Trump] when they should be more terrified of the audience to whom he is appealing, and the very large box of rocks that this now largely vestigial "Republican establishment" has spent almost four decades building.

BONUS II:  Nancy LeTourneau on the dangers of the right wing's "epistemic closure."
 
(Photo: Republican "word doctor" Luntz - physician, heal thyself)

Giving Up The Game Quote of the Day

"The difference between Trump and his cohort is that he shouts his party’s ugliest views at the top of his lungs and without apology rather than sugarcoating them in Frank Luntz–tested euphemisms and code words. What the GOP Establishment wants is Trumpism — and Trump supporters — without the embarrassing spectacle of Trump himself. Now he has called their bluff and is holding the entire Republican Party hostage. The Establishment would like to blow him up so that he’ll stop giving up the game by calling attention to the extremist views and constituents in the GOP base, but every attempt to sideline him has backfired."--  (emphasis added) Frank Rich, writing in New York Magazine.

The only quibble with Rich's comment is that the infection has spread beyond "the GOP base" and afflicts the entire, dysfunctional party from top to bottom.

Trumpnado!

It bears repeating and repeating and repeating:  Donald "Rump" Trump is the Republican brand:

They say he’s [Trump's] trashing the Republic brand. They say he’s “stirring up the crazies,” in the words of Senator John McCain. But Trump is the brand, to a sizable degree. And the crazies have long flourished in the Republican media wing, where any amount of gaseous buffoonery goes unchallenged.  [snip]

Trump is a byproduct of all the toxic elements Republicans have thrown into their brew over the last decade* or so — from birtherism to race-based hatred of immigrants, from nihilists who shut down government to elected officials who shout “You lie!” at their commander in chief.

It was fine when all this crossing-of-the-line was directed at President Obama or other Democrats. But now that the ugliness is intramural, Trump has forced party leaders to decry something they have not only tolerated, but encouraged.  (our emphasis)

He's still polling strong among Republicans even after his comments on Sen. John "McAngry" McCain's status as a war hero, and notwithstanding his ongoing attacks on his Republican rivals.  "Trumpism" is not going away, because it's the beating heart of the inchoate, angry id of the Republican base, and the fact that he has no filter to soften the ugliness appeals to that base.  Because of that (and his "TEN BILLION DOLLARS"), he'll be in the race for the long-run.

 For that, Republicans can thank their own toxic, increasingly extremist politics over the past half-century, their right-wing rabble-rousing media, and the "mainstream media" that has been too neutered or co-opted to report honestly on the slow-motion radicalization of the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid Party and the conservative movement that drives it.  In the meantime, it's important now that Rump continue to have the high profile his poll numbers and ego demand, because he's the most accurate reflection and best spokesperson for a party and movement gone mad than anything else in this election cycle.  Let's see how long that fact can be ignored.

* Steve M. points out, as we do above, that it's been a lot longer than a decade.

(Photo:  Trumpnado - "Oh hell no!")

Donald Trump And The "Party Of Crazy"

With a big assist today from The Miami Herald's Leonard Pitts, Jr., we continue to fill the void left by HuffPo's refusal to cover the campaign of Republican front-runner Donald "Rump" Trump (except in its Entertainment section).  You're welcome!  Here's Pitts on why Rump appeals to so many in his party, and what that ultimately tells us:

Trump is No. 1?

Sure. Why not? Didn’t he promise to build that wall and make Mexico pay for it? There you go, right? Immigration solved, right?

Well...no. But the very fact that so many of us apparently think so provides a vivid illustration of the anti-intellectualism and deep-fried yahoo-ism now holding the Republican Party hostage.

Somehow, the party of Teddy Roosevelt, Gerald Ford and Bush the elder has become the party of secession talk, revolution talk and vigilantes harassing children on the Southern border, the party of the “war on whites,” “the war on Christmas,” tea parties and birthers, the party of anti-science, anti-history and fear that the U.S. military is, right this moment, preparing for the invasion of Texas. In a word, the party of crazy.
Small wonder it is also the party of Trump.

Yes, cooler heads will soon prevail, and some establishment candidate will carry the banner into battle. But don’t let that tempt you into being sanguine about this insane moment when the leader of the Republican field is a two-legged id with an incontinent mouth.

We should take no solace in the fact that Trump will eventually fall from his lofty perch. Rather, we should wonder what it says about the GOP that he was up there in the first place.  (our emphasis)

A brief anecdote could serve to illustrate "The Problem."  As we noted below, there was a rally in Columbia, SC, of "Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan" members who were demonstrating against the removal of the Confederate treason flag from the South Carolina state capitol grounds.  The leader of that group of simian/ human hybrids is one Roy Pemberton, who was asked for whom he would vote in the 2016 election, if the choice were a certain match-up:

Pemberton’s world is one of hate, cloaked, at least at times, in a veneer of righteous struggle. He said he would vote for Ben Carson, the African American Republican candidate for president, over Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton. He said he hates black people as a race, but not individually.

So, whether or not Rump is in the race, or is the front-runner, is really irrelevant;  "The Problem" is the audience that finds what he and the other far-right cranks in the race says so appealing.  It's called "The Republican Base," also now undeniably revealed as "The Party of Crazy."  It's who you are, Republicans;  own it.

BONUS:  See also Digby and Andrew O'Hehir.

Keep Him Talking….Please

It bears repeating that the reason bigot blowhard Donald "Rump" Trump is flying high at the top of the polls of Rethuglican base voters is that he gives voice to their dark thoughts, thoughts which are broadly unpopular outside of the right wing hothouse.  Some of the other Rethugs in the race for President are more careful in their bigotry, using well-known dog whistles and code terms.  But Rump is unrestrained, hateful and unapologetic.  Here's Kali Holloway at Alternet:

"With Trump, though, there’s nothing to decode in his speeches, no dog whistles you have to strain to hear; it’s all loud and wrong and right there on the record, with no pretense of being anything but ugly and hateful. When Trump offers his thoughts on Mexican immigrants, he is clear and direct about the fact that this is what he truly believes. When he sends the press an 881-word essay saying that 'the worst elements in Mexico are being pushed into the United States by the Mexican government,' and that 'tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border,' he is telling us, in no uncertain terms, that this is how he thinks. When he retweets supporters that Jeb Bush “has to like Mexican illegals because of his wife,” or that he should 'Get to The WHITE House' (you know, to reclaim it from the black people currently living in it), he is sending a resounding message about who he is. Likewise, when Republicans applaud Trump for his honesty or claim he’s speaking for the American people, they too are telling us that Trump is expressing exactly what they think. Only out loud. And without the big show of pretending to be a decent human being that his competitors put on….

Donald Trump has always been awful and racist, but that wasn’t enough, I suppose. It took him being awful and driving his racist rhetoric right to the tippity top for the Republican base to fall truly and madly for him. In a league of crazy racist xenophobes, Trump has proved himself the craziest, most racist xenophobe of all, or at least the most upfront about it. And for that, he is being rewarded by a party of people who cannot get enough. Because that’s what the modern GOP is all about." (emphasis added)

The more Rump rages, the more the Rethuglican establishment has apoplexy.  The higher he rises in the polls, the more the same establishment sees their hopes in 2016 fading.  Goodbye, rebranding. Goodbye, 2016 and the White House and Senate.  (Which is why, unlike HuffPo, we won't be exiling Rump to our Entertainment section -  if we had one, that is.)

Keep talking, Rump, keep talking.

BONUS:  Today's Trump Dump:

While addressing the annual Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa on Saturday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump took another shot at John McCain, this time questioning the latter's status as a war hero. “He's not a war hero. He's a war hero because he was captured,” Trump said. “I like people that weren’t captured.” McCain was taken as a prisoner of war for five years during the Vietnam War. Trump, meanwhile, received four student draft deferments between 1964 and 1968 and an additional medical deferment after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

Uh oh.  A personal attack on a former POW and decorated veteran is the other third rail for a political candidate.  And a fellow Republican, to boot. This could be YOOGE.