Dahlia Lithwick is normally very good, but when she’s righteously pissed, she’s extra good:
Murkowski wants you to know that she is sad. We know she is sad because it is the word she used to describe that feeling she gets when the branch of government charged with checking the other branch of government wholly abdicates its responsibility to do so. And she emphatically wants you to know that Congress, which has failed to check the executive, is to blame for this failure: “This process has been the apotheosis of the problem of congressional abdication,” Murkowski said, in her transcendently incoherent floor speech on Monday evening, explaining her own abdication. “Through the refusal to exercise war powers, or relinquishing the power of the purse, selective oversight and unwillingness to check emergency declarations designed to skirt Congress—we have failed.” Having excoriated Congress for its failure to check the runaway executive branch, she then announced her vote to refuse to check the runaway executive branch. It was like a surgeon watching a patient bleed out on the table, while refusing to pick up a scalpel, while also blaming the concept of surgery.
Lithwick also has a good go at the other sad sister, Collins.
Murkowski has always struck me as having a resting sad face, though it is nothing compared to Stellan Skarsgård in the video above.
Also, I posted a comment in the other thread that Jennifer Rubin had let me down on Romney, but I was wrong. She posted a column on the greatness of Mitt about 50 minutes after he gave his speech on the Senate floor – either she writes at the speed of the sound of loneliness, or she had an inkling that her hero would come through. Read it through for the last sentence – I won’t spoil it for my fellow Rubin connoisseurs.
Open thread.
burnspbesq
Back to work. November is all that matters.
syphonblue
Yup, as soon as the Republican party nominates Not-Trump in the next election, all the people who “left” the party will swarm right back to it.
Timurid
@syphonblue: The 2024 Republican nominee will be hand picked by Trump (whether or not Trump wins in 2020).
Cermet
Rubin got it backwards; Romney did this while he still has a long political life remaining – McCain waited till he was at deaths door to finally show a backbone (i.e. actually vote for what he was supporting that went against his party.)
Butch
Jerry
I love this line so much, I feel the need to quote it:
Jamie
@Jerry: That’s the line that jumped out at me, too. “Transcendently incoherent” is genius.
Baud
Imagine if a Democrat had uttered such an elitist word.
Betty Cracker
@Timurid: Unless he drops dead before then. But yeah, regardless of Trump’s dirt nap status in 2024 and the years beyond, the cat is out of the bag, and Republican donors, lawmakers, etc., now know for certain their voters will not only elect but worship and commit violence on behalf of the douchebaggiest demagogue in North America, reveling in his overt bigotry while congress and the judiciary enact a plutocratic agenda. They will not forget that lesson.
PJ
Spoiler alert:
Rubin’s last line: “He was McCain-esque.” What would be a withering put-down from a Democrat is her highest praise. Christ.
The Moar You Know
@Betty Cracker: You’re damn right. Trump, as I’ve always said, is just a symptom. The right wing in this country now knows they have a volunteer SA brownshirt army – a HUGE one – that’s going to be willing to go out in the streets and commit violence to further their goals. They also know most cops in America, far from preventing these thugs from doing so, will join in the fun instead.
If you’re wondering why these times feel so dangerous, this is why. There’s an army, well armed, out there waiting for orders. When the smart, stable version of Trump comes around – the one that has no need for external validation – in the next couple of election cycles, that’s when we’re in real trouble.
call_me_ishmael
OpEd coverage in 2024 is going to be awful with Rubin, Brooks, and all of the never Trumpers like Max Boot etc stampeding home once Daddy Mitt is back in the saddle.
Also not looking forward to 8 months of beltway press yammering about “binders full of women” in the GOP primary.
EthylEster
“He was McCain-esque.”
Does that mean finding many ways to dissemble and deny reality but finally realizing that there IS a line that you won’t cross?
Because that’s what both men did in my opinion.
namekarB
Paywall! Guess I’ll never know what the last sentence reads.
Barbara
Shorter Murkowski and Collins: “If I wanted to make a sacrifice I would have joined the army.” At least Murkowski is from a deep red state, though she owes much of her success to Native populations who are most likely to vote for a more progressive outcome. Collins simply seems to be living in a fantasy world that might have existed once upon a time for Republicans from New England, but doesn’t anymore and hasn’t for a long time. She keeps pretending that the most important thing for her “success” as a senator is whether she gets appointed as Chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, not how she votes on questions of monumental importance to her constituents and the Republic. I call this attitude rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, or fiddling while Rome burns. You might have other images or expressions.
jnfr
@burnspbesq:
Yes indeed. Vote, register voters, write postcards to voters, protest, write your congresscritters, talk to your friends and neighbors. They only win if we stop fighting.
MattF
@Barbara: I’ve previously posted this link about a mysterious PAC that’s given Collins a chunk of cash:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/susan-collins-campaign-is-being-helped-by-a-mysterious-hawaii-company
Before seeing this, I hadn’t considered the possibility that Collins is crooked. But that would explain some things.
satby
Just want to include a link to Liberal Redneck’s latest rant here for your enjoyment. Not sure if he channels the blogfather or the blogfather is a fan of Trae’s, but I can picture Cole writing these.
catclub
@satby: That was great. “You are a doormat. You would vote for a Camaro if a man told you to.”
burnspbesq
@satby:
thanks, i needed that.
Death Panel Truck
@Cermet: McCain’s vote wasn’t for something he supported; it was his final “fuck off” to Trump.
joel hanes
at the speed of the sound of loneliness
!
waspuppet
Donald Trump is minutes away from getting behind a microphone and literally saying “They’ll all pay.” This will make Susan Collins sad.
Hungry Joe
“Courageous.” People keep using that word. I do not think it means what they think it means.
James E Powell
@Betty Cracker:
And the press/media – who all lost their minds when Hillary Clinton called racists deplorable – will treat it all as normal everyday politics.
ThresherK
Sad?
Murkowski is working Collins’ side of the street. A pitched battle ought to ensue.
Kristine
Lykki Li shout-out!
Love that song.
Ken B
@call_me_ishmael:
Any presidential aspirations Romney may have had as a Republican are dead now.
Trump can’t hurt Romney much, but the GOP base and the GOP politicians that flushed their future reputations because they’re chickenshit cowards will never forgive him for this.
I’m pretty sure Romney knew this, which was why I assumed he wouldn’t do it. This won’t hurt him much, if at all, in his home state and with Mormons in general.
But he’s dead to the GOP nationally.
Shana
“McCain-esque”? WTF?