Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

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

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Everybody saw this coming.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

“But what about the lurkers?”

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

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

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

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

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

No one could have predicted…

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

We still have time to mess this up!

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

People are weird.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: Repubs Complain DeSantis Has Done the Unforgivable

Late Night Open Thread: Repubs Complain DeSantis Has Done the Unforgivable

by | 121 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

Ron and his kkkrew of ‘mischevious’ young groypers have rent the GOP’s flimsy scrim of plausible deniability (Of course I’m not a racist, but many people are saying… ) to flinders! Those careless bastards!!!

Rod Dreher is saddened…

Because, see, Rod has a Black Jewish friend:

I’ve talked to a couple of ppl who know him, including a Jew, & they both believe Nate. They think he was truly naive. I hope that is true. I spent some of this afternoon in Budapest in the Dohany Street Synagogue, in the garden of which Hungarian Nazis buried 2,200 Jews in 2/

a mass grave, during the Holocaust. It’s just up the street from the hotel where Eichmann set up HQ to direct the Budapest deportations. It disgusts me that these young right wingers play around with these symbols to be edgelords. I’m going to choose to believe my friends, & 3/

accept that Hochman sincerely didn’t know what he was doing. He’s wrecked his career, bec after once praising notorious Jew-hater Nick Fuentes, Hochman makes all those who defended him look like suckers. A tragedy all around — Hochman is a super-bright guy. Which is why it’s so difficult to believe that he was so naive about the Nazi sun symbol. But I’ll accept that it’s true, because I don’t want to believe the worst about somebody I respect, and the two friends I know who vouch for him are trustworthy. /end


Bethany Mandel, rightwing-talking-pointperson and professional Mommy, somersaults into the convo…

Late Night Open Thread: Repubs Complain DeSantis Has Done the Unforgivable 1

Rich Lowry wants DeSantis to get smart and use the proper euphemisms, dammit!

Look, accidents happen!

Matt Yglesias, Captain Obvious:

Late Night Open Thread: Repubs Complain DeSantis Has Done the Unforgivable 2

Reader Interactions

121Comments

  3. 3.

    RaflW

    Rod, really: “I spent some of this afternoon in Budapest… pining for my secret* crush Viktor Orbán. Just like I do every day. When will he notice me. I mean really see me. Le sigh.”

    *Sorry, Roddy. It’s not even much of a secret.

  4. 4.

    scav

    So, the right-wings better educated operative class are stunningly naive when it comes to nazi imagery and thus represent a pull to the center of GOP (or is it American?)  culture by being edgelords?

  6. 6.

    piratedan

    appears to be something of an epidemic, all of these GOP candidates and pundits coming down with a case of the Nazi’s, please be sure to socially distance yourself appropriately until we come up with a vaccine…..

  7. 7.

    twbrandt

    What’s funny is if you search for “sonnenrad” (I use DuckDuckGo), most of the results that come back mention DeSantis. That nazi symbol will be associated with him for a long time.

  8. 8.

    danielx

    Mercy, that groypers definition…if I did a Venn diagram between them and those incel freaks, how much overlap?

  11. 11.

    MattF

    Hey, he did his job… and he was great at it. The guy found the perfect video background for a DeSantis campaign ad. What’s wrong with that???

  14. 14.

    Peale

    Ugh. The “X” rebrand looks to me like Elon is daring me to click on the tweets and close them.

  15. 15.

    JWR

    @Peale:

    Ugh. The “X” rebrand…

    I know! It draws the eye to the brand and not the Xeet(sic). Might be easier on the eye if it weren’t bolded, but then it wouldn’t look quite so edgelord-ish.

  16. 16.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    ” all of these GOP candidates and pundits coming down with a case of the Nazi’s, please be sure to socially distance yourself appropriately until we come up with a vaccine…..”

     

    Oh, we’ve got the vaccine.

    It’s just a matter of giving them “the shot”, if you know what I mean.

    1944 style.

  17. 17.

    eclare

    • I googled this image earlier today, I had never heard of it.  Took several tries to find it.  This was no accident by Ron’s assistant.
  18. 18.

    dm

    I wasn’t familiar with the sonnenrad, but I have to say the parallel lines of soldiers marching toward it at the end of  the DeSantis video looked like something Lena Riefenstahl might have done for Mussolini.

  19. 19.

    JWR

    I’m going to choose to believe my friends, & 3/

    accept that Hochman sincerely didn’t know what he was doing.

    Willful ignorance, one of the hallmarks of the modern GOP.

  20. 20.

    Ruckus

    What’s the size of the neo Nazi constituency in America in your estimate?

    If there is more than one, it is:

    Too Fucking Large

    And there is more than one.

  23. 23.

    Balconesfault

    @Ruckus: What’s the size of the neo Nazi constituency in America in your estimate?

    I suspect that DeSantis pollsters told him that a lot of the older GOP primary voters were too locked in for Trump to move them … and he had to look to younger likely GOP primary voters.

    Then the relevant question becomes What’s the size of the neo Nazi constituency among younger Republican primary voters?

  25. 25.

    Tony Jay

    There does not exist a situation or a combination of events that could lead someone to ‘accidentally’ choose a symbol of specifically Nazi and neo-Nazi iconography to superimpose over a heavily militaristic scene in a professionally produced campaign video.

    All of the tortuous squirming around this central fact is just to obscure the incontestable truth that the RoDS campaign, and the wider Republican Party, is staffed by neo-Nazis who want people to know they are neo-Nazis because they think that’s a good thing to be.

    And the only Dreher that anyone should ever give a moment of their time to is the beer for sale here in Sicily. 66ml bottles for €1.80. Not as tasty as Messina, but it’ll do.

  32. 32.

    Baud

    “Mr. DeSantis, why have you grown a Hitler moustache.”

    “I thought it was a Charlie Chaplin moustache. I had no idea.”

  38. 38.

    Brachiator

    I have heard this tune before.

    “A real patriotic MAGA American could not possibly be racist.”

    Even with a slightly new arrangement, it’s still the same old song.

    “A real patriotic MAGA American could not possibly be antisemitic.”

  39. 39.

    Baud

    U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina has criticized fellow Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for supporting new standards that require teachers to instruct middle school students that slaves developed skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”

    “What slavery was really about was separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives. It was just devastating,” Scott, the sole Black Republican in the Senate, told reporters on Thursday after a town hall in Ankeny. “So I would hope that every person in our country — and certainly running for president — would appreciate that.”

    “People have bad days,” Scott added. “Sometimes they regret what they say. And we should ask them again to clarify their positions.”

  40. 40.

    Citizen Alan

    @Baud: $10 says Scott gets primaried now. He said stuff that might make white racists feel bad about themselves, which is the essence of CRT and a sure sign that he’s a Woke RINO.

  47. 47.

    Ksmiami

    Blood and soil, racism anti-semitism and misogyny. That’s is the essence of the GOP now and it’s why the party needs to be obliterated. With salt over the ashes.

  48. 48.

    karen marie

    Do candidates do any kind of background check on campaign employees? It seems odd they wouldn’t, simply to avoid ratfuckers from opponents’ campaigns. Or Nazis.

  49. 49.

    lowtechcyclist

    @NotMax: ​
     

    “Only to ten, Mudhead.”
    – Firesign Theater

    Good one!

    Don’t Crush That Dwarf is still amazing after all these years.

  50. 50.

    satby

    Well, good morning campers!

    So I’m confused, did the “oopsie, nazis” break out concurrently to the superseding indictment news, or did it take center stage to distract from it? Because I don’t think “we’re not traitors and criminals, we’re just nazis” is the killer distraction they think it is.

  51. 51.

    lowtechcyclist

    @NotMax: ​
     

    Wait, wait, back up there a moment.

    Rod Dreher has friends?

    What’s Dreher’s dog in this fight, anyway? Apparently America has disappointed him so much, he’s moved to Hungary. And that, IIRC, was after the more cosmopolitan parts of America disappointed him so much, he’d moved to East Bumfuck, Louisiana. He moved to Hungary only after that didn’t work out for him.

  52. 52.

    VeniceRiley

    My 101 year old mother died yesterday, and now she is finally freed from the right wing grift machine that Rush, Murdoch, and Hannity laid to entrap our loved ones. RIP mommy.

  56. 56.

    lowtechcyclist

    @VeniceRiley: ​
     

    Condolences on the death of your mom. And I’m all too familiar with the way those grifters prey on the elderly. My wife’s grandmother was of that generation (born 1924), and they were still ringing up her phone and sending her pleas for money by mail for years after we had to move her to the nursing home.

  58. 58.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud: ​
     

    “People have bad days,” Scott added. “Sometimes they regret what they say. And we should ask them again to clarify their positions.”

    Their positions are quite clear. Tim Scott is fooling only himself if he thinks he can be fully accepted as a Republican and tell them even the limited amount that he’s willing to tell them about what the Black journey through American history has been like.

  59. 59.

    Anyway

    Yglesias is full of it. GQP culture warriors (esp those featured in the FTFNYT) pulling the party to the center does not pass the smell test. But he got to do a facile bothsides — give him a cookie.

  60. 60.

    JWR

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Doesn’t take much, with that crowd, to make yourself a heretic and apostate, and Hurd cleared that bar x1000.

    He’d already cleared that bar by x100 when he woke up that dusky morning. But srsly, what is it that causes a guy who looks like him to think he’s got a snowball’s chance in wherever of becoming the GOP standard bearer? Magical thinking, I would suppose.

  61. 61.

    NotMax

    Yes, Virginia, there is TMI.

    Copied and pasted (verbatim) from package tracking regarding a single item ordered from Amazon on July 20. Item home crafted in Georgia by a hobbyist (76-year-old guy who bravely provides his own cell phone number along with the Amazon listing for those with questions or complaints).

    Friday, July 28
    12:17 AM
    Package arrived at a carrier facility.
    East Granby, CT US

    Thursday, July 27
    11:23 PM
    Package arrived at a carrier facility.
    Springfield Ma Network Distribu,

    10:36 PM
    Package left the carrier facility.
    Springfield Ma Network Distribu,

    9:51 PM
    Package left the carrier facility.
    Springfield Ma Network Distribu,

    8:53 PM
    Package left the carrier facility.
    Springfield Ma Network Distribu,

    5:10 PM
    Package being processed at carrier facility.
    Springfield Ma Network Distribu,

    5:10 PM
    Package arrived at a carrier facility.
    Springfield Ma Network Distribution Center, US

    3:55 PM
    Package arrived at a carrier facility.
    Southern Ct Distribution Center, US

    12:28 PM
    Package left an Amazon facility.
    Wallingford, CT US

    Wednesday, July 26
    4:59 PM
    Package arrived at an Amazon facility.
    Wallingford, CT US
    Carrier picked up the package.

    Original estimated delivery date August 5, now changed to August 2.

  64. 64.

    satby

    After a huge storm cleared out our smokey air, it’s now 69° with a dew point of 69 at 6:22 am. 100% humidity, and it’s not raining. I hate summers with normal hot weather, this has been awful. When the weather hasn’t been too hot and humid, the air has been positively chewy. It’s like the covid shut-in time again.

  65. 65.

    bjacques

    It looks like the smarter alt-right trolls from the previous decade learned to parlay their online skills into gigs as GOP media and outreach consultants,  Though 2016 was their high-water mark, the Trumpier ones still think they’re worth the money.

    Vaguely related, I remember a Trump press conference in the Rose Garden, in 2018 or 2019, and a tenacious woman reporter tried to ask a follow up to the first one he’d already refused to answer. He ordered the mike taken away, and the guy in charge of it gave off serious Proud Boy vibes, with a bad short haircut, goatee, and black shades.

  66. 66.

    Tony Jay

    @eclare:

    Going great. It’s damned hot, but it’s the central Med in Summer, so of course it’s hot. Mr Pale Blue Skin here is taking it into account and sticking to the shade like Count Orlok.

    We’re just relaxing, crosswords, watching Monk, doing a bit of cooking, eating lots of granitas and the fantastic ice-cream. Haven’t found a bad restaurant yet, and the pizza, Jeebus in a One-Piece bathing suit but the pizza is magnificent!

    And when we’re done with beach life, we get whistle stop tours of Venice, Vienna and Paris. Life is so good it’s like I’m kicking RoDS in the nuts every goddam day.

  68. 68.

    lowtechcyclist

    @NotMax:

    Yes, Virginia, there is TMI.

    Or just that Amazon has its own Department of Redundancy Department.  I see the package arrived in Springfield twice, departed Springfield three times, and arrived at East Granby twice.

    East Granby makes sense because that’s where Bradley International Airport is. Bradley is in between Hartford and Springfield and is the commercial airport for both cities.  Not sure why the package went right past Granby to Springfield first, though – Wallingford’s right off I-91 north of New Haven; a package going from Wallingford to Springfield would go right past the airport on the way. (Spent a lot of time in southern New England in another lifetime.)

  69. 69.

    Tony Jay

    @Steeplejack:

    Weights and measures are obviously not my thing. That’s why I outsource all of my logistical needs to capable minds who stop me starving/living like a stylite.

  70. 70.

    p.a

    That Yglesias tweet is just *chef’s kiss* of the MSM/”we explain politics so you don’t have to” crowd.

     

    Similar to some human beings, there is no center in modern Republicanism.

  73. 73.

    Tony Jay

    @NotMax:

    Lost in translation. What Dreher calls ‘friends’ are what people who aren’t such deluded knobslappers would term ‘actual fascists that lonely creeps observe through barred windows and fantasise about being one of’.

    A lot of his words have different real world meanings. Phrases too. ‘Took a step away from the distractions of domestic life to concentrate on intellectual pursuits’ is his version of ‘the bitch dumped me because I’m a fucking weirdo with kinks any Jackboot Jack could fund a new speedboat from’.

  74. 74.

    Princess

    @Peale: yeah, stupidest logo ever. A logo in the top left that looks like the x in the top left you use to close a page.

    W/respect to Dreher, I still think he’s living in Hungary to escape the consequences of something in the states. I don’t care how fash-friendly he is; no one who isn’t Hungarian settles permanently in Hungary unless they have nowhere else to go, because of the language.

  79. 79.

    eversor

    @lowtechcyclist:

    The same one as Leonard Leo, Alito, Bill Barr, Sorhab Ahmari, Douthat and the rest of them.  Christianity.

    Christianity is more important than anything.  Furthermore they cannot live out or pass on their faith in a society that rejects Christian values and where Christian values are not dominant in all aspects of academia, government, legal, and cultural spheres.  And since the US has rejected both Christian and Biblical demanded gender roles, patriarchy, sexual morality, submission, and hierarchy they cannot live out their faith or pass it on.  Since the young have rejected the faith as well democracy has failed and will destroy Christianity.  So what is needed are strong man leaders who will use the power of the state to enforce all of these issues and stand for Christianity to save the faith.  Anything and everything, is OK and even good in process of accomplishing this.

    Orban comes into this because he created government programs that give out money to women who stay at home and make babies.  He’s also flat out said Christianity is the key to everything and having a Christian nation is the most important thing.

    They saw in DeSantis a chance for their own Orban or Franco.  If you read through the who national conservative manifesto the nuts and bolts of it boil down to putting prayer in schools, the government, a biblical legal system, giving the Church control over all things cultural, and that the dominant religion rules.  Everyone else is just tolerated as long as they go along with it and don’t complain about it.

    They all give a pass to the fascists because the fascists are on their side when it comes to all the parts of Christianity liberals pretend don’t exist, were only in the old testament, or Jesus never demanded or condoned.  From their logic, it’s abandoning those things that causes fascist uprisings so facism is nothing more than the end result of social liberalism.

    These guys aren’t hard to understand.  The attend international meetings on this, talk at colleges about it, comment on TV about it, and write and cosign manifestos around it.  People just head in sand about it because confronting what’s actually going on with the right means it’s not really race or wealth driving all this, it’s Christianity full stop.   With the racists and the wealthy just along to get what they want as well.  But until the religious issue is taken care of this can’t be beaten, stopped, or countered.  You can only delay it.

  80. 80.

    Kay

    I wasn’t familiar with the sonnenrad, but I have to say the parallel lines of soldiers marching toward it at the end of  the DeSantis video looked like something Lena Riefenstahl might have done for Mussolini.

    The use of Nazi images on the Right gets all the attention – as it should- but these ads they do are insanely angry and militaristic even without the appreciative nod to Hitler.
    Does this not occur to anyone on the Right watching them? That the ads are grim and frightening and unhinged? They’re ALL poisoned by the toxic,combative culture they lovingly nurtured if they don’t see it.

  81. 81.

    Ken

    @twbrandt: What’s funny is if you search for “sonnenrad” (I use DuckDuckGo), most of the results that come back mention DeSantis. That nazi symbol will be associated with him for a long time.

    Remarkable, when you consider it took months of concerted effort to google-bomb Santorum.

  82. 82.

    AM in NC

    @Baud:   “People have bad days,” Scott added. “Sometimes they regret what they say. And we should ask them again to clarify their positions.”

    Maybe we should ask Senator Tim Scott to clarify his position on whether women are human or not, based both on his votes to deny women the same bodily autonomy as men and on his comment that slavery was “about mutilating humans and even raping their wives”.

    So telling that their language gives the game away.  Too bad for the (non-human) wives, I guess.

  83. 83.

    Matt McIrvin

    Meanwhile, RFK Jr. whines about not getting Secret Service protection in an odd tweet that prominently juxtaposes the numbers 14 and 88, not long after Just Asking Questions about whether COVID was engineered to spare the Jews. So it appears he’s playing a similar game.

  84. 84.

    Ken

    @Princess: no one who isn’t Hungarian settles permanently in Hungary unless they have nowhere else to go, because of the language.

    I take an obscure pleasure in the fact that Hungarian doesn’t have gendered pronouns; ő is used for both “he” and “she”. I suppose it’s too much to hope Dreher twitches slightly every time ő’s forced to use such a “woke” language.

  85. 85.

    AM in NC

    @VeniceRiley:  So sorry about your mom. The one-year anniversary of my mom’s death (only 78) was a couple of days ago. Nothing that you are feeling is wrong during this time.  Sending you strength and peace.

  86. 86.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Peale: The thing that gets me is that it’s not even a custom-designed logotype. It’s something that shows up in a standard Unicode font pack–the “blackboard bold” capital X from the extended mathematical symbols section, not used as frequently as ℝ, ℂ, ℤ or ℚ but a similar idea. Here, I’ll make some, and you may or may not be able to see them: 𝕏𝕏𝕏𝕏𝕏𝕏𝕏𝕏𝕏

  88. 88.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Matt McIrvin: Those definitely look like what I’m seeing on Tweet Xcretions now. He didn’t have to pay graphic artists to design anything! (Fortunate because they were fired long ago). Genius move! That’s how you become a billionaire!

    Legal Department might have pointed out some issues, but there isn’t a Legal Department any more.

  91. 91.

    Eyeroller

    @Matt McIrvin: At my age and with my computing history, all I see in this “new” logo is X11/X Windows.  Which it basically is although they used a filled version.

  92. 92.

    MagdaInBlack

    @NotMax: Some sort of rift in the time-space continuum has created a mini time-loop in MA. It’s the only answer.

  93. 93.

    catclub

    @JWR: ​
    &nbsp

    ;Willful ignorance, one of the hallmarks of the modern GOP.

    also granting benefit of the doubt to adult whites but 12 year old black kids are obviously hardened criminals.

  95. 95.

    Ken

    I am slightly bummed by the writer’s strike, because of what I imagine SNL or the late-night comics would do with it. SNL would probably be better. Something like, first show the campaign video, which is basically 1930s Nazi footage with DeSantis’ face and “KILL THE WOKE” superimposed. Then cut to the campaign staff which has been watching the video for their reaction, and they want more Nazi stuff.

  97. 97.

    Betty

    @JWR: I feel a little shock every time I look at my screen and see the cute little blue bird replaced by that offensive, bold X. It does represent Musk accurately though.

  98. 98.

    Denali5

    @Princess,

    I hate to tell you this but my son settled in Hungary because…..follow the woman. He is still taking Hungarian lessons.

  101. 101.

    different-church-lady

    His outreach to the far right is neither a strategy nor an error: it’s a desire.

  102. 102.

    Wapiti

    The part with Dreher that causes me to twitch is his usage of  “a Jew“. That set off all sorts of bigot alarms.

  103. 103.

    CliosFanBoy

    You know what you call someone who joined the NAZIs, not because they hated Jews, but because they thought it was good for their career, or because their friends did, or because they were afraid not to??

     

    You call them NAZIs, because nobody care why the F* you joined them!!!!!

  104. 104.

    Jinchi

    @Betty:  Agreed. Elon’s new ‘X’ icon is offensive in a way all his other changes were not. It’s a constant reminder that he’s turned a well known social site into a very expensive version of 4chan.

  105. 105.

    Bill Arnold

    @Ksmiami:

    Blood and soil, racism anti-semitism and misogyny. That’s is the essence of the GOP now

    And tax cuts for the wealth. And cheap, fearful, compliant labor.

  107. 107.

    Elizabelle

    @Tony Jay:

    And when we’re done with beach life, we get whistle stop tours of Venice, Vienna and Paris. Life is so good it’s like I’m kicking RoDS in the nuts every goddam day.

    Wonderful trip.  Enjoy!!

  110. 110.

    Tony Jay

    @MinuteMan:

    My lamentable error has already been pointed out. That should have been 66cl bottles. Basically a pint.

    That said, they are bottles of Dreher, so tiny proportions are to be expected.

  111. 111.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Eyeroller: At least they bothered to draw something for the X Window System logo! It probably wasn’t an a professional designer who drew it, knowing how they did things in that community in those days, but they bothered.

  112. 112.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    They maybe Nazis, but it’s more of the “Mutant Love Child of Himmler and Martian Borman” kind of way.

  113. 113.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @CliosFanBoy: You know what you call someone who joined the NAZIs, not because they hated Jews, but because they thought it was good for their career, or because their friends did, or because they were afraid not to??

    I always thought the truly disgusting thing about the death camps were they were run by guys who thought it was a good career move and could careless about the rest.

  114. 114.

    VeniceRiley

    We used to torture my mother by pointing out that her democrat children were caring for her while her right wing children would parachute in for a celebration now and then. 

  115. 115.

    NotMax

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Mind boggling how many incarceration camps Germany had set up during WW2. Death camps, concentration camps, slave labor camps, prisoner work camps, detention camps, and on and on.

    This is not a typo: More than 40,000.

  116. 116.

    El Muneco

    @Matt McIrvin: He seems to be of the opinion that his polling numbers in the primary race were getting too high, and is aggressively doing something about that.

Comments are closed.