Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

A Senator Walker would be an insult to the state and the nation.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

The revolution will be supervised.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

I was promised a recession.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Bark louder, little dog.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night Horrorshow Open Thread: “How did the Republican party arrive at this place?”

Late Night Horrorshow Open Thread: “How did the Republican party arrive at this place?”

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80Comments

  1. 1.

    dnfree

    I want the shirt.  Just had another discussion with a right-wing Facebook friend today.  He blames “both sides” for the immigration situation.  Just tosses that off.  Easy answer for him.

  3. 3.

    The Dangerman

    …how did the Republican party arrive at this place?

    Florida, 2000. If they lose in the General for the 3rd consecutive time, things might be different. The lesson they learned in 2000 is that cheating and winning is kinda cool if you are on the winning side.

  5. 5.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    “how did the Republican party arrive at this place?”

    I saw some bilge being spewed by Steve Scalise, and I thought, as I always do when I see his name, that he once described himself as “like David Duke, but without the baggage”. You can try to unpack whatever the hell that means, or we can just focus on the fact that he ran for Congress wanting people to think of his as “like David Duke”. He’s the number two in the House GOP caucus.

    There’s very little about trump that wasn’t already well-established in the GOP long before he ran for president.

  8. 8.

    zhena gogolia

    Why am I in moderation for embedding a tweet with Swalwell’s brilliant questioning from today?

    We need to celebrate the great people on our side instead of constantly wallowing in the NYT’s idiocy.

  12. 12.

    lollipopguild

    The gop is here because so far it has worked for them. These are people who have no problem destroying our country as long as they get to control/run the wreckage that is left.

  13. 13.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Great minds, Anne Laurie!

    I was just reading this

    I read the Peter Baker piece earlier this evening, or the first third of it. It’s really awful. I was thinking that I have to do a post in my continuing series on disinformation devoted solely to the New York Times, although Jay Rosen is doing a good job of that.

  15. 15.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Cheryl Rofer: Jonathan Chait said that he was surprised to get a positive review of his Obama book from the conservative-leaning (I think was the phrase he used) Peter Baker

  16. 16.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I used to like Peter Baker when he was at the Washington Post, before he went to the Times. He did a good piece about a week ago, although maybe that was someone else or I dreamed it.

    Dean Baquet is bringing out the worst in all of them. I think Jay Rosen is right about the Times backing itself into a very small space.

  17. 17.

    Eljai

    I don’t know why Dean Banquet thinks that Twitter replaces the need for a public editor. They get pushback all the time on Twitter but they just ignore it. They not only need a public editor, they need an intervention.

  18. 18.

    Jay

    J Owen Shroyer, the Infowars Host who was today dragged out of the impeachment hearings, will be forever remembered by me as the one who was called a "fucking idiot" by some little girl, in what was maybe the greatest viral clip of the decade. https://t.co/L22buV6SYc— Jon, but wintry (in a non-religious way) (@JonIsAwesomest) December 9, 2019

  19. 19.

    Cheryl Rofer

    And with that, I will give the cats their late-night crunchies and retire to bed. It’s kind of a lousy week IRL for me, although it may improve after tomorrow.

  20. 20.

    debbie

    Apologies if this has already been shared, but this fucking asshole:

    BREAKING: Russia is banned from the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo for state-sponsored doping. President Trump said he's "sure the US does the same thing" saying the ban on Russia "unfairly punishes the world's best athletes". https://t.co/WEHUSAQ1UlThis news provided by The Scallion— The Democratizer (@DavidTheNonBot) December 9, 2019

    I hope American athletes speak up and speak up loudly.

  21. 21.

    joel hanes

    How did the Republican Party arrive at this place?

    John Mitchell/Paul Weyrich/Jerry Falwell/Paul Gann/Howard Jarvis/Lee Atwater/David Frum/William Safire/Michael Gerson  and their ilk skillfully weaponized various cultural and racial resentments to secure their hold on political power.

    Cheney/Rove/Gingrich/Gramm/Lott/DeLay/Hastert had the blinding insight that simply seizing power while ignoring norms and laws would cement that hold

    So those voters whose political ideas are centered on resentment, and on hatred of others not like them, gradually adhered to the Republican Party, and began to choose haters from their own ranks in GOP primaries.  It’s sort of a Gresham’s Law situation : the teahadist MAGAt morans drive out better Republicans, leaving only the dross.

  26. 26.

    Mandalay

    O/T, but the City Police Chief in Houston is going full Hulk on Republican Senators. A cop was murdered last Saturday after a woman reported being assaulted by her boyfriend, and he gave the most blistering takedown of (Republican) politicians I have ever seen from a cop:

    Two days after a Houston police sergeant was shot dead responding to a domestic violence call, the city police chief, Art Acevedo, has lacerated the majority leader Mitch McConnell and Texas’s two Republican US senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz for stalling the Violence Against Women Act…

    “We’ve got to get the Violence Against Women Act acted upon,” he said. “We’ve got to get in a room. I don’t want to hear about how much they support law enforcement, how much they care about lives and the sanctity of lives.

    “And yet we all know in law enforcement that this is one of the biggest reasons that the Senate and Mitch McConnell, and John Cornyn and Ted Cruz and others are not getting into a room and having a conference committee with the House, and getting the Violence Against Women Act, is because the NRA doesn’t like the fact that we want to take firearms out of the hands of boyfriends that abuse their girlfriends.”…

    “And who killed our sergeant?” Acevedo asked. “A boyfriend abusing his girlfriend. So you’re either here for women and children and our daughters and our sisters and our aunts, or you’re here for the NRA.”

    Growing more emotional, he continued: “So I don’t want to see their little smug faces about how much they care about law enforcement when I’m burying a sergeant because they don’t want to piss off the NRA.

    “Make up your minds. Whose side are you on? Gun manufactures? The gun lobby? Or the children who are getting gunned down in this country every single day? In our schools, in our theatres, in our colleges, on our streets, in our homes, in our businesses. Who are you coming to work for?

    Brutal. It’s only Monday and Ted Cruz was already having a very bad week, but it just got a lot worse for him

    Democrats need to be shouting about this at every opportunity, especially in Texas.

  30. 30.

    Gvg

    It seemed to me like it was the 80’s with the Reagan popularity then the fall of the Soviet empire. A whole bunch of bandwagon sloganeers saw a chance to get elected by parroting stuff they had heard but didn’t understand that the republican smart guys had been saying when all the fear of nuclear anihalation went away suddenly. They started racking up big wins easily because the population was willing to believe all their religious and economic crap was the reason the evil empire fell. A lot of them were morons but the smart leaderly guys needed them to vote party….and then somehow the smart guys seem to lose or go to jail and there was no one left but idiots who had grown up believing the con was real. I am not sure how that last step happened, but it looked to me like the smart guys thought the dumb ones would always be the followers and not a threat.

  31. 31.

    jimmiraybob

    The Deep StateTM is far deeper than we’d dared imagine!  The Donald remains pure and innocent until the bottommost turtle has been identified, thoroughly investigated and hung for treason! [queue infinite regress]

  32. 32.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: The President is not actually mentioned at all in the BBC article he linked to, nor does the quote he attributes to the President anywhere in that article.

  33. 33.

    Other MJS

    President Trump is refusing to engage and Democrats have concluded they will press ahead anyway, rendering a historic undertaking little more than a foregone conclusion.

    So I guess Twitler get a veto on impeachment by “refusing to engage”.

  35. 35.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mandalay: Chief Acevado is considered an anti-2nd Amendment, anti-gun, gun grabbing cop by the armed intelligentsia. Everyone he named will simply either ignore him or use his statement to fundraise by asserting that they’re standing up to gun grabbers like Acevado who are trying to take away your 2nd Amendment rights.

  36. 36.

    HeleninEire

    Jesus this is horrible. So you all know my story. I left the USA not because I was running away from anything but because I was running to something I loved. It just happened to coincide with Trump’s election. 2.5 years later I came back because I missed NY and my Dad was sick and needed me. My mistake. I love my Dad but as soon as he passes I am once again out of here.

    Oh hey let’s once again open up the “Who wants to marry Helen for an Irish citizenship sweepstakes?” ?

  41. 41.

    Yutsano

    @HeleninEire: I’m in. I can even find work easily over there. Lots of American ex-pats in Eire needs returns done back home. Hell I’ll even learn Irish taxes for diversity.

  42. 42.

    smintheus

    This is reassuring. According to a new book by Peter Bergen, Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip Korea policies nearly provoked a war on multiple occasions . Top officials had a habit of just ignoring his stupid orders until he forgot about them.

    Trump told his national security team: “I want an evacuation of American civilians from South Korea”.

    A senior official warned that such an evacuation would be interpreted as a signal that the US was ready to go to war, and would crash the South Korean stock market, but Trump is reported to have ignored the warning, telling his team: “Go do it!”

    Alarmed Pentagon officials ignored the order, and – according to Bergen – Trump eventually dropped the idea. It was one of a number of occasions that the defense secretary at the time, James Mattis, ignored direction from the White House. He also refused to send defense department officials to a planned Korea war game at Camp David in the autumn of 2017, or to provide military options for intercepting North Korean ships suspected of sanctions busting.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/09/trump-seoul-evacuation-north-korea-book

  43. 43.

    Mandalay

    @Adam L Silverman: Maybe you are right, but I think the Democrats’ campaign ads – “Senator Cruz (or whoever) only wants the NRA to fund his campaigns, and he doesn’t care about women and cops getting slaughtered by the bad guys….” (in a scary voice) – is going to have a bigger impact on uncommitted voters.

    More NRA money may help Cruz et al to get out the vote, but how many  undecided minds can they win over on gun rights? They have to be swimming against the tide on that issue.

  45. 45.

    HeleninEire

    @Yutsano: You don’t need to do that. What you make determines the percentage you pay. There are no deductions/exemptions and you are not required to file a return at the end of the year. You can file if your income moves from one required percentage category (up or down) during the year.

    EDITED: Oh yeah. Expats need to file American taxes. Only 2 countries in the world require that. America and Eritria.

  46. 46.

    Jay

    “Hate speech targeting Indian caste, religious, gender, and queer minorities is rampant across Facebook.” pic.twitter.com/YWjTg2Fwpa— Erin Gallagher (@3r1nG) December 9, 2019

    “Beyond the larger issue of the drafting process of Facebook’s community standards, the major concern is that the standards are not available in all Indian languages, despite the fact that millions of users speak, read, and write in these languages.” What the fuck. pic.twitter.com/Tp7t3nJeAm— Erin Gallagher (@3r1nG) December 9, 2019

    Facebook India – Towards a Tipping Point of ViolenceCaste and Religious Hate Speech https://t.co/r1KeeJ8SiT 2019 report by Equality Labs— Erin Gallagher (@3r1nG) December 9, 2019

    FaceBook learned nothing from Royhingha Genocide because money,…….

  49. 49.

    Yutsano

    @HeleninEire: Especially if they want to go home. The IRS watches that stuff carefully. I think you’re fine but upper middle class folks can get hammered hard.

    I have a Kiwi friend who’s a dual citizen. He was all in a panic about this until I calmed him down by reminding him he is poor college student. That helped I think.

  50. 50.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @HumboldtBlue: One of my all-time favorite songs. Still remember where I was when I 1st heard it. It was playing on radio in drugstore in Gainesville FL in 65. Eery song, so right for bad, wrong times,

  51. 51.

    HeleninEire

    @Yutsano: Yes. I have to FILE and tell America how much I made. The first $120,000 is exempt from American taxes. After that you are screwed because you pay both expat (in my case Irish) taxes PLUS American taxes.

  52. 52.

    CaseyL

    @HeleninEire: I hope Ireland allows polygamy, because you’re going to get a LOT of offers.

    Will you marry me? (Fairly well-preserved redhead in her 60s who is very easygoing.)

  54. 54.

    HeleninEire

    @CaseyL:  No polygamy. But they were the first country to legalize Gay Marriage by a referendum necessitated by a change to the constitution.

  58. 58.

    Jay

    Sorry for the horses mouth copy,

    For a number of reasons, I have decided not to attend the December 19th "debate" — regardless of whether or not there are qualifying polls. I instead choose to spend that precious time directly meeting with and hearing from the people of New Hampshire and South Carolina.— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) December 10, 2019

  59. 59.

    Spanky

    @HeleninEire: Howzabout when you get back there you lobby to get the rules changed so a couple more generations back allows immigrants’ g-grandchildren to be citizens? Hell, at least 6 of my 8 ggs were Irish.

  60. 60.

    Amir Khalid

    How did the Republican party arrive at this place?

    Simple: many years ago, it chose the easy path, the path of pandering to the worst in Americans; and that path inevitably led it to where it is now.

  61. 61.

    David ??Booooooo?? Koch

    This is progress!

    Just a couple of years ago, they placed the entire blame for gop nihilism on Obama.   Remember how they would say it’s Obama’s fault for not giving them a victory and for not having a drink with them.

    Sure they’re manufacturing a false equivalence, but at least they’re assigning them a modicum of responsibility.

  63. 63.

    HeleninEire

    @Spanky: Just now trying to walk my niece through it. She needs to register as “Foreign Birth” and then apply. All I had to do is apply for an Irish passport cuz as far as Ireland is concerned I was born Irish even though mom became an American at 22 and I was born in America.

  66. 66.

    HumboldtBlue

    @HeleninEire:

    What if I said I could get us invited onto The Late Late Show because me family has a direct route to the set?

    None of these other poseurs and boulevardiers with their lutes and flemish horns will stand a chance!

  67. 67.

    Spanky

    Jesus J. Edgar Hoover in a cocktail dress, Comey’s already got an op-ed in the WaPo following the IG report. “The truth is finally out. The FBI fulfilled its mission.”

    The stench of the sanctimony prevents me from even opening it.

  69. 69.

    JAFD

    Good morning, Ms. Helen !

    Hoping you can keep us informed on this.

    (OK, one of my grandmothers was born in Co. Mayo, have thought about making myself official dual citizen, but times in my life when I’ve had time I haven’t had cash, and viceversa ).  Thanks very much !

    (nOTE: This was meant as reply to Ms. Helen’s comment to Spanky, #63, somehow didn’t get categorized as such ??? )

  71. 71.

    TriassicSands

    @Amir Khalid:

    The problem is not the Republican Party. The problem is the voters and donors who support the Republican Party. This country has had grotesque and undemocratic political parties before but they posed no threat to the country because few supported them.

    the problem with Dean Baquet and the Times is that they don’t want to become the “opposition” to the Republican Party, but they fail to understand that opposition to the Republican Party today is opposition to tyranny.

  72. 72.

    Anne Laurie

    @TriassicSands: Dean Baquet is doing what his employers pay him to do, and he’s happy to advertise this fact.

    What they pay him to do has very little with ‘news reporting’, and much with ‘comforting the comfortable to punish the afflicted’, which is left as subtext.

  73. 73.

    Amir Khalid

    @TriassicSands:

    The problem is not the Republican Party. The problem is the voters and donors who support the Republican Party.

    And who, pray tell, chose to woo those voters and those donors?

  75. 75.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @WaterGirl:

    Is the limit really 7, not 5? I count only 7 links in zhena gogolia’s comment, and it got blocked.

    ETA: Unless @theautismdad was a link before. It’s not now.

  78. 78.

    Elizabelle

    This was a terrific post.  Appreciate the links to stories and twitter feeds. Jay Rosen, etc.  Someone suggested the professional journalism schools (UMissouri? Columbia?) have a lot to answer for, in one of his threads, with stressing balance way too much.

     

    Entirely possible.  We have seen what the MBA-zation of American business has done.  They’re a feeder system to the prestige news organizations.

  80. 80.

    Professor Bigfoot

    How did they get to this place?

    They invited the disaffected Southern segregationists into the party after ‘68; and now those white supremacist bastards own that party.

    It’s not a coincidence that they look like a neo-Confederate party, because that’s exactly who they are.

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