March 15, 2018

Poor Mika and Joe. The Morning Joe stars are trying so hard to help Republicans see the light, but they just won't listen!

Heidi Przybyla talked about the House Intelligence shutting down the Russia investigation.

"That is members again putting themselves on the record in quite a public way that they don't want to know and that they're willing to take that risk that they look silly when the evidence comes out," she said.

(I don't know that I'd call them "silly," Heidi. The word that comes to mind is "complicit." But whatever.)

"I've never seen a larger group of self-destructive suckups," Mika responded. "Like, what -- what good is going to come out of -- I -- I -- how does this help them?"

"That's what I was trying to figure out all day yesterday. I don't understand it because Jonathan, there's this -- there's a huge, huge highway just right down the middle of American politics for a Republican saying, I'm a conservative," Scarborough said.

" 'I am a conservative. I was a conservative when Donald Trump was contributing to Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and the DNC. I was pro life when Donald Trump was for late term abortions. I was with the NRA when Donald Trump was talking about banning guns. I have been with this Republican party while Donald Trump has been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat conservative candidates, and I am still a conservative. If Donald Trump decides he wants to be conservative, then I will vote with him. If he doesn't, I will fight day and night to protect conservative values, to protect Republican values and to constituents who I promised I would go to Washington and be your conservative voice,' " he said.

"There is such a massive lane for that speech. There are opportunities every day for men and women of the Republican party to step up and be leaders of the new Republican party when it all comes crashing down this fall. Why won't one person do it?" he lamented.

"And the only Republicans that have stood up, they're leaving," Steve Rattner said. "They're ones who have announced their retirement. Those are the ones who said they're not running again, because they are still -- they fear that Trump is more popular in the districts than they are. They're afraid of his Twitter account. They won't challenge him."

"If they are afraid of Twitter, Steve, then they don't deserve to have a congressional vote," Scarborough said.

"They're also afraid of being primaried and having Trump support their opponent," Rattner said.

"There's been a lot of talk about where I have been on gun rights and the NRA supporting. The NRA was against me my first campaign and I won with 62% of the vote. Guess what? They never crossed me again. because guess how weak I made the NRA look in my district and it's the same thing with trump. If conservatives start crossing Trump, and he tries to primary one of them and they win, guess what happens? They look weak.

"We ran Newt Gingrich out of town. I stayed after Newt Gingrich just like I stayed after Bill Clinton. Guess what? They came after me one time. I got 62% of the vote, they never came after me again. Again, I'm not making this about me. I'm using this as an illustration. I could make illustrations about when I was a football coach or when I wrote musicals, that probably wouldn't -- because people are like, why are you always talking about winning in Congress?

"I know they can cross you one time and if they don't beat you, then they look really weak. So I think this fear is so overrated. Somebody needs -- a conservative needs to start separating themselves from Donald Trump, and save the conservative movement, and save the Republican party.

"It's going down this fall, and when the dust settles people are going to look back and say okay, who stayed the course while everybody else was chasing after and defending Donald Trump?"

"You'd have to have foresight," Mika said. "As you said, the iceberg is coming, so why are you afraid of being primaried when the whole thing's going down anyway?"

The thing Mika and Joe don't understand is, the Republicans are the Party That Looks The Other Way. That's their brand! They looked the other way with racism and the Southern Strategy, with Iran-Contra, with crippling tax cuts, with the Iraq invasion and the fake weapons of mass destruction, and with torture. Why would they stop now?

They have this fantasy of a noble, principled Republican party (exemplified by their favorite Great White Hope, John Kasich) that just doesn't exist -- and hasn't for a long time. Take a big gulp of that morning joe, guys -- you need to wake up and smell the coffee.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon