“More to the point, the fact that so many potential candidates are on Fox \u2013 and that Fox is setting rules as to how long you can stick around before being kicked off if you\u2019re not going to say one way or the other whether you\u2019re running \u2013 is proof, if any more were necessary, that the actual GOP machinery is far less important than Fox News in the strategic operation of the Republican Party. Fox News sets the priorities, employs the players, pumps the memes into public circulation, and apparently now decides the timetable for declaring when\/if you\u2019re going to run for office. It\u2019s not unreasonable to speculate that the two major parties at present are the Democrats and Fox, with \u201cRepublicans\u201d as merely a faction of the Fox Party.<\/p>\n
Which is an extraordinarily unhealthy thing, for one very obvious reason: the needs of a for-profit broadcaster are not the needs of a political party in the electorate \u2013 or in governance. Which is why we get what we have. No sane governing party would have blown the first couple of months in office on assorted culture-war issues. Hell, no sane governor would have opened his career by taking an enormous deuce on some of his key supporters for the sake of ideological purity \u2013 yet Walker up in Wisconsin has managed to make enemies of the teachers, the firemen, the police AND the Green Bay Packers. That\u2019s bad arithmetic.<\/p>\n
But the Fox Party isn\u2019t about governance. It\u2019s about maintaining the special world in which the viewers of Fox are simultaneously the martyred minority holding out against the forces of evil and the righteous majority who represent Real America. It\u2019s about making sure that people tune in every day and every night to be told how right they are and how scary the rest of the world is. It\u2019s about keeping the team fired up and racking up wins.”<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
–March 4, 2011<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n “In so many ways, it goes back to W.J. Cash, as it always does, and his characterization of the essential Southern quality: \u201cthat no man living could cross him and get away with it.\u201d \u00a0I don\u2019t have to go along to get along. I don\u2019t have to listen to some pointy-headed bureaucrat. I don\u2019t have to stand behind the yellow line. I\u2019ll just roll through that stop sign. I\u2019ll put my cigarette out when I feel like it.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just Southern anymore. It\u2019s not even just gun-suckers anymore. \u00a0Call it fascism, call it socialism, call it political correctness, or just call it fucking manners if you like. \u00a0But until our concept of citizenship in a polite society rises above the level of a sugar-shocked 8 year old in the back seat on a road trip, don\u2019t expect a lot of progress on things like assholes meandering their guns through the grocery.”<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n –Jan 29, 2013<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n “The enemy, as was said so many years ago, isn\u2019t conservatism or liberalism. The enemy is bullshit. Bullshit too plentiful and overwhelming to refute. Bullshit that wins out on volume because it\u2019s too much to beat down every single individual packet of bullshit. The bullshit will always get through, and people who don\u2019t know better \u2013 or won\u2019t know better \u2013 will fall before it.<\/p>\n Actually, there is coherence and cohesion to the modern GOP belief system: it\u2019s called bullying, and it\u2019s how \u201cBlue Lives Matter\u201d can coexist with the open carry of firearms and how the admiration for a Russian totalitarian can launder the exposure of classified information. The Trumpets who are now trying to read California out of the Union as somehow not really America have it all wrong. Silicon Valley is full of natural Trumpists: people who aren\u2019t aware there are other people who aren\u2019t like them, who are the embodiment of I GOT MINE FUCK YOU, who don\u2019t care that we live in a society. That should have been warning enough for anyone that this was possible. As Uber, so Trump: do what you like and the facts and the law be damned, because your sycophants and worshippers will\u00a0laud you for it.<\/p>\n And there are plenty of those. The GOP has spent the last 25 years powered by weaponized ignorance fueled with bullshit. It started in the Clinton years with exaggerations, misrepresentations, things that could be explained but if you\u2019re explaining you\u2019re losing. Then it got progressively worse, with lies about things that could be disproved but were complicated to demonstrate. And the bar just kept getting lower and lower until 2016, when the GOP lied constantly about things that could be instantly and trivially disproven \u2013 knowing that their base would reject the proof. And because our system can\u2019t cope with shamelessness, we got burned. Badly. The problem is, if you can\u2019t have truth, you can\u2019t have a society. We have to be able to interact truthfully. If we can\u2019t, we don\u2019t have a society.”<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n –Dec. 19, 2016<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n “Let\u2019s not forget that the famous \u201cwe create our own reality\u201d interview was in October 2004, before Dubya was elected the second time. In fact, let\u2019s have the block quote, which is generally understood to have come from Karl Rove himself:<\/p>\n The aide said that guys like me were \u201cin what we call the reality-based community,\u201d which he defined as people who \u201cbelieve that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.\u201d \u2026 \u201cThat\u2019s not the way the world really works anymore,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe\u2019re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you\u2019re studying that reality\u2014judiciously, as you will\u2014we\u2019ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that\u2019s how things will sort out. We\u2019re history\u2019s actors\u2026and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Basically that\u2019s taking a shit on the entire concept of empirical fact. That\u2019s pissing directly in the face of the Enlightenment. That\u2019s an argument that says\u00a0we can believe whatever we want and you can\u2019t stop us. It\u2019s the functioning basis of Fox News, of Glenn Beck and Alex Jones, of five straight GOP Presidential campaigns. It\u2019s not a Trump phenomenon, it\u2019s not even Tea Party. It is what the Republican Party has stood for now for over a decade: who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?<\/p>\n This is why there has to be a reckoning. This is why Obama was wrong to try to work with the GOP, to try his whole \u201ccome let us reason together\u201d shtick, to desperately try to negotiate with the other side. You don\u2019t negotiate with a five year old having a tantrum. You don\u2019t negotiate with a lunatic screaming on a street corner. You act quickly and decisively to put them out of harm\u2019s way \u2013 their own and others \u2013 and carry on having an adult society while doing what you can to see that they get the help they need.”<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n –April 25, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n “Consider: 75% of the Republicans in the lower body have only been there since the 2010 elections or later. Their entire Congressional career has not only been post-Fox, but post-Tea Party. They have never passed a budget in regular order, never had to confront the world outside the axis of Breitbart. They\u2019ve been part of two government shutdowns and the unprecedented near-default of sovereign debt. They\u2019ve voted over fifty times to repeal Obamacare. Their entire MO is tribal loyalty and their entire range of issues is Benghazi-birth certificate-EMAILS, and they\u2019ve never had to actually govern. And now they are the frontline troops for an accidental amateur President. When Trump says he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his followers would cheer? The ones he means are the ones in the Capitol, because those are the only ones he needs. And they don\u2019t know how to do anything but moo for their side.”<\/p>\n –May 12, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n “But here\u2019s the thing: there is no reckoning.<\/em> Nothing happened to the GOP after they went Party Of No on Clinton, or weaponized impeachment to try to undo the 1996 results. Nothing happened to the Electoral College when Al Gore got screwed under shaky circumstances. Nothing happened when the GOP turned the filibuster into a daily process and snowed the catamites of the media into normalizing the idea that \u201cthe Senate needs 60 votes.\u201d Nothing happened when the Republican Party nailed its colors to Donald Fucking Trump. And right now, despite all the shit hitting the fan, despite a partisan firing of the FBI director and blood-curdling breaches of national security and patently unconstitutional actions, nothing suggests that the GOP will bend or buckle as long as they think having this fatuous publicity whore in the Oval Office can still deliver them tax cuts and Supreme Court seats.<\/p>\n There are two sides sitting at the gaming table in America. One is trying to win the game and the other is trying to burn the house down so they can run off with the silverware. This is patently unsustainable. It\u2019s the dog humping your leg: it\u2019s in his nature and you can\u2019t blame him for it, but eventually, you have to cut his balls off. And that\u2019s exactly what has to happen to the Republican Party, because as long as this version of the GOP can continue to operate, we cannot function as a country. The last time we had this problem, the Democrats chose to cast off the South and stake their future on the old children\u2019s hymn: \u201cred and yellow black and white, they are precious in His sight.\u201d And George Wallace, Kevin Philips and Richard Nixon, Lee Atwater and George Bush were all ready and waiting to scoop up those who replied \u201cno they\u2019re not.\u201d And then the GOP made them the base of the party in 1994 and it\u2019s literally been downhill ever since. From January 1995, the opening of the 104th Congress, you can date the shutdowns, the impeachments, the near-defaults, the political witch hunts, the propaganda parade on cable news, and the tribal politics of \u201cyou\u2019re entitled to your own reality.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019re going to keep limping through, with Democrats trying to slap on salve and bandages where they can and Republicans normalizing the notion that there is no such thing as society \u2013 just them that has and them that can suck it. In a world where a millionaire apartment developer can tell millennials they could afford a house if they just gave up avocado toast \u2013 while Silly Con Valley housing prices skyrocket 20% every year \u2013 the Republican meme is that everything bad that happens to you is your own fault, from illness to poverty to skin color to just not being able to keep up with the cost of living. And now the Baby Boomers will pull up the very ladder they used, with affordable college and available housing and defined benefit pensions, and everyone else can go screw.<\/p>\n Which is why it\u2019s time to start thinking about how America will look if we survive. Because this is unsustainable. Our system of government, our entire political culture in the 20th century, depended on certain norms and unwritten rules and cultural guidelines which have all gone out the window, almost entirely of Republican doing. And if they\u2019re committed to their tribal project, there\u2019s no way to prevent them from continuing to vote \u2013 we\u2019d have to just make some kind of pact that everyone else will vote for the same person every time to ensure they can\u2019t get in. At which point you\u2019re right back in Alabama, where the party primary decides the statewide result (and has for basically all but three or four statewide elections in the last century). And Alabama is a broke, dysfunctional system of government whereby people only get by because they\u2019ve had the Feds holding a gun to the state\u2019s head.”<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n –May 16, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n “So what happens now? Even if Trump bites the dust and the GOP is turned out of office across the board in a manner recalling 1974-76, what are we left with? We have a political party still in existence whose members have been radicalized to believe anything they are told by their trusted leadership \u2013 which largely consists of conspiracy-mongering media. We have an electoral process that was compromised by bad actors in and out of government and which was swayed by a foreign power, and a nuclear one at that \u2013 what do we do about that? We have the precedent of a President elected while stonewalling any effort to explore his finances, his foreign ties or his past conduct \u2013 why should any future candidate not do the same? We have net neutrality crucified on behalf of Comcast and Verizon \u2013 how do we return to a regulatory framework robust enough to ensure actual competition in broadband and get us within shouting distance of what the rest of the world has? And \u2013 most of all \u2013 how do we convince the rest of the world that our leadership and our global role can be given any more heft than, say, Italy? Or Russia? Or any other country with a corrupt and compromised political leadership and a public unable to check or contain it?”<\/p>\n –July 14, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n “The rules of the Senate and the composition of the Electoral College means the Republican Party can get its way without having the most votes in a way the Democrats simply can\u2019t anymore. They could have, maybe, in 2009 \u2013 but they were still constrained by norms and traditional practice and \u201cthe way things are done.\u201d The Republicans have the advantage of not caring about that in the least, which is of a piece with the way that party has worked for a quarter century. Twenty-five years of AM radio and cable news and being led around by the nose by carnival barkers and rodeo clowns and circus freaks. Twenty-five years of being told that it\u2019s not enough to have your own opinions, you\u2019re entitled to your own facts. And if they don\u2019t square with reality? You\u2019re entitled to your own reality. You can believe that 10% of the federal budget goes to foreign aid and that your Affordable Care Act insurance is more virtuous and entitled than the Obamacare those brown people have and that there\u2019s some secret Democrat child sex ring spiriting kids to Mars as slaves…<\/p>\n Our system was not divinely ordained, not handed down from Olympus as some timeless model of perfection. It was conceived in iniquity and birthed in sin, reserving power to the male, the white and the landed. More than one person has pointed to the various amendments in the ensuing 240 years as proof that the American struggle is ultimately toward giving everyone the participatory power that the Founding Fathers reserved for their own kind. But it isn\u2019t working any more.\u00a0<\/p>\n We\u2019re broken. We\u2019re not going to be able to fix this, because the people who could have \u2013 the people who needed to stand up and say \u201clook, I disagree with the Democrats but this is horse shit, there are no death panels, foreign aid is a rounding error compared to your Social Security, Sharia law is not a thing that is happening in this country, the President is an American citizen born in Hawaii and a practicing Christian\u201d \u2013 those people sat on their hands and kept their mouths shut so they could reap the partisan advantage, and it got us to this point. Between the hilljack yokels, the ones who mined their ignorance for electoral profit, and the ones who can\u2019t be arsed to take part, there aren\u2019t enough people left to reliably redeem the country.<\/p>\n And here\u2019s the kicker: what happens when the rednecks run into reality? The kind of reality that can\u2019t be reconciled with the old \u201cthe universe is 4.5 billion years old six days a week and 6000 on Sundays\u201d? The kind of reality you can\u2019t wish away? The kind of reality that doesn\u2019t care what Alex Jones told you because that cancer isn\u2019t going to respond to peach pit extract and your insurance won\u2019t cover you anymore? What happens once these Trump voters all realize they played themselves? Are they prepared to live with the consequences? And since the answer is almost certainly hell no, who are they going to take it out on? And how? And what are we prepared to do about it?”<\/p>\n – July 31, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n “Sixteen years ago, Osama bin Laden made Stupid Americans shit themselves. Then we spent every year after validating stupid. And after a wihile, Russia figured out how to exploit their fear. And Twitter and Facebook both lay back and allowed them to do it. The confluence of public stupid and technological free-for-all destroyed the 21st century before it could start. And now, because we didn\u2019t push back on an electoral college that make the person with the most votes lose, because we didn\u2019t push back on conspiracy theorists as \u201cnews\u201d, because we decided the Internet was the free-speech wing of the free-speech party (whatever the fuck that means other than something to let tech bros get erect), we wound up where we are now. Comcast and Verizon have free reign to carve up Internet access like cable TV. There is no free market in broadband anymore. The budget is such a freakin\u2019 disaster area that we don\u2019t even know whether to pay off the property tax now so it\u2019ll still be deductible on our federal return.<\/p>\n The really disturbing thing is\u2026how do you come back from this? Elect a bunch of Democrats and then see if you can get away with impeachment, which will only put a bigger holy roller in the Oval Office and convince Ed Earl Brown that the job is done because Trump\u2019s out? Run the table in 2020 and start trying to put things back like they were, only to get smeared by the catamites at the New York Times and take an ass-kicking in 2022? Do we have the time to wait for demographics to fix things or are we going to be too far gone by then?”<\/p>\n –Dec. 22, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n “You don\u2019t have to like it. No one is asking you to approve of everything they stand for, everything they might want to do, and that\u2019s fine \u2013 nothing serious could move for two years anyway. You don\u2019t have to worry that Congress is suddenly going to nationalize Comcast and outlaw Baptists. It\u2019s fine. This isn\u2019t about granular issue positions any more. Those have to wait for later. This is about only one side being willing and able to stop the bleeding.<\/p>\n Because the GOP had plenty of chances to head this thing off, and couldn\u2019t. Wouldn\u2019t. Didn\u2019t. For better or worse, this is what it means to be a Republican in 2018: I believe all of this is OK<\/em>. Because nothing has happened to stop it. If the GOP was going to stand up to Trump, they\u2019ve had two years to do so. And it didn\u2019t happen, except for a gesture toward healthcare by a dying man who isn\u2019t there anymore. Flake, Collins, all the sorrowful \u201cmoderates\u201d \u2013 they\u2019re there for him when it counts. Every single time.<\/p>\n The fact of the matter is, we functionally have a two-party system. You can vote for a third party if you want, but don\u2019t kid yourself that you\u2019re not actually throwing away your vote. The Green party isn\u2019t going to save you, and there is no magical third way moderate who is going to lead us out of this. Your choices are yes, this is OK, or no it isn\u2019t. And right now, today, in 2018, \u201cno it isn\u2019t\u201d is labeled Democrat. Full stop.<\/p>\n Maybe if the sixty-something percent who say \u201cno it isn\u2019t\u201d in polls could all get behind one party, we could do a deal. We\u2019ll hash it out in the party, and when the rubber hits the road we\u2019ll hold our noses and support what we decided to do rather than going all different directions and tolerating crazy \u2013 or worse, endorsing it \u2013 for the sake of getting our own way. And we\u2019ll leave the nuts and the crazies and the assholes on the outside and wait for them to die, and contain in the meantime, because holding together a society is more important than burning it down for a bare advantage.”<\/p>\n –1 Nov 2018<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n “The Republican Party has become Trump, and Trump has become the Republican Party, and the GOP that built itself on Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan has been reduced to a postmodern religious cult of hate, fraud and make-believe. Only an idiot seeks to meet bullshit halfway, and there is nothing to gain by trying to split the difference with Crazy World. Call it out, cut it off, and shun everyone and anyone who won\u2019t, including the catamites of the Washington press corps. \u201cCome let us reason together\u201d only works with people capable of reason, and the burden of proof is all on the other side now. Start by making the most simple litmus test of all: if you can\u2019t say who won, you don\u2019t get to play.The end.”<\/p>\n –Nov. 23, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n “We\u2019re back to containment. This is the last chance for the GOP to climb off the train before becoming the QOP. It may yet be necessary to blow up the filibuster and resort to adding states and going full scorched earth to prevent the scum who tried to overrun the capital taking a place in American politics. But for the moment, the \u201cnot all Republicans\u201d are being offered one chance at a Billy Martin.”<\/p>\n