My last post was about the wildly popular grifters who are capitalizing on the resistance by peddling simple minded (and almost entirely fabricated) pablum for Trump haters. This, my last post of the year is about “Never Trumpers”. If you’re not familiar with the term, it refers to both former and current republicans for whom Trump is just a bridge too far.
They have joined the resistance to speak out against Trump, and they have been embraced by the left for doing so. Why? I mean, I kind of get why but I don’t understand the (in my opinion) unearned credibility that is being showered upon them. These are a group of people for whom Willie Horton was completely acceptable. If you’re not familiar with the background on the infamous Willie Horton ad, please take a moment to read this very well written piece by Eugene Scott. Now that you know the background, here’s the infamous ad:
Every single Never Trumper saw this unfold with George HW Bush, thought it was swell, and decided that this was the political party for them. I was a fucking teen-ager when I saw this, and I was appalled. They all watched Reagan explode the deficit, thought it was fine, and crowed on about how republicans are the party of “fiscal responsibility”. They saw that Poppy Bush had to raise taxes because Reagan’s trickle down utopia was completely untenable and kept on pushing the virtues of trickle down economics in order to trick their voters into making their very wealthy donors obscenely wealthy. They all enthusiastically created a narrative in which we can’t have nice things like free education and universal health care because a brown person would be stealing from fine white folk if we did that.
This is who Never Trumpers were, and who they still are. With the exception of two people, none of them have done any sort of mea culpa and admitted that they were wrong about everything, and that they fucked over the middle class in order to make themselves rich. I’m sorry, but until you can demonstrate that you’ve reflected on your past and realized what you’ve done, you get no credibility from me.
The vast majority of these Never Trumpers have a very shallow opposition to Trump. They don’t actually disagree with most of his policies (except for the recent troop withdrawals). They fucking loved the massive tax cuts for the obscenely rich because they refuse to acknowledge that we now have a mountain of evidence to prove that trickle down is a giant load of crap. No, their issue with Trump is stylistic. The Southern Strategy was okay with them. The giant dog whistle that Reagan blew when he made his second campaign stop of his (third) presidential run in Philadelphia, Mississippi which is only known for one thing. Willie Horton (btw, he never went by Willie but that made him sound scarier and blacker): peachy. Sitting idly by while millions of Americans dies of AIDS: nothing wrong with that. George W Bush’s vicious attacks on basic human civil rights for the LGBTQ community: meh – we gotta win, right? These are all things that Never Trumpers were on board with and helped to cultivate. Their primary issue with Trump is that he’s a little to crass in his delivery. He’s a little too impolitic for their taste. They preferred it when George HW Bush hid behind the very thin veil of pretending that Willie Horton was all Lee Atwater’s doing so he wasn’t the crass one. Let me repeat: I was a fucking teenager when I was able to identify the source of the crassness.
Their track records are what we used to refer to as credibility. We don’t do that anymore, apparently. Now, when they say mean things about Trump, we gift them credibility. As I said, the majority of Never Trumpers have never apologized for their part in building the foundation upon which Trump’s viability was built. Nicole Wallace: no apology. Rick Wilson: no apology. Steve Schmidt: no fucking apology. I can do this all day, so for the sake of being concise, let me tell you who did apologize: Jennifer Rubin and Max Boot.
I apologize, I can’t find Jennifer Rubin’s mea culpa to save my life, but here’s Max Boot’s. The majority of reactions to this article on Twitter were vicious attacks. Mine was not:
I share that to let you know that I am not an unreasonable person. I’m actually a sunny optimist, which is why I’m so bitchy. Bitchy people are bitchy because they’re constantly being let down by the world. Happy people are the ones who are deeply jaded, and whose expectations are constantly being met and therefore have no reason to be bitchy. You laugh, but this is really my theory. Anyway, I digress. My point is that the mea culpa is the gateway to the road of credibility. It is not instant credibility, but it is the necessary first step toward eventually building some. Anyone who skips that step is merely a craven opportunist, looking to build themselves a lifeboat because their livelihoods can’t survive staying on the sinking ship that is the GOP.
So people like Nicole Wallace, Steve Schmidt, and Rick Wilson have zero credibility. They are “resisting” only to save their miserable careers. They have not joined our movement: they’re here to usurp it. Please do not make the mistake of believing otherwise because they are snakes who will most certainly bite you someday, and you would be wise not to elevate them in a way that gives them more power to do so. The absolute worst among this pack of life boating wolves are Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. These are two vapid, star fucking scumbags who can’t even apologize for their part in lionizing Trump. And on top of all that, they’re not very bright. I was on a business trip a few months ago, so I was staying in a hotel. I turned on the TV in the morning (something I never do when I’m home because I find cable news to be totally worthless) for some background noise and in the hope of getting at least some news. I landed on Morning Joe and I swear that listening to them for an hour actually made me dumber.
A couple of snakes have already emerged to undermine liberals and liberalism. Wanna know who they are? Max Boot and Jennifer Rubin. If you clicked on those links, you would see that they went right back home the first chance they got. Lionizing George H.W. Bush as some sort of honorable statesman clearly demonstrates a lack of understanding of the foundation that Trump was build on. Reading those articles made me super bitchy.
You wanna know who else has undermined liberals and liberalism? Liberal commentators like Rachel Maddow who allow people like Nicole Wallace to occupy a seat at the discussion table, when that seat rightfully belongs to a long list of people who were on the right side of politics all along. That seat should be occupied by someone with credibility (i.e. a track record of being on the right side of history). Perhaps Thom Hartman, Sam Seder, or Amy Goodman? How about Phil Donahue who was fired by MSNBC for opposing Bush and Cheney’s Iraq war at the very moment that Nicole Wallace was helping to make it happen. How’s that for an idea? Color me crazy, but I would prefer to hear the opinions of someone who has been right about most things over the past twenty years, than to hear from someone who started being right about one thing two years ago. Credibility is important. In some ways, the liberals who aid and abet the life boating of republican snakes are the most destructive members of the media.
I am not saying that Never Trumpers have no value, but I am saying that they have no credibility and that you should understand that they’re not really with you. They should be regarded as tools to be used by those of us who have been on the right side of history all along, to achieve our goals. Once those goals are achieved, they should be discarded because they’re only tools. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t listen to them, follow them, or share their content. You should. Some of them like Rick Wilson are delightful reads. He is extremely intelligent lots of fun to read but he’s a tool until he does a true mea culpa. And every time you share their work, you should remind people that, “the guy (or woman) who thought George W Bush was awesome has this to say about Trump”. Keep them in the tool box where they belong, lest they escape and hurt more people.
Steve Schmidt should not feel emboldened enough to tell democrats what to do. When I hear him comment on Bernie Sanders and how socialism isn’t the right path for the democratic party, I want to punch him in the face with every fucking thing he did to build a party that embraces Trump so whole heartedly. Hey Steve, you can take your advice and shove it up your ass! Maybe you don’t give democrats any advice until you’ve successfully fixed the republican party?
So that’s my final rant of the year. I would like to wish all of my readers and followers a very happy new year. I appreciate your support more than you will ever know. As an aside, I believe that 2019 will be a very good year, full of tasty treats like Michael Flynn’s court appearance a couple of weeks ago. I genuinely feel good about 2019 but then again, I’m a sunny optimist.
