It’s been such a joy this week watching the backwoods MAGA terrorists twist themselves into oblivion.
First, a near government shutdown created by their fantasy demands, then the political cannibalism of Kevin McCarthy sure to signal a new period of ungovernable chaos. QAnon Crazy Marjorie Taylor Green, Trailer Trashy Lauren Boebert, “Florida Man” Matt Gaetz, and the phony braintrust of State 48’s Andy Biggs, Eli Crane and Paul Gosar, are getting their asses kicked. I should note that Gosar went off brand and sat our McCarthy’s beheading.
Yes, it took way too long and we’re stuck with the Biden impeachment hearings that’ll chew up more time and money than anything should. But, the mushroom cloud rising from the ruins of the horribly misnamed “Freedom Caucus” is real. Even if/when these roaches are re-birthed via FOX News and the Mad King, they are, for now.…snuffed.
Also a joy, though definitely a piss off factor, is the crow eating rehab effort underway by old line Republicans, who may have finally seen enough. They’ve apparently done nurturing MAGA. A bit late, dontcha think? Yet, here they are talking contrition through two of their scribes.
Enter The Apologists
The Arizona Republic’s Phi Boas reported last week that uber-wealthy and defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate Karrin Taylor Robson - Boas calls her “MAGA light” - will kick in with a copper state fundraiser for supposed Trump antidote Chris Christy. Former governor and Covid criminal Doug Ducey, former Senator Jon Kyl (R-Infinite Arrogance), and failed NFL owner Michael Bidwill are signing on, willing to write checks to defeat the monster they created.
Boas’ fealty to the country club set - Phil gushed over Taylor Robson before she was eviscerated by Kari Lake in the primary - left out the part explaining how, since 2016, these folks have played nice with MAGA as Trump’s mob pushed Arizona and the U.S. closer to rule by corporate oligarchy and outright monarchy. In Taylor Robson’s case, it was her campaign failure to call Trump out for his stolen election lies. For Ducey, it was the smarmy Trump ass kissing at the height of the COVID crisis, smooches on the Mad King’s posterior while thousands of Arizonans died. Bidwill just wrote checks and supported his high school pal Brett Kavanaugh. What’s changed?
Defeat.
Trump gave them their Supreme Court, their tax breaks, their corporation run amuck policies, their racist Christian nationalists and the January 6th traitors. But, his chances at winning another term are suspect. Worse for the GOP, his unhinged behavior may cost them the House, the Senate, some governorships and statehouses - including Arizona’s. So, they say, let’s pull the plug, all the while pretending we weren’t in the room when Frankenstein came off the table. This is not moral authority at work. This isn’t throwing in because Chris Christy is the next Ronald Reagan. It’s we’ve ridden the Trump horse far enough, so time for the glue factory.
The other GOP apologist is the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan. I look forward to her weekly column because it delivers a reasoned assessment of American politics. She was a Reagan speechwriter, so there’s cred. And, Noonan’s column usually stands out as rational amidst WSJ’s Murdoch mania editorials. But this week was different.
In “Biden’s Trend Line Points Downward,” (paywall) Noonan walks us through what she sees as Biden (read Democratic) policies out of step with mainstream America’s needs (however that’s defined nowadays). She describes those alleged policy misses as “hardened” with the electorate. Noonan sees unhappy voters blaming Biden for creating awful stuff like inflation, changing societal dynamics around gender, opening the border and making everyone feel less safe. It’s an old school GOP lecture, Noonan peering over her eyeglasses, patronizing and arrogant. “I believe the majority of Americans don’t like current Democratic policies on major issues,” she says. Here’s more:
“They don’t like the party’s position on crime, which comes down to the idea that crime is bad but we can’t just arrest people and throw them in prison if they’re convicted, it’s more societally nuanced than that. Or its position on illegal immigration, which is that the number and boldness of the past few years’ surge is unfortunate, but we’re not sure it’s happening at really high levels, or why, and the latter question demands more study.
They don’t like Democratic stands on gender issues—boys on the girls’ team, men in the women’s locker room, and all of this enforced in the schools by some Right Think Mechanism whose source can never be traced back. They don’t like the party’s preoccupation with climate concerns to the point that all economic decisions must revolve solely around that issue.”
Of course, I have some thoughts.
Let’s start with crime. Her critique is Republican code for let’s go back to the good old days (pre George Floyd) when we could arrest a lot of non-White people, beat a few of them to death, and put the rest in prison without question. She’s bought into whining by rank and file police finally facing real reforms after decades of covering up their racist interactions with Blacks and other minority groups.
Of course Democrats want safe streets, want real criminals in jail. They also want cops and courts who follow due process and police their own whenever they enforce with racism and brutality.
Let’s continue this dissection with immigration, a failure by BOTH parties and by the American people overall. Fears rooted in skin color, language, customs, and religion have been ratcheted into terror by the FOX News crowd and its “border invasions” then leveraged by Republicans to raise money and capture votes. Again, Noonan skips the fact that NO Republican politician has attempted real immigration reform since John McCain’s “Gang of Eight” almost got a bipartisan solution. That was 2013 before portions of African democracy collapsed sending refugees worldwide, before millions were forced to flee climate change, before Chinese fentanyl was finding its way in from Mexico, before Ron DeSantis was shipping Venezuelans to Martha’s Vineyard. Yes, Democrats have failed morally on this one, but it is Noonan’s Republicans who exploit it for political gain.
Up next, gender issues. Noonan apparently has a blind spot for the Christian Nationalist luddites and book burners harassing school boards and librarians. They’ve been embraced by current GOP darling and Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin in an awful effort to remove legal protections like marriage and health care and LIFE for large numbers of Americans who identify as LGBTQ. She’s missed Justice Clarence Thomas’ musings about eliminating these rights just as the courts have outlawed abortion. These actions aren’t coming from Democrats. It’s Republicans who are exploiting and othering, screaming about “boys on the girls’ team,” when in fact that just isn’t happening on a large scale anywhere.
Further, Noonan writes, Democrats, have allowed their party to be captured by university leftist intellectuals who have an outsized influence on policy without applying real world tests. They’re backed by wealthy leftists who fund campaigns, so the party bosses can’t or won’t get them under control.
Wrong again, Peggy. Fact is, Republicans want a dumbed down electorate that lacks the capacity to probe and question. Any thought which doesn’t celebrate the GOP’s American history propaganda gets painted as “woke.” In fact, we need individuals who actually do reasearch and reach reasoned conclusions. Otherwise, we get the DeSantis curriculum equating slavery with a job training program.
Finally, Noonan takes aim at a longstanding GOP whipping boy. Democrats, she says, put every policy through a filter of dealing with climate change. Every decision, she says, has to somehow contort to managing global warming. Here, Noonan is channeling Americans (myself included) who’ve had enough of $5/gallon gasoline and ridiculously high grocery bills.
But, Peggy, you’re wrong again. Climate change didn’t create $5/gallon gas. Greedy oil companies no political party has ever controlled are printing money with their formulas of market manipulation. Groceries are expensive because congresses and presidents failed to shape agriculture policies to produce nutrition-rich foods and positive environmental outcomes while keeping farmers in business and prices low.
Peggy, have you smelled the smoke from the Canadian wildfires? Know anybody who’s been whacked by a hurricane? How about a friend in Brooklyn dealing with flooding this past week?
The U.S. must lead the way with policies that protect this planet Those policies aren’t pushing gas and groceries up. They’re trying to save the only planet we’ve got.
What I find most disappointing in both Noonan’s and Boas’ outlooks, a so-called“mainstream” GOP viewpoint, is where they’ll go next. That is, a belief that businesses unleashed from regulation will solve every problem. That wealthy people shouldn’t pay taxes because they’re “job creators.” And, that long-haired lefties, confused about their gender, and living in a bookstore in Manhattan, are responsible for the failure to lift all Americans economically and intellectually.
Has the GOP forgotten its role in subverting primary and secondary education and underfunding universities - Doug Ducey’s “school choice” movement being Exhibit A? Has the GOP forgotten its race baiting crime policies mainstreamed by Richard Nixon in the turbulent 1960’s. Has the GOP forgotten the deregulation chaos unleashed by Ronald Reagan in the 80’s that hit its failure zenith in the 2008 housing crisis? Has the GOP forgotten its demonization of LGBTQ Americans beginning with Jerry Falwell and Pat Buchanan’s fear campaigns in the 1980’s and 1990’s and continuing with Charlie Kirk’s brownshirts today.
Phil and Peggy, weren’t you in the room and looking the other way when Trump opened the Pandora’s Box of American demons from 2016 to the present day.
I can agree with Noonan and Boas on one thing. We are a Not-United States of Mess right now. But don’t throw Democrats alone under that bus. There’s plenty of room there for the enormous moral and political failures by Trump and his Republican sponsors.
That, Peggy, is a “trend line” at work.