Here we go again. Last night's 11th Hour:

BRIAN WILLIAMS: You and I keep having this conversation, but this president's playing with house money. This is your political party, the ruling political party right now in this country. We're going to see in short order, couple of months, if the president can take any of his agenda out for a spin and what's going to happen at the polls?

STEVE SCHMIDT: Of course. Look, we haven't yet had a chance as a country to have a referendum on Trumpism. The first opportunity for the American people to weigh in with a verdict will be in the November midterm elections. And this will be a nationalized election. I think there's fundamentally one question on the ballot. It's the same question that has dominated the decision-making of voters in all of the special elections. And that question is around Donald Trump. And the evidence would suggest that there will be a massive repudiation of Trumpism by the electorate in November 2018. Certainly, that will be the case if these special elections are prologue to the main event. And so for Republicans certainly as you look at their fragile majority in the house, slightly less fragile majority in the Senate, and you look at Republicans who did well in state legislative races over the Obama years, there should be a major comeuppance upon the Republican party. As we see this continued chaos, dysfunction, recklessness out of this white house, I expect that this president, who has the lowest approval levels for any president in history this early in his term, that there will continue to be growing downward pressure on those that the Republican majority pays a heavy price for.

Steve Schmidt is right that the Republican Party is about to pay a heavy price for supporting Donald Trump. But how did Donald Trump get elected, anyway? By using talking points, from the very moment he descended the escalator at Trump Tower, from Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh. And then Republican base primary voters said "Oh, look! He's saying what I'm thinking." No, he's saying that with which right-wing media has brainwashed you for thirty years.

Anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-people of color. You know, Republican orthodoxy.

MSNBC has Steve Schmidt and other never-Trumpers on their programs to appear to have "balance" in their coverage. To appear to be saying "see, we have Republicans on to bring 'debate' to our programming."

What they are really doing is building a lifeboat for a Republican Party to keep on doing the "tax cuts for billionaires and slash social programs rhumba" they've always done. As long as they can re-brand their party, or in this case, brand what Trump is doing as "not-Republican," but "Trumpism," they win.

They did it with Bush by funding the Tea Party.
And with Trump by calling what he's doing "Trumpism."

But most voters, it turns out, are freaked out as much by the threat the Republican Party poses to their health insurance as they are by Trump's narcissism.

It's Republicans who tried to repeal Obamacare with zero "replacement" scores of times.

And the voters and potential voters in the #MarchForOurLives Never Again movement know that it's Republicans taking money from the NRA slaughter lobby.

It's Republicans who cut taxes for billionaires, spent obscene borrowed money on the Pentagon, and now want a "balanced budget amendment." Why do you think? Everybody knows.

The hashtag is #BurnTheLifeboats.

And once again I point everyone to my post from August of 2016, "Don't You Dare Call It Trumpism," because I saw this coming.