"Crawling Back To Trump": The Republican Death Spiral

 

 

It's a snowy day across swaths of the country, so if you're snowbound (and even if you're not), we have some reading from our hometown newspaper for you.  The only thing is, it's a bit lacking in diversity. That's because the topic in general is the death spiral of the rotted out Republican Party.  These are just snippets, so please go to the links for the full articles/op ed.

Starting off with the Washington Post editorial, "Crawling Back to Mr. Trump," a consistent theme for the day emerges:

FOR A moment, it seemed as if the Republican Party might exorcise former president Donald Trump. After four years of submission, GOP leaders were telling the truth. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared that Mr. Trump had “provoked” the Jan. 6 Capitol invasion, having “fed lies” to the rioters. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Mr. Trump “bears responsibility” for refusing to calm the insurrectionists. There was talk that enough GOP senators might be willing to join Democrats to convict the former president in an impeachment trial.

Days later, the era of glasnost seems to be ending. Senior Republicans are crawling back to Mr. Trump. The big lie of election fraud lives on...[snip]

Republicans should ask: What principle instructs them to bow to a man whom the country has rejected? How can they continue to excuse the attempted overturning of a fair and free election? What is the value of sitting in the Senate, or of being speaker of the House, if they continually humiliate themselves before a small, dishonest man leading their party to nowhere?

They had a chance, after Jan. 6, to reject their narrowing future as a party of lies and voter suppression and try, once again, to widen their appeal by standing for something positive. What a shame to throw that chance away.  (our emphasis)

Dana Milbank puts an even finer point on the takeover of the party by the low-IQAnon Trumpists:

The supposed civil war within the Republican Party is over. The neo-Confederates have won.

Just three weeks ago, congressional GOP leaders set out to reclaim their party from President Donald Trump and his violent supporters. Trump had frequently emboldened white supremacists and domestic terrorists, but never more visibly than when he recruited and incited those who sacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 — and then did nothing for hours as they rampaged, hunting for lawmakers, in hopes of overturning the election.

From that deadly spree emerged a glimmer of hope that Republicans would, finally, distance themselves from Trump. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) said Trump “bears responsibility” for the “attack on Congress by mob rioters” and for failing to “immediately denounce the mob when he saw what was unfolding.” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) said that the violent attackers were “fed lies” and were “provoked by the president.” He let it be known that he might vote to convict Trump after an impeachment trial.

Yet just three weeks after feebly trying to quit Trump, they have relapsed. It’s as though Abraham Lincoln had offered the Union’s unconditional surrender after the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter.

Thanks to the cowardice of McCarthy and the perfidy of McConnell, the GOP now comprises two relatively harmonious factions: those who actively sabotage democracy, and those who tacitly condone the sabotage. Trump is gone; Trumpism reigns.  (our emphasis)

Historian Robert Dalleck sees echoes to an earlier time when Republicans had to exile a crackpot fringe, whose descendants have now come back with a vengeance, and seem unlikely to be easily cast out:

It seems unlikely, but it’s happened once before. In the postwar decades, a slash-and-burn conspiratorial style took hold of the right wing, posing a challenge to several pillars of American democracy, including free and fair elections, the acceptance of facts in political debates and the peaceful transfer of power. Just as QAnon followers see a deep-state conspiracy to destroy Trump, some John Birch Society members viewed liberals as communist agents and dupes. The armed Minutemen of the 1960s echo in the gun-toting pro-Trump extremists in Charlottesville and Lansing, Mich. Talk radio kingpins such as Rush Limbaugh share a heritage with right-wing media stars Dan Smoot and Clarence Manion. And the Proud Boys share a sensibility with the white supremacists who formed Citizens’ Councils in reaction to the Supreme Court’s Brown decision desegregating schools.

By stigmatizing, punishing and outvoting the forces that wanted to burn it all down in the 1950s and 1960s, Americans ostracized them; the United States put a lid on the toxic stew of bigotry, conspiratorial thinking and White Christian identity politics, and defended democratic values like truth, equality and racial justice. It was a whole-of-society strategy, more effective than anything unfolding today. Clearly, it didn’t keep those forces at bay forever. But in the right circumstances, it could work again.

He concludes, 

The postwar decades show how Trumpism emerged and how democratic society might turn it into a minority within the Republican Party. Only by imposing political consequences on Trump’s wackiest followers can Americans hope to loosen their grip on the GOP, a strategy that some Never Trump organizations (Republican Voters Against Trump, the Lincoln Project and the Republican Accountability Project) have grasped, even if they have found limited success so far.

It is never too late to intensify that effort. Anything that works to define anti-government extremists as toxic threats to our country is helpful. This work held off the far right for a time. And any period, short or long, that this fringe spends in the wilderness is a boon to American democracy.

We agree with the notion of imposing political consequences (as well as legal and financial ones) on these enemies of democracy, but we would argue that the time for their exorcism of the low-IQAnon fringe has come and gone.

A few conservative takes are also offered in the paper today.  Here's cutesy writer Kathleen Parker's conclusion to "The GOP Isn't Doomed. It's Dead":

Going forward, not only will House Republicans be associated with a colleague who “liked” a Twitter post calling for Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s murder. They’ll be attached to QAnon, which promotes the extraordinary fiction that Trump was leading a war against Satan-worshiping pedophiles and cannibals, whose leadership includes Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks and, oh, by the way, yours truly, as well as U2’s Bono.

To those Republicans who can read: You own all of this. The party isn’t doomed; it’s dead. The chance to move away from Trumpism, toward a more respectful, civilized approach to governance that acknowledges the realities of a diverse nation and that doesn’t surrender to the clenched fist, has slipped away. What comes next is anybody’s guess. But anyone who doesn’t speak out against the myths and lies of fringe groups, domestic terrorists and demagogues such as Trump deserves only defeat — and a lengthy exile in infamy. Good riddance.

In a case of "too little, too late," former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor echoes Sen. Mitt Romney's advice that Republicans should start telling their voters the truth.   That would have been nice during the years Cantor was in power, where he and his caucus told vicious lies daily to their base (remember Obamacare "death panels"?).  A lot more honesty and atoning is in order for you.

(Image: Oliver Munday, via Mother Jones)

Corrupt, Deluded "Establishment" Republicans Learning To Love Trump

As we noted the other day, there's a recent phenomenon of so- called "establishment" Republicans who are apparently in the Fifth Stage of Grief ("acceptance") over the increasingly likely prospect of neo- fascist fartbag Donald "Rump" Trump being their standard bearer in November.  Needless to say others have taken note also.  Prepare for some extended excerpts!

The once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle editorial board sees corrupt Republican insiders caving to Rump:

JUST WHEN you thought the presidential campaign couldn’t get any more bizarre — just when you thought American politics might finally have exhausted the possibilities for cynicism and irresponsibility — certain Republican Party insiders have begun developing strange new respect for the candidate whose meteoric rise only yesterday made him the bane of “the establishment”: Donald Trump.  [snip]

To be sure, we do not envy Republicans the Hobson’s choice they seem to face between Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz. No doubt the latter could do lasting damage to the party brand, as the establishment fears. But Mr. Trump wouldn’t? “Concerns” about him do not stem from conventional political controversy — say, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s handling of “Bridgegate.” Rather, the erstwhile casino magnate owes his rise in U.S. politics to a demagogic assault on ethnic and religious minorities, of the sort that, like previous such demagoguery in our history, has won him support — but also disqualifies him to lead a decent republic. [snip] 

... Not only is Mr. Trump manifestly temperamentally unfit, but also he has not remotely fulfilled the first duty of an aspirant to the White House, which is to offer a plausible, specific set of policy proposals. Rather, he has issued platitudes — “make America great again” — and threats — “bomb the sh-- out of them” — that please crowds but offer no sense of what he might do with power, except, possibly, abuse it.  [snip]

Some in the GOP establishment now spin Mr. Trump’s policy emptiness as a feature, not a bug. When they describe him as someone who will “cut deals,” or turn to D.C. elder statesmen for advice, they sound like people who imagine themselves filling the void in Mr. Trump’s head with the agendas of their own lobbying clients.

In other words, the insiders’ upbeat new take on Mr. Trump is a bet on his corruptibility — and a confession of their own.  (our emphasis)

Frequent blind squirrel Dana Milbank voices similar opinions:

That soft flapping sound you hear is the Grand Old Party waving the flag of surrender to Trump. Party elites — what’s left of the now-derided “establishment” — are acquiescing to the once inconceivable: that a xenophobic and bigoted showman is now the face of the Republican Party and of American conservatism.

In recent days, influential Republicans including Bob Dole, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, Rupert Murdoch and, as my Post colleagues reported, Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Peter King (N.Y.) have made noises about being able to stomach Trump. Republican donors are trying to insinuate themselves in the billionaire’s orbit. Trump himself said Thursday: “I have received so many phone calls from people that you would call ‘establishment,’ from people — generally speaking, conservatives, Republicans — that want to come onto our team.”  (our emphasis)

Even- blinder squirrel Kathleen Parker chimes in, in the belief the problem started in 2008 (!) with the ascension of snowbilly grifter Sarah "Winky" Palin to the Republican ticket:

... Meanwhile, it looks as though Republicans may get what they deserve — a bombastic, bellicose, self-aggrandizing, mean-streaked, golf-cheating, bullying narcissist without plans or policies beyond his own, no doubt fickle, fantasies.

Once Republicans forced the party to take the governor of Alaska seriously as a vice presidential candidate, they opened a populist door that they’ll not easily shut. But the GOP really owes its thanks for current circumstances to John McCain, who, you’ll recall, spent a little over an hour with an otherwise unvetted candidate and, over coffee under a sycamore tree, decided to make her second-in-command should he win the election.

And now we have Trump, who has Palin, who has cemented the anti-intellectual, anti-“elitist” fervor of the Republican base. William F. Buckley’s conservatism seems headed for the door, and National Review deserves plenty of blame. There is, alas, no one left to stand athwart history and yell, stop! (our emphasis)

Ms. Parker, the time to have stood "athwart history" and yelled "stop!" was at least 40 years ago, and as the party was relentlessly taken over by professional nihilists and grifters like Lyn Nofziger, Lee "Southern Strategy" Atwater, St. Ronnie of Hollywood, Newt Gingrich, Karl "Turdblossom" Rove, and the entire swamp of right- wing "bombastic, bellicose, self- aggrandizing, mean- streaked, golf- cheating, bullying narcissist" media whose only aim was to empty the pockets of rubes who were looking for someone to hate. Now it's time to pay for those choices.

Why Republican Elites Are In Panic Mode - Exhibit B

Today, frequent blind squirrel Ruth Marcus slips on her reality glasses and focuses her op/ ed on Dr. "Mental Ben" Carson, with a swipe at co- front runner Donald "Rump" Trump.  She says:

"... [the question] about Carson isn’t whether the retired neurosurgeon is a fabulist, and therefore whether he has the right character to be president. It’s whether he has the knowledge and understanding to be president. The evidence is rather conclusive that he doesn’t.

Why single out Carson? This is a fair question in a Republican race whose other front-runner is Donald Trump. But Trump’s brand of blustery unpreparedness is more self-evident, more accessible, than Carson’s. Trump will build a tremendous wall. He’ll stop making stupid deals. If voters are credulous enough to be seduced by his supposed managerial skills and convinced by his grandiose promises — well, that’s on them, though woe to the rest of us.

Carson’s ignorance is of a more subtle sort, delivered with his genial bedside manner. It unfolds not in indignant sound bites but in paragraphs of pure blather. Carson doesn’t just need fact-checking. He needs thought-checking.  (our emphasis)

Meanwhile, both Rump and Mental Ben continue to score with the appallingly awful Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid/ Crazy Party base:

A new poll finds Donald Trump surging well above his chief 2016 rival Ben Carson after week that included a Saturday Night Live appearance and a GOP debate.

Forty-two percent of likely GOP voters supported Trump in a five-day rolling poll released Friday by Reuters/Ipsos, up from 25 percent last week. Carson was also polling around 25 percent last week and his support among GOP voters has since dipped slightly.  (our emphasis)

Mmmmm.  Let's see.  Forty- two percent plus 25 percent equals [tap tap click click] 67 percent (!!!). No wonder the money boys and the insider Republican elites are "in panic mode."

Contrary to the wishful thinking in the Republican hack writers guild that the Rump and Carson melt downs are finally happenin' (no, this time for realz!), the co- front runners show no signs that their bizarre ideas and behavior are negatively affecting their standing among the folks residing in the asylum right- wing bubble.  In fact, the more bizarre the talk and the walk, the more they're clasped to the bosoms of the True Believers.  For this despicable party, the chickens cuckoos are coming home to roost with a vengeance.

Sunday Comics Twofer - The Witchhunt FAIL

(click on image to enlarge)

(Robert Ariail, via gocomics.com)

(Rob Rogers, Pittsburgh Post-Dispatch)

The House Republican Benghazi! Kangaroo Court's spectacularly incompetent partisan prosecution of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has been judged by most observers as, well, a spectacularly incompetent partisan prosecution.  It reached perhaps its most bizarre and revealing climax during the questioning involving Clinton friend and adviser Sidney Blumenthal, as pundits across the spectrum observed.

Dana Milbank

The House Select Committee on Blumenthal, as some are now calling it, came to order at 10 a.m. Lawmakers didn’t finish questioning Hillary Clinton until 11 hours later — just after the Democratic presidential candidate succumbed to a coughing fit.

In that period of time, the name of Sidney Blumenthal was invoked more than 75 times, and scores of questions were asked about the longtime Clinton friend. By lunchtime, Blumenthal had been invoked 49 times — exactly the number of mentions of J. Christopher Stevens, the ambassador to Libya whose death in Benghazi is the supposed subject of the congressional probe. The other three Americans slain in Benghazi — Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods — got seven or eight mentions apiece, then-CIA director David Petraeus and former defense secretary Robert Gates each got two, and then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had none.

Kathleen Parker

Who the blast is Sidney Blumenthal?

Doubtless many watching Thursday’s House select committee hearing on Benghazi must have wondered the same. This obviously important person’s name was mentioned so many times, it was challenging to remember that Hillary Clinton, not he, was the one on trial, for lack of a more-accurate word.  [snip]

None of this was remotely relevant to the alleged purpose of the hearing — to find out once and for all what happened before, during and after that terrible night in Benghazi when four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, were killed. The real purpose was as obvious as the shine on Gowdy’s nose — to discredit Clinton both as secretary of state and as a leading presidential candidate — and, if possible, to make her head explode. All the questions about Blumenthal’s e-mails ultimately resulted in a rather wispy point: That he had Clinton’s personal e-mail address and Stevens, also a friend, did not. 

The focus on Blumenthal, of course, belied the unctuous vows by Chairdolt Trey "Deuce" Gowdy and his merry band of Republican knuckle-draggers that they were after "the facts" on Benghazi!  The angrier the questioning and the more Clinton refused to rise to the bait, the more the true intent of the Kangaroo Court was made apparent to all but the most deluded in the right- wing echo chamber.

Charleston And The "Culture Of Evasion"

Here's E.J. Dionne, Jr., this morning on how some =cough= Republicans = cough= take cover through a "culture of evasion" to deflect the changes that we need to make as a people in the wake of tragedies like the murders in Charleston, SC:

Right off the top, anyone who wants to discuss the implications of this shooting is scolded for “politicizing a tragedy.” We are told we must heal and mourn first, that it’s “disrespectful” to the victims to ask what this slaughter means and what we must do as a nation. How manipulative: Mourning the deaths of good people — and honoring the astonishing spirit of forgiveness modeled by their families — is used as an excuse to delay reflection on why this happened until the moment of urgency passes. In a media culture with a short attention span, there is no surer way to contain and marginalize the hard questions. (our emphasis)

Hmm.  Could he be referring, at least in part, to an op/ ed in the same paper the day before from Republican apologist and Family Bush publicist Kathleen Parker, who wrote this perfect example of delaying reckoning:

As I hear talk-show hosts scramble to turn this tragedy into issues — gun control, race, mental illness, what’s next? — I can’t help thinking that some manners are in order. People need time to recover from shock and to heal. Grief isn’t bound by deadlines or expressed in sound bites. Southerners, especially, like to take time with their mourning.

Let’s allow them.  (our emphasis)

No, let's not allow them.

Manners?  How is flying the flag of slavery and treason -- the "American swastika" -- at the South Carolina state capitol mannerly?   Southerners "like to take time" in a lot of things, don't they?  Southerners are taking their time getting over the Civil War, over integration, over voting rights, over same-sex marriage -- essentially over entering the 20th (much less the 21st) century.

No, they've had enough time.  And they don't have the moral authority to decide when and how long to mourn the victims of their "heritage."

UPDATE:  The Governor of South Carolina is now calling for the flag of slavery and treason to come down.

Letters We Wish We'd Written Dept. - "National Trauma" Edition

Readers of the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle were responding today to Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid Party fabulist Kathleen Parker's June 17 op/ ed tongue bath of the Family Bush ("Bushes Through The Years"), and in particular this sentence: "After the national trauma of the Clinton years, during which mothers like me were forced to shield our children from the president's deeds, it was a relief to see George W. and Laura Bush move into the White House."

Here's a Letter We Wish We'd Written in response:

Which of these eight-year presidential terms should be characterized as a “national trauma”:

●The Bill Clinton years: Approximately 23 million net new jobs, no major land war launched, one combat-related military death, the addition of $1.3 trillion to the national debt, and the blue-dress sex scandal; or

● The George W. Bush years: Approximately 1.1 million net new jobs, two major land wars launched, thousands of combat-related military deaths, the addition of $4.9 trillion to the national debt, and no sex scandal?

Kathleen Parker chooses the Clinton years. Anyone care to question her priorities?

Samuel T. Goldberg, Bethesda

We  would say her priorities are clearly to whitewash the Dumbya years so she can see Jeb! in the White House after the "national trauma" of an African-American president who expanded health care to millions more Americans, and brought us back from economic ruin and the disastrous war the president she so fondly remembers got us into.

Letters We Wish We'd Written - Income Inequality Dept.

From today's once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle:

Kathleen Parker [“Language inequality,” op-ed, Jan. 8] would like to know “[h]ow much will be enough to satisfy the inequality camp?” This is how much: when every working person — regardless of age, gender, education level, disability, profession or job — makes enough money to keep a decent roof over his or her head, healthy food on the table and at least one working car in the garage, pay bills, put the kids through school and save for retirement. And when folks who are disabled and cannot work can do the same, with government help as needed. And when every person has access to affordable medical and dental care, whether through a government program or other means.

None of this assumes that everyone will make the same amount of money, just that there should be a baseline living standard for everyone — absolutely everyone. That would be satisfactory.

Beth Lee-De Amici, Crofton

That's right, "a baseline living standard." So relax, Ms. Parker.  Nobody's coming to steal your jewels.

Quote of the Day

A sampling from a thoughtful piece from Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast:

The more I think about this Republican “civil war,” the less it looks like war to me. It often gives the appearance of being war because these Tea Party people march into the arena with a lot of fire, brimstone, and kindred pyrotechnics that suggest conflict. But what, really, in hard policy terms, are these two sides arguing about? Practically nothing. It’s a disagreement chiefly over tactics and intensity. That’s a crucial point, and so much of the media don’t understand it. But I’m here to tell you, whenever you read an article that makes a lot of hay about this “war” and then goes on to describe the Republican factions as “moderate” and “conservative,” turn the page or click away. You are either in the hands of an idiot or someone intentionally misleading you.

Not surprisingly, there's a lot of this nonsense going on over at the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle.  David Broder heritage bipartisanship troll Dan "I Got No" Balz,  blind squirrel emeritus Kathleen Parker, Chris "The Lizard" Cillizza, to name a few of the usual suspects.  But it's really endemic in the "mainstream media" world of the networks, CNN, etc.  Keep in mind Tomasky's instructions.

Letters We Wish We'd Written Dept.

Today's Kaplan Daily offers two responses to a recent Kathleen Parker op/ed on the Supreme Court's review of the Affordable Care Act:

Kathleen Parker [“Putting Obamacare in its place,” op-ed, March 28] argued that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are about as similar as a dog and a zebra. She’s right — it’s an absurd comparison. But she did not acknowledge the most important similarity between the two bills.

The main constitutional argument against the individual mandate in the ACA, as put forth by Paul Clement before the U.S. Supreme Court, is that it is an “unprecedented effort by Congress to compel individuals to enter commerce.”

But it is not unprecedented. The Civil Rights Act compelled many Southern business owners to enter commerce. It forced them, against their will, to sell products to black people.

What is the difference between compelling someone to buy something (as the ACA does) and compelling someone to sell something (as the Civil Rights Act does)? In both cases, commerce is created where it would not have existed without congressional mandate.

David Gutman, Washington

---

Kathleen Parker said that the Affordable Care Act “forces business and individuals to buy something against their will.” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. likewise argued that the law forces people who are “never going to need pediatric or maternity services” to buy into the health-care market.

In response, I quote the reply by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) to the assertion by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) that he would never need maternity care: “I think your mom probably did.”

Even the young and healthy can’t have the hubris to assert that they will never require medical care. The law would simply require everyone to support a safety net that will help them if and when they one day need it.

Courtenay Lewis, Washington

Parker, her fellow Rethuglican apologists and the Rethuglican justices are wont to draw false comparisons (as above) and ludicrous reductio ad absurdum arguments (mandatory broccoli eating!) that once again only serve to illustrate their blind partisanship and the poverty of their reasoning.

BONUS: Want more of the Parker/Rethug Zeitgeist? Here's Hunter at Daily Kos, referring to Rethuglican id, uber-crackpot and purported Christian Rep. Steve King's (Loon-IA) malevolent take on freedom, liberty and health care:

Tanning and broccoli, freedomz and liberteez, every damn thing tossed up against the wall to avoid dealing with the basic notion that perhaps people are dying and they don't have to die, and perhaps we could help them if the crapsacks among us could only be convinced to give a damn, and maybe repairing the flaws in our system would be a good thing except that a bunch of people who make a lot of money and have wonderful health insurance and are not currently sick just don't see the problem the rest of us are left to deal with every day, and so just don't care. Sovereignty means go to Hell, less fortunate, does it not? I know that from the Republican presidential debates, where the audience was quite clear on what should happen to people who suddenly need medical care but who cannot, for any one of ten thousand different reasons, afford it.

(Ed. - For those who missed the debates, the Rethug crowds cheered the notion of uninsured folks being denied health care.)

Mostly, The Blind Squirrel Doesn't Find The Acorn

Blind squirrel Kathleen Parker swooning in today's Kaplan Daily, expertly parsing the bet Millionaire Mitt offered Rick "Oops" Perry at the latest Rethug "debate", and mystically determining that the wager was not too cold, not too hot, not too hard, not too soft, but Just Right, all the while missing the forest for the trees:

"... Ten thousand dollars was the perfect number. A dollar would have been silly; $10 trite. A hundred would have seemed amateurish; a thousand, too studied. At the higher end, $100,000 would have been boastful, and a million would have tied Romney to the millionaire’s club to which he does belong — but the man is not a braggart. Ergo, $10,000 was an amount he could afford to lose (the first rule of betting), and it was high enough to demonstrate his certitude."

Oh. My. God.

Acorn Found, Then Lost By Blind Squirrel

Wherein, in this morning's Kaplan Daily, blind squirrel Kathleen Parker finds an acorn:

"It takes courage to swim against the tide of know-nothingness that has become de rigueur among the anti-elite, anti-intellectual Republican base. Call it the Palinization of the GOP, in which the least informed earns the loudest applause. The latest to this spectacle is Herman Cain, who has figured out how to turn his liabilities into assets. After fumbling for an answer during an editorial board meeting to a simple question about his position on Libya, a lead news item since February, Cain blamed — who else? — the media."

Then promptly forgets where it is:

"Even so, there are signs that the GOP is recognizing its weaknesses and is ready to play smarter. To wit: The sudden surge of Gingrich, who, whatever his flaws and despite the weight of his considerable baggage, is no intellectual slouch. Whether he can pull off a victory in Iowa remains to be seen, but a populist professor — a bombastic smarty-pants Republicans can call their own — may be just the ticket."

Yes, "Air Poot" is the ticket, though there may be an extra charge for the weight of all that "baggage," and some fellow nuts are not on board yet.

P.S. - If your concern is about the know-nothings in your party, and the liars and cranks that work overtime to misinform them, here's something you might want to look into.

(Image: Kathleen Parker, in search of an acorn - or was it "the ticket?")

The Grifter's Return

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker isn't a fan of former half-term Governor and full-time grifter Sarah "Mama Fizzly" Palin. Today, Parker fires another salvo at Snowbilly Snooki:

"Time will tell, but what recent history already confirms is that Palin isn’t a serious person. If she had been serious about running for president, she would have completed her term as governor. Or, having left office, she would have spent her time hitting the books and filling in knowledge gaps so painfully exposed during the 2008 election. Instead, she hit the road in a series of moneymaking, self-promoting stunts and has succeeded in achieving the true American dream: fame and fortune. Good for her. But all those people who have written checks and invested good faith in their chosen one will be justified in feeling played like any other heartbroken victim of a terrible flirt."

The Alaska con artist was in Iowa this weekend to try to grab the spotlight from the actual candidates for the Rethug nomination. At some point, as Parker suggests, the rubes that idolize her will notice that their wallets are empty as she counts their money on her tour bus as it gathers speed leaving town.

Even A Blind Squirrel, Cont'd.

The fracture within the Rethuglican / New Confederate Party widened last week over their self-inflicted debt ceiling crisis. On the one hand, you have the traditional big money, big business elite who have funded the Rethug Party for years. They want the debt ceiling lifted. On the other, you have the loony teabagger true believers, far-right extremists who see bringing down the Government as a good thing, and to hell with the economy.

Right wing pundits have been forced to choose sides in the internal war. Blind squirrel and country club Rethug Kathleen Parker finds a nut in today's Kaplan Daily:

"Take names. Remember them. The behavior of certain Republicans who call themselves Tea Party conservatives makes them the most destructive posse of misguided “patriots” we’ve seen in recent memory. If the nation defaults on its financial obligations, the blame belongs to the Tea Party Republicans who fragged their own leader, John Boehner."

Better late than never, but you have to remember that the right wing media was stoking the fires of obstruction from the minute Obama was elected. Any lie and distortion was acceptable in whipping up the low-information teatards, who are clueless that the far right groups that pay for their rallies, buses and signs are actually working against their economic and social interests.

Sunday WaPo Reading

It looks like both Fred Hiatt and Broderella have gone on vacation and let someone else write their op/eds today. On the other hand, Kathleen Parker, whose occasional bouts of sanity we've noted here, is back on the "Bush-good, Obama-not-so-much, media-biased" wingnut train.

Hiatt goes over the "three camps" in the health reform debate, concluding that the camp represented by the Rethugs and their insurance industry financers ain't got nothing but fear mongering.

Broder, who must be taking a colonic in Florida while someone writes his latest entry into the conventional wisdom, passes modest, albeit of course highly caveated judgment on the efficacy of the stimulus on stopping the economy's slide into Great Depression II.

Parker is back from her walk on the sane side to argue that Obama has not been "treated to the same scrutiny" as Dumbya was on the subject of a Faith-Based Initiatives program in the White House. Well, lady, the reason Dumbya was "scrutinized" was because of well-founded suspicions that the primary function of the initiative was to funnel money to his Christian religious right base (hello, Revs. Dobson and Robertson, have a grant Tony Perkins). Had he not been "scrutinized," Turdblossom and his minions would have run roughshod over the system. Nice try, though.

Kathleen Parker, Sane Republican?

We hope Kathleen Parker is ready to get a huge wingnut hate dump on her eMail, thanks to her surprisingly honest op/ed in today's WaPo. In it, Parker, who once again takes a passing shot at Winky You Betcha ("a pretty gal with a mocking little wink"), largely agrees with Sen. George Voinovich's (R-OH) recent complaint about the Southern regional rump party the Rethugs have become. As evidence of her belief that the "ignorant, right-wing, Bible-thumping rednecks are ruining the party," she cites the birthers, who have assumed "kudzu qualities among Republicans in the South." The wingnut rage that's been fueling the "party of no" may work to galvanize a largely Southern, white base but, as Parker concludes, "before the party of the Great Emancipator can rise again, Republicans will have to face their inner Voinovich and drive a stake through the heart of old Dixie."

FLASH! Another Blind Squirrel Finds Another Nut

Stop the presses!! Kathleen Parker has found another nut! (You may recall she found an earlier nut buried deep in the musty, foul debris of wingnuttia.) This time, Parker notes the need to purge the Rethugs of racists like Rusty "Ass" DePass and Sherri "Don't" Goforth.

Good luck with that, hon. That would mean purging 90 percent of the Rethug base! Don't think so? Well, it so happens we had to link to Parker's column via the wingnut cornucopia "Clownhall" (sorry) since the WaPo won't let you link without registering with their asshole web site. Check out the comments to her column at Clownhall to see what we mean when we say there won't be much party left when you take out the nuts.

Sometimes the Squirrel Finds the Acorn...

... And sometimes it's just a nut. Writing in today's WaPo, Kathleen Parker looks aghast at the "fire-breathers on the right" that are obscuring the Rethug Party "message" (what message would that be: the urban hippity-hop one, the socialist/fascist/democommie Obama one, the party of "no" one, the "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" one? etc.). She does, however, stumble blindly on a few truisms about the Limpballs, Mad Randall Terrys, and Alan Keyes of the conservative movement: i.e., that the Rethugs lack a moderating voice and are stuck with the blowhard of the day to represent them.

Our reaction? You reap what you sow, lady, and the Rethugs (the elected ones) have at minimum tolerated, and more often have actively and relentlessly encouraged, the nuttier, more fringe elements of the crackpot right. Now you act surprised when they can't be "moderated." Of course they can't be moderated: you wouldn't have anyone left in the party willing to go out and teabag, or shout "socialist," or in the most horrific case, assassinate the "demons" you've concocted.

Did McAngry Think With His, Er, "Little McAngry"?

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker raises the interesting question of whether the key part of McAngry's "decisionmaking" about Gov. You Betcha was more erotic than political.

"McCain the mortal couldn't mind having an attractive woman all but singing arias to his greatness. . .Will he join the pantheon of men who, intoxicated by a woman's power, made the wrong call?"

Short answer? YES.

Bwahahahahaha. Oh, and Sen. McAngry? We doubt that Caribou Barbie's into geezers. "Thanks, but no thanks."

Kathleen Parker, Wingnut Javelin Catcher

Blue Texan has an appropriate reaction to this morning's op ed by wingnut warrior Kathleen Parker in the WaPo (still another reason to cancel the Post, brother Hackwhacker). Parker complains today about the vicious reaction she's received from Rethuglican knuckle-draggers in response to a recent column questioning Sarah Who?'s manifest unreadiness for the Vice Presidency, and her call for Who? to withdraw from the ticket.

I believe the quote that's fitting here is "if you lie down with dogs, you should expect to get up with fleas."

(Photo: National Review/WaPo's Kathleen Parker, about to feel the itch, if not the javelin.)

Fred Hiatt Strikes Again

Washington Post editorial page "editor" (Right Said) Fred Hiatt is introducing a new wingnut to his op/ed page (soon to be known as the "kooks korner," already stocked with the likes of Kraphammer, "Mushroom Cloud" Gerson, Will, Novak, etc.): Kathleen Parker. Whew! Reading her inaugural piece makes me wonder, "Does it hurt your neck to carry around such a huge brain?"