Via The Washington Post, this glimpse of the GOP id:
Not, as the Post reporter Griff White* pointed out, unreasonable views on their face.
Could the glitterati** of the Florida Gulf Coast find anything objectionable in Congressman Francis Rooney’s pretty anodyne statements?
Oh yeah:
“I told him, ‘You’ve betrayed your country, your president and your constituents,’ ” said Doris Cortese, 80, the vice chair of the Lee County Republican Executive Committee, recounting a conversation with Rooney.
“My exact words to him were: ‘Get out.’ ”
Within hours, the longtime Republican insider had, announcing on Fox News his decision not to run again after two terms.
Griff then unfolds a serious of interviews with — and I don’t know how to put this politely — delusional white people who testify to the perfection of Trump while denouncing all those apostates and unbelievers who do not bask in his glorious orange glow. A sample from a glitter artist specializing in Trump themed jewelry and keepsakes:
“[The impeachment inquiry is] not correct, it’s not constitutional, it’s unprecedented and it’s probably illegal,” said Marty Wisher, a 54-year-old artist and avid Republican volunteer.
Here’s another:
“I consider Trump to be our David against Goliath,” said Nancy Price, a 73-year-old retiree who spends much of her free time volunteering for Republican campaigns. “He’s doing such a phenomenal job, and look what he has to fight every day.”
“They’ll all be trying to outdo each other,” said Peter Bergerson, a political scientist at Florida Gulf Coast University. “It will be the Ivory soap test. You’ve got to be 99.99 percent pure. At least.”
The point for those of us who have not huffed Trump’s can of orange spray paint? The Biden-Buttigieg pitch that Democrats should and they can attract Republican voters to a “reasonable” centrist Democratic challenger to the corrupt and inept president is hooey. Malarky. Folderol. A nostalgic fantasy born of too many viewings of the collected works of Jimmy Stewart. This will be a brawl, to put it mildly, and the way we win is by mobilizing every last base Democrat and any actual uncommitted voter. The Republican Party that could range from Goldwater to Brooke no longer exists, and what’s left is neither persuadable or salvageable.
But of course, we jackals know that. It’s only the Village that needs reminding, along with some of our leaders.
Open thread!
*How is that not a Daily Planet reporter’s name?
**Wait for it.
Image: Jacques Stella, Solomon sacrificing to the idols, 1647
zzyzx
Counter argument: The people who were once moderate Republicans haven’t vanished. They just now identify as independents or even Democrats. The Republicans are so pure because many have left the party. The Democratic Party does not have the same ideological purity, so what it means to mobilize is more complicated, hence why different people are trying different ways to do it.
hells littlest angel
“It will be the Ivory soap test. You’ve got to be
99.99 percent purewhite.”Roger Moore
Ivory soap only claims to be 99.44% pure.
As I said in responding to this on Twitter, the Republican party has been a cult in search of a leader at least since the Reagan era. Reagan, for all his faults, seems not to have demanded cult-like loyalty, and it was only after he was too debilitated by Alzheimer’s that the cultist wing of the party tried to deify him. Subsequent party leaders either didn’t want to lead a cult (like Bush Sr.) or never quite managed to step into the role (like Bush Jr.). Sarah Palin came surprisingly close, but failed out when she got covered in McCain’s loser stink. It wasn’t until they got Trump that the party found someone who was simultaneously eager to be a cult leader, acceptable to the base, and capable of cheating well enough to take power.
stinger
So he’s named his running mate? The pairing wouldn’t surprise me.
MisterForkbeard
It’s definitely a cult. You can see this on facebook, where people are convinced that literally everything that happens is just some delusional liberal making up stuff about Trump. Not, you know, Trump lying and getting things wrong, causing genocides, betraying allies, etc.
It’s similar to the people I see proclaiming that Bernie is the best and has the best plans and has announced the best ways to pay for his plan and has the best rallies, and is therefore the best candidate, and anyone who disagrees is evil. I imagine there’s heavy breathing involved there.
It’s THIS sort of thing that I think Obama was warning about yesterday. The big difference is that Bernie looks like he’ll lose the primary decisively, while the Republican party gave a couple years of limp wristed concern and now is all-in for Trump/
Duke of Clay
Griff White — Perry’s Nephew?
NotMax
Perry White was not in favor of nepotism.
SATSQ.
mrmoshpotato
@Roger Moore: What’s the other 0.56%? Dirt? Unrefined crude? :)
satby
Florida attracts a special kind of rich white crazy old farts. And not just from the USA, the Canadians and Brits who bake their brains out down there love to piss and moan about their countries’ socialized medicine and how awful it is. Though they head home pretty dang quickly if they get sick. They’ve all got theirs, fuck you very much.
jeffreyw
I’m old enough to remember that it was a huge scandal when the actress in the ivory Snow commercial was outed as a porn star.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Honestly, if the # 1 priority of Democrats when they briefly had all 3 branches of government was reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, Obama would have not had the same level of opposition from the GOP and Trump would have bi-partisian support for impeachment.
MisterForkbeard
The coda to this whole sad and insane story is that not only did they browbeat him into retirement – he went back on his own remarks and voted against the inquiry.
So no, not even a principled Republican. Just someone who made some incredibly mild remarks and was attacked for them by the base.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
you don’t say?
the reporter never, that I can see, asks what issues they support, because they know it as well as we do, but it would be impolite to put it in the newspaper
ETA: is Marco Island part of this district ? My rich Obama-hating but trump-hating aunt lives there. I don’t if Kavanaugh changed her mind
Mary G
Fox News is a hell of a drug, and its biggest junkies will die happy even if Twitler has just shot them on Fifth Ave. They are lost to us. I think young people are our best bet – they came out in the midterms and need to be dragged to the polls this year and next in even bigger numbers, by their hair if necessary. All the abortion bans, screaming about colleges, and raping the environment will boomerang with the Republicans. I hope so anyway.
TomatoQueen
I left Fort Myers in early 1991 after living there for seven years, after realizing it would never evolve from its then-incarnation of a dead-end hellhole for retirees from Cleveland (and not a place to raise a child with disabilities). Keeping track of it has less and less appeal as it seems to be a breeding ground for more and more exotic forms of algae and red tide, as well as Rs far more bizarre than oldtime types such as Porter Goss and Connie Mack IV. Tourist season approaches and now they offer some sort of zombie apocalypse convention. To be avoided.
mrmoshpotato
@satby:
I congratulate them on the Russthuglicans somehow failing to destroy their social security and Medicare in the two years the bastards controlled the House, Senate and White House.
I still don’t know how they dodged that cannon.
TS (the original)
This was the first news I saw this morning (Australia)
So much for the very stable genius.
satby
@mrmoshpotato: air. Truth. It was invented by accident when a company technician left a mixer on too long and whipped air into the soap batter.
It’s also one of the only true soaps made by Proctor and Gamble.
HumboldtBlue
@zzyzx:
Or, as is happening in Virginia, Republican candidates are just lifting Democratic policy positions whole cloth and running on them as their own platform.
LGBTQ protections, healthcare, etc.
MisterForkbeard
@TS (the original):
I’m pretty sure Hillary/Cassandra warned us about this too.
Well, and so did the rest of the left, and the media…. wait, no. The media did nothing.
dmsilev
@Roger Moore:
Seldom is the question asked, pure _what_?
HumboldtBlue
@dmsilev:
Soap.
dmsilev
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Fairness Doctrine only ever applied to broadcast news (because it is “the public airwaves”), and was never relevant for cable. It wouldn’t have done anything to cut off the rise of Fox. Rush Limbaugh, maybe.
WereBear
If I hadn’t grown up in Florida, I wouldn’t understand Southern Gothic so well.
JaySinWA
@Duke of Clay: Nepotism? Perrys the thought.
Or what @NotMax: said.
mrmoshpotato
@dmsilev: Pure horses’ asses. :)
dmsilev
@HumboldtBlue: Where, of course, “soap” is defined as “those substances making up 99.44% of Ivory”.
TS (the original)
@MisterForkbeard:
I checked the CNN report on the trade deal and it only said
Didn’t want to upset the genius with the rest of the quote.
satby
@dmsilev: pure soap. Soap is an FDA regulated term, that’s why most of the bars you get in stores are labeled “bath” or “deodorant” or “body” bars, not soap. It can only be called soap if it consists of saponified fats and oils (fatty acids mixed with a base like lye).
Yeah, I could go on all night…
JaySinWA
@mrmoshpotato: Rat turds most likely.
Roger Moore
@mrmoshpotato:
According to The Straight Dope, the remainder is 0.11% uncombined alkali, 0.28% carbonates, and 0.17% mineral matter. Those seem like reasonable percentages. It’s really hard to get anything ultra-pure, and in practice you only need to reduce the impurities to a level that they aren’t problematic for the purpose you’re using it for.
Too bad they didn’t decide Ivory’s other notable characteristic “It Floats!” as their Trump test. After all, when there’s a witch hunt on, floating is a bad sign.
satby
@JaySinWA: ? do you not read all the way to the bottom of a thread first?
debbie
NPR interviewed Rooney last week, and he then announced his retirement a couple days later. Would an 80-year-old man intimidate him like that? Maybe he listened in and realized just how stupid he sounded.
hells littlest angel
@jeffreyw: I’m afraid you’re so old you don’t remember it right. The porn star was outed as the Ivory Soap model.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@dmsilev: Then the Fairness Doctrine should have been reinstated and broadened to include cable news. These people are so enmeshed in their bubbles they are clueless. You can’t have a functional Democracy this way.
Mike in NC
Yesterday’s USA Today had an article about the cultists, like one 84 year old who thought Fat Bastard ranked right up there with Washington and Reagan as one of the greatest Americans to ever live, blah blah blah. I confess to not understand elderly conservative white people who want to live in 1950 again. They appear to marinate in FOX News.
trollhattan
And Ivory floats. You know what else floats? Witches! The witch hunt is real, and there are really a lot of witches!
Jeffro
@zzyzx:
Agree. In this day and age, Ronald Reagan would be more welcome in the D party than the R party (barely, but it’s true)
Forty years ago, Obama could have passed as a moderate Republican.
THAT’s how far gone today’s GOP is.
trollhattan
@TS (the original):
“Trade wars are the easiest wars to win, believe me.”
–Some guy
NotMax
@satby
Or perhaps not so accidental after all.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Mary G: I think the brain rot on display there goes much deeper than a wee bit to much Fox News.
Jeffro
@HumboldtBlue:
Lifting them…but lying about it. They have absolutely no intention of following through on those things.
It’s the same with the whole GOP, from trumpov on up (order intentional there): they are already saying they’re trying to protect those with pre-existing conditions…while trying to undo that in the courts. Just flat out lying 110% at this point.
Ruckus
@dmsilev:
It does get your hands clean. We use it at work. In a machine shop.
JaySinWA
@satby: Not today, and I thought rat turds is always an answer to what contaminates consumer non-durables. It definitely is for food products.@Roger Moore: s answer could well embody that possibility, when rat droppings are reduced to components.
Roger Moore
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
then the Roberts Court would have wiped their asses with it the same way they did with McCain/Feingold.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@TS (the original): Just think, it’s most of our’s life times that China was the crazy ones with the Cultural Revolution.
satby
@NotMax: Good catch! Yeah, production accident was the story I heard.
dmsilev
@trollhattan: And besides witches, what else floats?
A duck!
Tamara, a desperate nation turns its eyes towards you.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
Pure alkali salts of fatty acids, i.e. soap.
TS (the original)
@Jeffro: Wondering what happened to trump’s super big fabulous cheap health system that will replace Obamacare.
Reality – the Chinese understand trump much better than those 60 million Americans who voted for him.
trollhattan
After hearing earlier today from the second-stupidest man in congress, #1 had to take the mic back.
WereBear
Cults wish they had Fox News.
Hours and hours of their favorite fantasy world streamed into their eyes and ears — many people listen to hours of Limbaugh during work. Imagine the brainwashing potential.
The closest thing I can think of is how Amway would push their victims to listen to those motivational cassette tapes, bought from Amway. Because enthusiasm was the key to success!
In the memoir Merchants of Deception, a man woke from the Ambot haze when he stopped listening to them. Like the drug wore off.
germy
@trollhattan:
Gohmert is aching for a civil war. He wants us frightened in our homes.
Michael Cain
@Roger Moore: IIRC, the mineral matter is salt, added to harden the soap to hold its shape better.
Ruckus
@Mike in NC:
They want yesteryear. They remember it differently than it actually happened, so they think it’s better. They are of course, full of shit. Oh and faux news constantly telling them it was better. faux news is also full of shit.
NotMax
@dmsilev
Cannot resist linking.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan: Those ammosexual Democrats! *headdesk*
MisterForkbeard
@trollhattan: “Investigating us will end in us shooting you” would normally appear to be an admission of guilt, but I guess I’m not a legal expert like the fine minds at DOJ.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jeffro:
It’s really bizarre to think Reagan would be denounced as a secret liberal wuss in today’s Republican party.
I think the race to the Right with the conservative is getting to the point they will soon be on the hard left advocating Marxism. They’ve declared Trump Sun King, what’s left?
satby
@JaySinWA: the 11% uncombined alkali sounds weird to me; in modern soap making the types and % of fats and the amount of pure lye to saponify the batch is always calculated so that the ratio of fatty acids is greater than the alkali. It’s a chemical reaction, and no uncombined alkali should remain. Interesting.
NotMax
@WereBear
Marshall McLuhan identified hot media and cool media. Never envisioned filthy media.
;)
satby
@Michael Cain: bingo! I bet you’re correct.
Roger Moore
@satby:
But, oddly enough, not an FDA regulated product. True soaps are regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, while non-soap cleansers are regulated by FDA. To quote from the FDA FAQ on soap:
JPL
nytimes
I fear for us if he wins agains
prostratedragon
@TS (the original): Pure Communist propaganda!
Chris T.
@mrmoshpotato: I’ve always wondered that myself, and I actually use Ivory.
satby
@Roger Moore: yep. Lots of people run afoul of those regulations in their labeling or because they make medicinal claims.
JaySinWA
@satby: That’s 0.11% or 0.0011, I am not a chemist, but I wouldn’t be surprised that some alkali didn’t react even in a super saturated condition. It’s all probability.
NotMax
@Roger Moore
Speaking of soaps, worth a glance if only for the darling construction “twee paddywhackery.”
JPL
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Reagan would do what it took to remain in power.
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
Congressman Francis Rooney voted today against the impeachment proceedings.
Roger Moore
@satby:
That testing was done in the 19th Century, so a lot has changed in the manufacturing process since then. I’ve read about 19th Century soap manufacturing (yes, I really am that geeky) and I think a bit of left over alkali was considered normal back then. IIRC, they would usually saponify the oil with excess alkali and then rinse it to get rid of the excess. They also had a hard time getting really pure sodium hydroxide- they often used either a mix of sodium and potassium hydroxide or mostly potassium- so they would use saturated brine for the rinse to replace the potassium with sodium. The brine would also tend to salt the soap out so they lost less of it to dissolving in the rinse water. That’s probably where the mineral matter came from.
Marcopolo
So here’s something to think about: as of tomorrow we’ll have reached the timeline of Bladerunner.
Here’s a piece looking at our Nov 2019 compared to the film’s: https://gizmodo.com/heads-up-replicants-may-already-be-among-us-1839508789/amp?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=_twitter&__twitter_impression=true
While I can probably live w/out replicants, having flying cars would be kind of cool. Well, that and off-world colonies.
For folks who have seen the film, anything in it you’d particularly like to see or are glad hasn’t yet come to pass?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Buzzfeed has a similar story, also from Florida, but up around the Panhandle, and they let the trumpers explain themselves
Mr Lane is retired Navy. I don’t know if or how he checks the race of the people whose taxes pay his for his health care, pension, etc
That’s Chris, who’s on a totally heterosexual, jeebus-approved disability
God bless that private sector.
kindness
The Cultists are swilling the KoolAide by the barrel.
NotMax
@Marcopolo
Well, FOX ‘News’ viewers might be described as electric sheep.
;)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@David ??Booooooo?? Koch: as did Beto’s friend, the legendarily thoughtful Will Hurd
Chris T.
@satby: All chemical actions are subject to kinetics. There are bound to be some molecules of NaOH left. 0.11% seems a bit high (gut-feel, no attempt at calculation, here) but it would obviously depend on how long they let the mix go before freezing it into bars.
(I wonder who did the measuring, and what sort of statistical sampling was applied? Well, I don’t actually care enough to wonder that much…)
Chris T.
@Roger Moore: Ah, that actually explains a LOT.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Uhh, come again?
Mary G
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again:
trollhattan
@Chris T.:
Nerdiest marketing campaign I have ever seen was a bar of soap sample–maybe packaged with the Sunday paper, been awhile–that they made a big deal of being neutral, not alkaline. Better for your skin! Accompanying it were litmus strips for testing it against your soap. Of course I had to do it and sure enough, Ivory tested alkaline while brand Whatever did not.
Like I said, nerdy.
SFAW
@dmsilev:
Alright. Why a duck? Why a no chicken?
JMG
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: They’re racist fucking morons, and all any of us should say to them is “we hope your grandchildren never visit. And we bet they don’t.”
SFAW
I gotta say, I never thought I’d be living in a country where so many people appear to be clinically insane.
JanieM
@zzyzx:
I can find an article that says something like this, but it has overall data only to 2017. A chart with more recent data from Gallup suggests otherwise. The Gallup data puts the percentage of Rs at 25-30 pretty steadily since late 2006. Of course there are blips, but it sure doesn’t look to me like people are leaving the party in droves.
I’d love to be proven wrong about this. I’m going to go poke around at 538…..
Professor Bigfoot
That part is never far below the surface.
Roger Moore
@Mary G:
And this is an example of how Trump’s corruption really hurts. You legitimately might want to hold up money in a case like this until you can be confident the new government is one that you ought to be entrusting your money to. But Trump has lost the benefit of the doubt. We can’t trust his motives when it comes to foreign policy, so decisions that would look reasonable and prudent if another president made them look suspicious.
chopper
@SFAW:
white supremacy is a helluva drug.
Tom Levenson
@Roger Moore: This comment captures one of the things I love most about Balloon Juice. In a thread launched by a story about Republican self-delusion, we get a fascinating account of the soapiness of soap.
All hail the Jackaltariat!
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Abortion crazies, racists, that’s the Republican base. But why would anyone think Nancy Pelosi has corruptly acquired millions of dollars but that Donald Trump hasn’t? Double U tee eff.
Gravenstone
@JPL: I don’t see Trump as being religious, so one wonders how she is stroking his ego to insinuate herself closer and closer to his inner circle.
debbie
Happy to see Katie Hill did not go out like a lamb.
debbie
@Gravenstone:
He’s like that with all Evangelicals who support him.
NotMax
@Tom Levenson
Toss in some classical art, also too.
(Apologies in advance to satby for linking to an article which links within to a competitor.)
:)
While on the subject, an intersection of art and soap –
chris
@debbie: Uh, pretty sure you meant to post a different link.
Dan B
@Gravenstone: Stroking his desire for more people to Christian worship him in addition to the brainwashed worshipful and the racist xenophobic worshipful. Also Mike and Mother may have pulled some strings.
I heard a bookreading by the guy who developed and implemented the Southern Strategy. He was very remorseful and afraid of its potential to destroy democracy.
jeffreyw
@hells littlest angel:
I’m so old!
rk
Jimmy Stewart was a racist moron in real life. The world portrayed in the movies maybe existed for white people. My parents never lived in that world and it was never safe for non white kids.
Roger Moore
@Tom Levenson:
As somebody who has spend way too much time reading 21CFR210-211 (the core parts of the Code of Federal Regulations dealing with drug manufacturing), I find it interesting to look into the rest of 21CFR (everything else covered by the FDA). For example 21CFR133, which covers the legal requirements for various kinds of cheese, is fascinating for a turophile.
Just One More Canuck
@Roger Moore: So if Trump weighs the same as a duck,….
debbie
@chris:
Indeed I did.
Amir Khalid
@SFAW:
A sitcom line waits to be written: “As God is my witness, I thought chickens could swim.”
HumboldtBlue
@Amir Khalid:
Not sure if you’ve seen this yet.
Villago Delenda Est
Supporting Donald makes one an accomplice to his crimes. To include treason.
chris
@debbie: Thanks. I hope we haven’t seen the last of her.
MoCA Ace
@Roger Moore:
Who are you who are so wise in the ways of science?
billcinsd
@satby: no, assuming they run the reaction to equilibrium, a small amount of all reactants should remain. If the reaction does not achieve equilibrium, there will be more reactants left
billcinsd
@Chris T.: technically, thermodynamics or thermochemistry not kinetics, although these can be related. One of America’s greatest scientists, J. Willard Gibbs developed the math