In which former George W. Bush chief speechwriter, senior Republican policy adviser and reliable Beltway Republican stalactite, Michael Gerson, once again takes up his pen and inkpot to proclaim that his Republican Party just all of the sudden became a racist shitpile a couple of years ago.
From Mr. Gerson today in the Washington Post.
The Trump era is a renaissance of half-witted intolerance
...Yes, these are fringe figures. But they are fringe figures in a political atmosphere they correctly view as favorable.
Sorry, Mr. Gerson but we must interrupt your adorable fairy tale about the history of your Republican party with this important, late-breaking news from 1988!
Do please go on, Mr. Gerson. This is all so terribly interesting!
In the Republican Party, cranks and bigots are closer to legitimacy than at any time since William F. Buckley banished the John Birch Society.
I do apologize, Mr. Gerson but we must once again interrupt your hilarious Republican creation myth with this important, late-breaking news from 1990!
The Politics of Slash and Burn
Published: September 20, 1990
'Sick.'' ''Traitors.'' ''Bizarre.'' ''Self-serving.'' ''Shallow.'' ''Corrupt.'' ''Pathetic.'' ''Shame.'' The group that urged political candidates to use these epithets has since regretted suggesting the word ''traitors,'' in response to inquiries from the press. But the others were allowed to stand; they appear in a glossary that a conservative Republican group recently mailed to Republican state legislative candidates.
The group is Gopac, the G.O.P. Political Action Committee. Its general chairman is Representative Newt Gingrich. With the pamphlet, ''Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,'' comes a letter from Mr. Gingrich himself. Its message to candidates: Step up invective. Use words like these to describe opponents. These words work.
Mr. Gingrich's injunction represents the worst of American political discourse...
The Gopac glossary may herald a descent into even lower levels of discourse. It comes blessed by a politician of some influence - the Republican whip in the House - and it is intended for candidates on the state level, many of them presumably running for the first time. Even though Mr. Gingrich himself may not have seen the list before it was mailed, this is a disturbing document...
Please continue, Mr. Gerson. You have my full attention!
For some of us, this was a concern from the beginning of President Trump’s rise -- not just the policies he would adopt but also the attitudes he would encourage and the passions he would provoke.
Gosh darn it, I am so sorry, Mr. Gerson but we must once again interrupt your spellbinding Republican superhero origin story with still more important, late-breaking news, this time from 1994!
Republicans Get a Pep Talk From Rush Limbaugh
BALTIMORE, Dec. 10 -- To all the advice for the new Republicans coming to Congress, add this from Rush Limbaugh: A hostile press corps lurks inside the Beltway.
"You will never ever be their friends," the talk-show host warned most of the 73 Republican freshmen at a dinner here tonight. "They don't want to be your friends. Some female reporter will come up to one of you and start batting her eyes and ask you to go to lunch. And you'll think, 'Wow! I'm only a freshman. Cokie Roberts wants to take me to lunch. I've really made it!' " The audience laughed.
"Seriously," he added. "Don't fall for this. This is not the time to get moderate. This is not the time to start trying to be liked."
The freshman class, which included not a single "femi-Nazi," one of Mr. Limbaugh's favorite epithets for supporters of women's rights, whooped and applauded, proving itself one big fan club of the man it believes was primarily responsible for the Republican avalanche in November.
Mr. Limbaugh was made an honorary member of the class as its members tonight finished a three-day orientation here sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and Empower America, two conservative Washington research organizations.
Barbara Cubin, an incoming freshman from Wyoming, told Mr. Limbaugh that because 74 percent of the nation's newspapers had endorsed Democrats, "talk radio, with you in the lead, is what turned the tide." On behalf of the women in the class, she gave him a plaque that said, "Rush Was Right." He also received a pin like the ones the freshmen wore, saying, "Majority Maker."
"Rush is as responsible for what happened here as much as anyone," said Vin Weber, a former Representative from Minnesota, now of Empower America. Citing a poll taken after the election by Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, Mr. Weber said that people who listened to 10 hours or more a week of talk radio voted Republican by a 3-to-1 margin. "Those are the people who elected the new Congress," he said...
Seriously, Mr. Gerson, you are an incredibly well-paid and respected member of the elite Beltway punditocracy who is read my millions every day, while I am a disreputable Libtard blogger who ekes out a few bucks here and there thank to some of my dozens of readers hitting a tip jar when they can afford to. And it is just unacceptably bad manners that your august personage should be so rudely interrupted while you are a guest in my house. So I have barred the door and I have taken the phone off the hook.
Now please, do continue with your fascinating saga!
Whatever else Trumpism may be, it is the systematic organization of resentment against outgroups. Trump’s record is rich in dehumanization...
This is more than a disturbing pattern; it is an organizing political principle. And it has resulted in a series of radiating consequences...
First, it has given permission for the public expression of shameful sentiments...
Excuse me, Mr. Gerson, but Jesus Christ on a UPS truck, you are not going to believe what happened!
Funny story, actually.
It seems that some Liberal asshole bundled together the record of your entire Republican party during the Obama Administration. You know, long before Donald Trump ever oozed down the escalator and into the hearts of the reprogrammable meatbags who always have been the base of your party.
Anyway, this person piled it all together. Your party's conspiracy to sabotage and destroy all Obama initiatives -- a conspiracy they hatched the day President Obama was inaugurated. Your party's theft of Merrick Garland's supreme court seat by the smirking ghoul who leads your party in the Senate.
Every Fox News lie. Every Breitbart hit-piece. Every "respectable" bit of hate-mongering slander pushed out through The Weekly Standard and The National Review.
The daily bile-geyser broadcast non-stop, coast-to-coast on Conservative Hate Radio.
Every shitty lump of Conservative prose by written by scumbags like Mark Levin, Ann Coulter and Jerome Corsi which the base of your party sops up with a biscuit.
Every unhinged...
...racist...
...Republican Fake Tea Party screed.
And every Beltway Both Siderist asshole who enabled every bit of it by dealing every new Republican atrocity by demanding to know "Why won't Obama lead?!?!"
Bundled it all up.
Tied it up with a ribbon.
Spray painted "It's Not 'Trumpism' And You Damn Well Know It You Shitheel!" on it and tossed the whole thing right through my front window.
Once again, Mr. Gerson, I am so very, very, very sorry for the all of these terribly shrill and impertinent interruptions.
Please do go on...
