Alex Pareene captures a phenomenon I think we’re all sick of:
There’s a certain sort of elite liberal who loves Republican men almost as much as they detest anti-establishment progressives. Not “Republican men” like Mitch McConnell or Jeff Sessions, who are too narrowly concerned with implementing their ghoulish agenda to play the game. Rather, their affections attach to men like John Boehner, perpetually out on his lawnmower; or Ben Sasse, with his family canon of great books by men; or good old John McCain, so recently memorialized by every old liberal’s new favorite young person, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. (Praising John McCain is, of course, good politics—if you are chasing the support of the liberal establishment, that is.)
But while those men easily win over reporters who don’t consider themselves liberal, the path to a more partisan liberal’s heart requires one to become an apostate—or at least play one on television. That’s the lesson Joe Scarborough learned, more or less overnight, when he criticized the Bush administration’s handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In the space of ten minutes, Scarborough went from being a steady font of right-wing outrage and hostility, to being fulsomely embraced as a breath of fresh air on cable news.
The most notable thing about Scarborough’s transformation is that he didn’t actually have to atone for his past life beyond, perhaps, a dollop of mild contrition. […]
Pareene’s topic is how Joe Walsh will get the same treatment as Scarborough by running against Trump, even though Walsh is pretty awful. The never-Trumpers in general get this treatment. One notable example is David Frum, who in a just world would be a marginal figure being roasted for the Iraq War. Instead, he’s enjoying a renaissance on MSNBC and CNN because he’s an apostate .
Don’t get me wrong – an enemy of my enemy is my friend, but Jesus Christ, not a close friend, and only as long as we have the same enemy. I’m certainly not going to roll over and submissively urinate in their presence.
On The Road and Suchlike
hells littlest angel
Walsh will get the “youthful indiscretions” treatment for the birtherism, racism, and general obnoxiousness of those olden days of three years ago.
Emma
The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy. No more, no less. We might have one thing in common but it isn’t enough to do more than gives us a temporary joint target.
Shell4747
Katrina? Oh dear
Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)
And let’s not forget that the only reason they don’t like Trump is because he says the quiet parts out loud. Trump is bad for their party, and that’s all that matters — they don’t care that he’s bad for the country.
They’ll turn on us once he’s gone.
germy
Every time I see one of these republican never trumpers I remind myself they would have been perfectly happy if Obama had lost his election, and we’d gotten VP Palin and VP Paul Ryan.
schrodingers_cat
Just wait and watch the fluffing Gen Theranos is going to get from the media this weekend.
hells littlest angel
@Emma: The enemy of my enemy is my ally. Friendship is optional.
schrodingers_cat
Oh and David Frum is still scum if you read his Twitter feed he is approving retweeting the likes of Jordan Peterson and Christina Hoff Summers. Of all the never T Rs I like Jennifer Rubin.
A Ghost To Most
@hells littlest angel: John Heileman and David Jolly did not let Walsh off easy on MoJo, but they’re both apostate.
germy
A Ghost To Most
@schrodingers_cat:
My former fury at her has fizzled. She has been in T’s face early and often.
BobS
@schrodingers_cat: I agree with you- Rubin seems to be the only one of them speaking from the heart and head (and given her past, I’d keep her at an arm’s length- although, to be fair, back in the day John Cole was an apologist for Bush II and his wars).
Shell4747
@Shell4747: never mind I’m a dope who can’t read
oatler.
It’s time we turn our attention to Andrew Lack.
ThresherK
I literally don’t remember this. To me he was always Joltless Joe, an opportunist with no compass, whose instincts weren’t to be depended on.
germy
Yes, the President Patted His Leg for Melania to Walk to Him Like a Dog and Let’s Stop Acting Surprised
https://www.theroot.com/yes-the-president-patted-his-leg-for-melania-to-walk-t-1837715694
Patricia Kayden
Keep in mind that Never Trumpers only dislike the fact that Trump is crude, bullying and dumb. They would be fully supportive of any other Republican in the White House who put forth the same policies and nominated the same judges as Trump. They’ll revert to being docile Republicans during the next Republican administration. They’re not our allies.
rikyrah
This is all about the grift for Walsh??
EthylEster
Peter Wehner wrote an excellent and completely non-snarky piece in the NYT this week on Walsh that I recommend to everyone. And he did it without trashing any Dems. He just enumerated bad things Walsh has said and supported. His conclusion: Walsh is no better than Trump.
Belafon
I prefer “the enemy of my enemy is the enemy of my enemy.” The only reason I root for these people against Trump is injuries.
MomSense
I’m old enough to remember when we laughed at trump and thought he would be easier to beat than some of the others. Joe Walsh running for President is an abomination. That racist, violence endorsing motherfucker has no business running and he owes it all to trump and the media lowering the bar such that he can. Enemy of my enemy is the same bullshit maneuvering the CIA did for years during the Cold War. It only leads to blow back and misery. No matter what assurances the politically savvy offer, don’t fall for it.
bemused
Woot! I just read that the documentary “Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins” opens select in theaters Aug 28, Texas and rolling out nationally on Sept 6.
germy
@bemused: I can just imagine what she’d be saying if she could witness our current clusterf**k.
JPL
Wait until Mark Sanford is touted as a family man.
germy
@JPL:
Well, he is a family man. He’s got several of them.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: Agreed — Rubin’s conversion seems more sincere than most. I don’t trust her 100%, but at least she quit the party and is not haranguing us to nominate a centrist. Ana Navarro also seems sincerely disgusted with the party and announced she voted for Clinton. Maybe those two understand the implications of Trumpism more than the white male never Trumpers because they’re Jewish and Latina respectively and women. They are allies on a trial basis in my book.
hells littlest angel
@JPL: What the fuck — wait until Joe Walsh is.
germy
Emma
@hells littlest angel: No. Not your ally, unless you have eyes in the back of your head. The majority of these people would cut our collective throats to install a “reasonable” republican in power. So, at best, someone who has a common enemy with us AT THE MOMENT.
bemused
@germy:
This morning I read an old Molly Ivins piece on Creators Syndicate referring to Bush administration that brings trump fiasco immediately to mind.
“Do you know how to cure a chicken-killin’ dog? Now cannot keep a dog that kills chickens…my friend John Henry always claimed you could…break a dog with a habit of killing chickens…the way to do it is to take one of the killed chickens, wire it around the dog’s neck and leave it there until it stinks so bad no other dog or person will even go near that poor beast…that dog won’t kill chickens again.”
“The Bush administration is going to be wired around the neck of the American people for four more years, long enough for the stench to sicken everybody. It should cure the country of electing Republicans.” The problem is that even Molly couldn’t envision a trump administration.
germy
Dorothy A. Winsor
@bemused: This is a version of “heightening the contradictions.” Does it ever work? Maybe that’s what happened in California?
I’m thinking that we’ll always have the folks who voted for W and Trump. We have guard against them and work around them. We can’t ever assume they’ve seen the light.
TS (the original)
@germy:
So has trump. The GOP has despised family values since they found out President Obama was a family man who sees his wife as an equal partner in life and adores his children.
They now believe a thrice married adulterer with 5 children from 3 wives is a man with Christian values.
bemused
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Truth. What we have experienced in the last few years is that very, very few Republicans will ever see the light and even those few should be viewed with high skepticism. They are hard wired to be cruel, cowardly and corrupt and there’s no cure.
Gin & Tonic
@JPL: What ever happened with that Argentinian woman?
CaseyL
@TS (the original):
He does.
Just not the Christian values of Jesus.
What he (and the white evangelicals, and the GOP root, stock and stem) have are the “christian values” of Savanarola, Torquemada, and Father Coughlin.
Yarrow
If people like Joe Walsh cause problems for Trump and the Republican party, I’m fine with that. Outside of that I don’t have to trust them. They are not our friends.
Please don’t overlook the inherent misogyny and sexism that the observation in the sentence reveals: “There’s a certain sort of elite liberal who loves Republican men almost as much as they detest anti-establishment progressives.” They love Republican men. The women, notsomuch.
I stumbled upon this retweet in Molly Jong-Fast’s twitter feed and it really struck me just how deep misogyny runs and how destructive it is. The tweet is from 2018, so it’s almost 28 years now.
There are images of the article and re-reading them it’s disturbing how far we have not come.
germy
@CaseyL: white evangelicals first became politically active to fight for segregated schools. That’s what launched their movement.
Van Buren
@germy: Somehow I don’t see any Trump knocking back boilermakers in the local bar and talking about hunting, fishing, and trucks.
germy
@Van Buren: Didn’t trump jr. show up at a pub in Europe, and get a glass full of foam from the bartender?
Yarrow
@Gin & Tonic: According to a google search, they broke up in 2014.
Gin & Tonic
@Yarrow: Thank you for doing what I was too lazy to do.
Yarrow
@Gin & Tonic: No problem. Your question made me wonder too. I’m not sure I believe what Sanford says in that regard. He doesn’t have the best track record.
In other news, isn’t this illegal?
catclub
@bemused:
I would argue that the wiring did not last long enough. The recession came too soon, so that Obama was president during the worst of it. and the
cure the country of electing republicans’ lasted until 2010. Never mind 2016.
Baud
@MomSense:
It’s a large part of why we didn’t beat him. Too many didn’t change their tune when he won the nomination or when the polls showed him within striking distance. Our voters would have taken Cruz or Rubio more seriously.
Kay
I really like Pareene. He actually offers something different. I often read his stuff twice through just because it’s such a joy to just read different thoughts :)
Also- how rare is it in punditry to have a liberal analyzing Democrats in a way that rings true and is not a compilation of GOP myths about Democrats! He may be the only one. The rest is fucking Tucker Carlson analyzing Democrats, special guest, Tulsi Gabbard or Glenn Greenwald.
Yarrow
@Baud: Agreed. I remember the Huffington Post declared they’d only cover Trump’s campaign in the Entertainment section. Even at the time I knew that was a mistake. People treated him as a joke so they didn’t ask him any tough questions or dig into his past. He completely skated through.
Gin & Tonic
@Yarrow: The whole story at the time made me laugh, because he told some sappy lies about going to Buenos Aires to walk on the beach or something stupid like that. I’ve been to BsAs a couple of times – the beach is hours away.
germy
@Yarrow: And then his press secretary goes on CNN to say trump never lies.
Yarrow
@Gin & Tonic: Initially he was hiking the Appalachian trail.
catclub
There is an interesting long article in the WAPO today, on the various right-wing ‘renegades’ who just happen to use the same rhetoric of being oppressed as was used by the south in the 1830’s until yesterday. They demand equal space (on liberal fora) which never seems to be granted
(or even considered) to liberal voices on conservative sites.
conservatives-say-weve-abandoned-reason-civility-old-south-said-that-too – when their voices are shut down (ha!) by liberal opposition.
Go read the whole thing
Kay
Walsh is a blatant liar, which they’re all pretending doesn’t matter but actually does matter. I know Trump is president and lies constantly but media probably shouldn’t have taken that to mean that lying is desirable and to be encouraged.
This is the new normal in the GOP? They all fucking LIE constantly, even if there’s tape from a year ago showing the lie?
Great! Good job. Drop that standard any lower and you’ll have to dig a hole.
catclub
@germy:
But he and I (his press secretary) are both Cretans.
Patricia Kayden
@ThresherK: And let’s not forget that he and Mika were buddy buddy with Trump during 2015 and 2016.
catclub
@Kay:
They prove their fealty to truth by attacking Joe Biden for any exaggeration. never mind 10000 lies from Trump – too much work.
catclub
@Patricia Kayden: They and CNN covering his every empty podium were gigantic donors to trumps election effort.
Kay
Walsh and the people like him created the conditions to make Donald Trump possible. Conservatives cannot get to THERE from HERE. He’s the problem, not the solution. That the idiotic and weak “never-Trumpers” think this is some kind of “opposition” is just pathetic. Try harder. Try something. This is their one and only idea? Walsh?
That’s WHY their Party got taken over by this crook. They’re weak.
Kay
@catclub:
I don’t think Biden’s supporters care. They see the exaggerations and gaffes as harmless, which they really are, other than leaving him open to attacks on his age, etc. I think they forgive him partly because the untruths or mistakes aren’t due to self-aggrandizing, like Trump’s are.
I don’t support him but I get that.
clay
@Yarrow: I’ve noticed for a couple years this pattern:
-Trump promises China deal soon, markets go up
-Some time later, market realizes that no deal is coming, markets crash hard
If I caught on to this, then how come it seems like the markets still fall for it every time?
hells littlest angel
@Emma: During WWII, the Soviet Union — under Josef Stalin! — was our ally. You don’t necessarily trust an ally.
hells littlest angel
@clay: Eventually, they’ll stop falling for it, and that will be bad. It’s largely why so many are predicting an imminent recession.
Kay
Never Trumpers could have done something that is hard work and not flashy- they could have formed a group of Republicans who would back moderate and/or competent and/or not horrible racist Republicans in congressional races.
Instead they have spent the last 4 years penning angry editorials. They did nothing. Pick ten far Right congress members in districts where they are somewhat vulnerable and PRIMARY them. That’s the way to turn the Party. They don’t want to turn the Party. They don’t want to risk losing a single GOP seat to a Democrat. They’re all full of shit. They are INCAPABLE of doing anything practical or real that might go against Republicans.
They should get used to the Trump GOP. That’s their reality. At the end of the day they were too partisan to save their political Party.
kindness
Let’s make a distinction between the MSM and the citizenry. The MSM will always go out of their way to see their fellow associates as upstanding and reasonable and say that on the MSM. Our citizenry though? Not so much. I’m more of a Show Me person. You have to show me you are going to act properly and not just fake it for acceptance.
I don’t think we’ll ever be able to change the structure of the MSM or how they report what they do.
Those Republicans who are feted by the MSM….They’re still Republicans. They will still vote for horrible policies. Just because they see Trump as a threat doesn’t change their own stripes.
catclub
@Kay:
I agree on his supporters. But what about people who have not decided between Trump and Biden (yes, I know, hard to imagine)?
They look at this and conclude Biden is a serial exaggerater. Kind of like Hillary is violating email standards. Or Gore is a serial exaggerater.
The common element seems to be the press and motes versus beams.
Kay
They are all Susan Collins. Susan Collins isn’t vulnerable because she’s a principled maverick who bucked Trump and the GOP. She’s vulnerable because she was incapable of both serving the GOP and serving her constituents. She CHOSE the GOP. Over and over and over. They ALL have. The moderates killed their own fucking political party. They never actually opposed party incumbents, and they had UMPTEEN chances.
Steeplejack
Personal update from me downstairs.
Kay
@catclub:
I agree it’s a problem but it’s safe to say we can bake in “higher standard” for the Democrat since they hold Trump to NO standard- even revel in his lack of character and low quality. Not our fault but definitely our problem.
Could be Biden, could be any of them. It’s the reality. He is a serial exaggerator. That’s his actual reputation. The question is if it matters to voters.
Kay
@catclub:
To me, Biden’s big sin is he bought this bullshit that he was somehow “central” to Obama’s success. He wasn’t, any more than Pence was to Trump. This populist man of the people thing was NEVER his reputation until media decided Obama needed an old white man to carry Pennsylvania and settled on “lunchbucket Biden supporters”. I don’t think that’s true. I think Obama won those states. Biden was always an eastern conventional Democrat who promoted the interests of Delaware. Which are not “populist” interests. It’s a weird state! It’s representative of nowhere else.
I can forgive him everything but that- the ego involved in believing that bullshit.
Starfish
David Frum and Max Boot are always whining about why they can’t be in charge of serious ideas, and why are these ideas that they consider unserious being taken seriously.
Bruce Bartlett who was also a Republican is better and checking the Never-Trump Republicans who are now Trump-curious because Trumpism seems unending. How the hell was Trump not investigated and booted from office in the first six months? People preferred power over doing the right thing.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: @Betty Cracker: Rubin is a Neo-Con. That group made common cause with the GOP over foreign policy and defense issues in the ‘70s. They are not particularly interested in domestic policy as a group, but, since many of their first generation started out on the far left, they could easily swallow Dem domestic priorities.
They see Trump fucking up on the world stage which will make it harder for the US to be an independent and all powerful actor on the world stage.
If you wonder why Bill Kristol seems sane now, he is also a Neo-Con.
James E Powell
@germy:
This fact has been erased from our political history. No one remembers the Bob Jones IRS case.
White supremacy remains an essential component of the evangelical movement. And they are the brownshirts of the Republican Party.
TenguPhule
@Betty Cracker:
She stopped being a Republican? Since when?
TenguPhule
@Kay:
Then they wouldn’t be Republicans in the first place.
TenguPhule
@Omnes Omnibus:
No, I don’t. He’s still fucking insane, just slightly less so.
Betty
@Kay: Agree, Kay. Biden does not have a progressive record. And so many of his stories seem to include some amount of fantasy. For the general election, he would be a disaster.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty: His record seems pretty decent to me. The pro-banking stuff comes from representing his state. He is too law and order for me, but there are few politicians who aren’t.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Joe_Biden
sdhays
@Kay: His arrogance about these things really bothers me. Biden just walks around generating gaffes that people can point to saying “well, Trump has lost most of the few marbles he ever had, but the Democrats’ candidate is the same, just different degrees”. Or “Sure, Trump lies, but so does Joe, so that’s not a criteria we need to consider when making a choice.” Sure, that’s all absurd because details and degree matters, but that’s certainly the way the narrative will be set.
It makes me kind of angry, because his whole campaign is around him being the safe choice, and I don’t see him as any safer than Sanders in the general election. He has “muddled” and entitled written all over him. Biden might be able to slouch to victory, but, my god, I’d be expecting an implosion every day until election day if he’s the nominee.