Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

He really is that stupid.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

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

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

I was promised a recession.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

T R E 4 5 O N

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Republicans in disarray!

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

You are here: Home / Politics / GOP Death Cult / Late Night Cheapjack Horror Open Thread: Their ‘Secret’ Pathology Made Flesh

Late Night Cheapjack Horror Open Thread: Their ‘Secret’ Pathology Made Flesh

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The ‘real’ Republican party, and their media abettors, would like us to know: They don’t like TFG, either! But somehow, this monster and his drooling minions have managed to take the GOP hostage!

Perhaps the NYTimes was sending a coded signal, this weekend?…

Evergreen tweet:

Reader Interactions

56Comments

  4. 4.

    Mary G

    I sometimes read Mike Gerson in the WaPo, who’s been pretty anti-TFG lately, and Serious Reporters were praising his column today scolding Tucker’s white supremacy language, so looked:

    Some in the Republican Party hope that it can eventually maintain the Trump coalition without the toxic excesses of Donald Trump’s disordered personality. Already, a variety of talented and calculating figures — Sens. Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Tom Cotton (Ark.) come to mind — are trying to model populism minus the psychopathy. They are clearly imagining a day when a working-class and fundamentalist cultural revolt can be channeled into constructive public purposes. As one Republican congressional staffer has said: “Trump has changed the party forever, but that doesn’t mean he will control the party forever.”

    It is a rational instinct. It also strikes me as a nearly impossible task.

    Josh fucking just-as-psychopathic-as-TFG-Hawley and Tom Cotton? THEY ARE ALL EVIL, and that includes you too, Mike, and all those Twitter who pushed this.

  5. 5.

    206inKY

    Until he turned to anti-evolution lunacy, WJB was a giant. He would have hated bitcoin. And he would have hated Josh Hawley, who naturally gravitated to fellow asshole Teddy Roosevelt in college.

  6. 6.

    Mike G

    Bottom line is the donors gave their money. They can carp on the bus back to the hotel all they want, what counts is the money.

    Trump is Republicanism with the mask off, they’ve dropped the pretense and are revealing who they always were.

    Like the talibangelicals, among whom TFG is more popular than GW Bush despite being the least-Christ-like person in America, because Orange Foolius embodies their real values of authoritarian white nationalism and selfish greed, rather than the pieties they pretended were so important.

  8. 8.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    I’m pretty sore due to about a 5 mile hike I took this afternoon in the San Gabriels to an old gold/silver/copper mine on the southern slopes of Mt. Baden-Powell.  The scenery and the smell of the pine trees made the trip well worthwhile.

  9. 9.

    Redshift

    @Mary G:

    Already, a variety of talented and calculating figures — Sens. Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Tom Cotton (Ark.) come to mind — are trying to model populism minus the psychopathy. 

    They may be trying to do it without some of “the toxic excesses of Donald Trump’s disordered personality,” but “minus the psychopathy” definitely does not describe either if those two.

  10. 10.

    Tony Jay

    Ah, to be a ‘conservative politician’. Ascribed all the best attributes of genuine national leaders while they’re actually just the political equivalent of those sporting mascots who dress up as an anthropomorphic elephant/eagle/rifle and caper up and down the touchline to make the fans laugh.

    Unfortunately we all live in a Media environment where all of the reportage is concentrated on how effectively they stir up their target audience and virtually none of it mentions that they’re doing it naked from the waist down.

  11. 11.

    Steeplejack

    The whole thread attached to that David Roberts tweet is very good. Excerpts:

    [. . .] my theory of conservatism. Basically, in any society, there’s a group/​class/​demographic that has power & privileges, sometimes economic, sometimes relating to race or caste. And every such group has a story about why their place at the top is justified.

    The US was founded on equality—at least that’s what it said on the tin—so its ruling class (white property owning males) came up w/ a story about property rights, “free markets,” “small government,” & federalism. They *earned* their privileges!

    But in all societies, when that privileged class begins feeling threatened, outnumbered, & insecure, the politesse fades. The high-toned philosophical justifications drop out. Raw tribalism takes over. The class is always, first & foremost, for its own continued hegemony.

    And this has basically been the course of U.S. conservatism in the 21st century: from a self-serious, high-falutin’ “party of ideas” to a raw, raging army fighting for white hegemony. Once they got scared, all pretense of “free market” & “family values” went right out the window.

    The point of this [. . .] is that today’s conservatives are just yesterday’s conservatives, scared. The philosophical superstructure was *always* a veil over group interest. It never had any constraining or motivating power. It was epiphenomenal.

  14. 14.

    Brachiator

    The ‘real’ Republican party, and their media abettors, would like us to know: They don’t like TFG, either! But somehow, this monster and his drooling minions have managed to take the GOP hostage!

    They knew what he was and chose him anyway. They protected him, defended him and repeated his lies.

    They still believe that they can use him to their benefit. If any of them complain, they are even bigger fools than I thought they were.

  17. 17.

    Geminid

    @Steeplejack: One of the best analyses of trump’s place in the Republican party is by author M.D. Russ, published by the journal Bearing Drift under the title “Trump is the Republican President.” Russ examines the contention that trump had hijacked the party, in the light of Republican history since Gingrinch and his Contract for America. No, Russ concludes, trump did not hijack the Republican party. “He just answered the casting call.”

  18. 18.

    Splitting Image

    Since it’s an open thread, I’d like to mention that the spreadingsantorum.com website is still online.

    It’s dropped to third in the Google listings, though, behind the wiki entry of a man who has run for president twice and ahead of his twitter page. Every other entry on Google relates to the Savage campaign, not to the man himself.

    Let Santorum’s present be the former guy’s future.

    So the question is: if you had to pick a neologism for “trump”, what would it be? “Frothy mixture” is already taken.

  19. 19.

    Steeplejack

    @Geminid:

    I’ll check that out. There’s a nimrod in the Roberts thread who makes the argument that Trump hijacked the party:

    Chris DeRose: You don’t understand the primary nominating rules and ignore a sixteen-way Balkanized field where non-Republicans were decisive. I doubt you’ve resisted anything as hard as we fought this takeover, except for having some idea what you are talking about.

    David Roberts: You resisted so hard Trump had a historically high approval numbers among Republicans.

    DeRose: The preening pseudo intellectual and frequently vile opposition outside the party did quite a bit to consolidate his support within, I’ll admit.

    Roberts: Look up Murc’s Law. [“The assumption that only Democrats have any agency or causal influence over American politics.”] And consider whether Republicans might have embraced Trump of their own free will, not because of anything Democrats did.

  22. 22.

    Baud

    @Steeplejack:

    LOL. “How dare you say Republicans didn’t resist Trump just because we supported Trump due to the opposition to Trump from outside the party.”

     

    ETA: If there’s one thing Republicans hate, it’s people who are preening and vile.

  24. 24.

    Mary G

    I know lots of you don’t like Twitter, but I love seeing people who come from different walks of life running into each other:

    Finally, a no shit classic. “Baby Blue” is god-level 70s, and the story of Badfinger might be tragic but they were awesome. #AT40— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) April 10, 2021

    We find common ground! Baby Blue is a great pop standard, as are Come and Get It, No Matter What, and Day After Day.— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) April 10, 2021

    Badfinger’s best among many! Pete Ham an underrated songwriter and this one produced by Todd Rundgren. @RadioFreeTom https://t.co/vlt25B2E74— Stevie Van Zandt (@StevieVanZandt) April 12, 2021

    And I disagree with all three of them. The guitar work was great, but they fought over the lyrics and it shows.

  25. 25.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Baud:

    “The Democrats were so preening and vile that in a lot of states we couldn’t even have primaries or caucuses and just had to give the delegates to Trump.”

  26. 26.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Mary G:

    What is the Badfinger song with just them singing over 12-string acoustic guitar? I’ve been trying to rediscover that for 50 years!

    I’ve got it hopelessly entangled in my memory with Bread’s “I Want You with Me.”

    ETA: Here you go.

  30. 30.

    sab

    @Amir Khalid: My fancy phone has a world clock converter, but Malaysia isn’t on it. 5:13 in Ohio (midwest, but east coast time.) Are you at 5:13 pm or 6:13 pm?

    I wish we had Malaysian food in my US midwestern city. Midwestern food, almost by definition, is bland. We are, culturally, offended by everything, including seasoning in food. Many of us break away from the norm, but the norm is still the norm

    My mother always said the best seasoning was butter, and salt. (Family runs to high blood pressure so salt is out.)

  41. 41.

    sab

    @sab: Ramadan.  I have Muslim neighbors.

    I have been focused on US tax season. Neighbors have religious issues. Beyond thoughtless of me.

    Thanks, Amir, for the reminder.

  45. 45.

    SFAW

    @Steeplejack:

    DeRose: The preening pseudo intellectual and frequently vile opposition outside the party did quite a bit to consolidate his support within, I’ll admit.

    Sounds like he’s saying “The Demon-craps being such virulent anti-racists meant that we had to oppose them, so they wouldn’t take over Unser Partei  Our Party!”

  46. 46.

    Tony Jay

    @Amir Khalid:

    Just imagine how you’ll feel if we lose tomorrow night and the cameras pan across the smirking visage of Sergio Ramos sitting at his ease on the Away benches.

    Appetite gone?

  47. 47.

    SFAW

    @Amir Khalid:

    Thought of you yesterday: Deadspin (I think) had an article/opinion piece on how Jose Mourinho has broken Tottenham. To be honest, I didn’t read more than a paragraph or two, but I thought of your love of the game/League.

  48. 48.

    marklar

    @Mike G: Trump is Republicanism with the mask off, they’ve dropped the pretense and are revealing who they always were.

    And with the hood on.

  49. 49.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Steeplejack: As with some many other supposed-tenets, the party of personal responsibility never, ever exhibits such. It is always someone else’s fault.

    Full-on losers.

  50. 50.

    ET

    They probably think tRump is the problem. He may be the GOPs biggest single problem but honestly all the people that keep showing up to these things and giving money are a bigger collective problem.  They may think they will hear something different from him but that is stupid.  He is never, ever going to talk about anything but himself and his grievance. It is (their) insanity to to think otherwise.

    And by continuing to give him oxygen they are squandering their money by throwing it into a black hole.  They GOP as a party will keep rewarding candidates that curry favor and continue the tRump Way because the funders keep proving that they will stick with the party regardless of where the train goes. If all the funders who really want to move on from tRump stopped giving to the GOP, GOP candidates, GOP PACs, and affiliated grifters, maybe things could begin to change. But they keep the train moving. So again they are just as much of a problem as they guy they are complaining about (but continue to support by giving him money).

  52. 52.

    Another Scott

    @JCJ: They’ve been telling us for decades that business is better than government, that strong rugged individuals who speak their minds and earn lots of money are better than the rest of us, that capital is better than labor, that taxes are always bad, that breaking norms and “shaking things up” is better than respecting the systems left by our parents and grandparents.

    Of course they’re stuck with him.  He’s the personification of what they said America was about.

    tl;dr – Words matter.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  53. 53.

    brendancalling

    @Splitting Image: “Ugh. I got high and ate three helpings of kale salad last night, and just trumped the fuck out of the bathroom. Where’s the plunger and the air freshener? I am so sorry.”

  54. 54.

    piratedan

    @Mary G: cut my teeth musically with them and Raspberries.  For dudes (especially young dudes like myself in my teens back then) the amount of emotional heavy lifting done by their music was somewhat cathartic.  A way to express emotion thru song when your own mental vocabulary and ability was lacking.

    No Dice and Straight Up were killer vinyls to have and the number of awesome songs on those (that weren’t singles even) is something else.  For me We’re For The Dark and Blodwyn were just as incredible as the singles No Matter What, Day After Day and Baby Blue.

  55. 55.

    J R in WV

    @Mary G: ​
     

    Sebastian Gorka has been permanently banned

    But how will poor Sebastian G ever make a living without a propaganda arm?

    We used to have such good immigration law about Nazis not being allowed into the country!

    Can we deport him for being a member of a Nazi-supporting group?

  56. 56.

    J R in WV

    @J R in WV: ​
     

    More accurately, can we deport him for lying about being a member of a Nazi-supporting group on his immigration paperwork? Do they still ask about that, or is it now just about Communist memberships?

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