Have heard same from attendees … and yet. So far not one will put their name to it and none will say it to him. https://t.co/btq64LA3pY
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) April 11, 2021
The ‘real’ Republican party, and their media abettors, would like us to know: They don’t like TFG, either! But somehow, this monster and his drooling minions have managed to take the GOP hostage!
Narrator: yet they remained donors. https://t.co/Qaq6c7TIyu
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) April 12, 2021
Averting gaze to the deeply personal attacks on McConnell by calling them stylistic (and thereby keeping Trump from targeting Thune) is part of the GOP story of last five years. https://t.co/Eu1L03rWMU
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) April 11, 2021
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club was paid more than $100,000 by the Republican Party to host dinner and his speech, which he used to attack a range of Republican politicians and complain that Democrats were tougher while calling for party unity and vowing Republicans would win in 2024.
— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) April 11, 2021
I've never seen a party so in thrall to a candidate who lost, except maybe the Democrats to William Jennings Bryan. And that didn't work out that well.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) April 11, 2021
it would be helpful if journalists like josh dawsey explained that politicians go to see donald trump at his rape compound because they want his donor list. and if josh doesn’t know that, well, hey dude, they want his donor list. you should know that. you’re a journalist. https://t.co/hpo0NUc1jA
— Peloton InfoSec Analyst (Incident Response) (@CalmSporting) April 11, 2021
Perhaps the NYTimes was sending a coded signal, this weekend?…
What is financial domination? “It’s controlling someone through their wallet.” https://t.co/lBkEau2Nh8 pic.twitter.com/u4jQmC2rti
— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 10, 2021
Evergreen tweet:
All the people who think there was some noble, credible US conservatism that has "fallen," or been "taken over" by Trumpism, tell me: why was it so weak? Why did it offer so little resistance? Why did it devolve so *easily* into reactionary madness? Doesn't it make you wonder?
— David Roberts (@drvolts) April 11, 2021
JCJ
They are who we thought were.
NotMax
Surely not the only one who remembers the old joke about moose sh*t pie.
;)
cain
The GOP has always been weak – after all it is the party of sycophants.
Mary G
I sometimes read Mike Gerson in the WaPo, who’s been pretty anti-TFG lately, and Serious Reporters were praising his column today scolding Tucker’s white supremacy language, so looked:
Josh fucking just-as-psychopathic-as-TFG-Hawley and Tom Cotton? THEY ARE ALL EVIL, and that includes you too, Mike, and all those Twitter who pushed this.
206inKY
Until he turned to anti-evolution lunacy, WJB was a giant. He would have hated bitcoin. And he would have hated Josh Hawley, who naturally gravitated to fellow asshole Teddy Roosevelt in college.
Mike G
Bottom line is the donors gave their money. They can carp on the bus back to the hotel all they want, what counts is the money.
Trump is Republicanism with the mask off, they’ve dropped the pretense and are revealing who they always were.
Like the talibangelicals, among whom TFG is more popular than GW Bush despite being the least-Christ-like person in America, because Orange Foolius embodies their real values of authoritarian white nationalism and selfish greed, rather than the pieties they pretended were so important.
Mary G
Oh dear.
?BillinGlendaleCA
I’m pretty sore due to about a 5 mile hike I took this afternoon in the San Gabriels to an old gold/silver/copper mine on the southern slopes of Mt. Baden-Powell. The scenery and the smell of the pine trees made the trip well worthwhile.
Redshift
@Mary G:
They may be trying to do it without some of “the toxic excesses of Donald Trump’s disordered personality,” but “minus the psychopathy” definitely does not describe either if those two.
Tony Jay
Ah, to be a ‘conservative politician’. Ascribed all the best attributes of genuine national leaders while they’re actually just the political equivalent of those sporting mascots who dress up as an anthropomorphic elephant/eagle/rifle and caper up and down the touchline to make the fans laugh.
Unfortunately we all live in a Media environment where all of the reportage is concentrated on how effectively they stir up their target audience and virtually none of it mentions that they’re doing it naked from the waist down.
Steeplejack
The whole thread attached to that David Roberts tweet is very good. Excerpts:
Anotherlurker
I love the U.Utah Phillips reference. @NotMax:
Steeplejack
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Sounds like a good outing. You’ll sleep like a baby!
Brachiator
They knew what he was and chose him anyway. They protected him, defended him and repeated his lies.
They still believe that they can use him to their benefit. If any of them complain, they are even bigger fools than I thought they were.
opiejeanne
@Mary G: What a pity.
opiejeanne
@Brachiator: He fucking told them what he was, with his recitation of the lyrics of that song about the snake and the foolish woman.
Geminid
@Steeplejack: One of the best analyses of trump’s place in the Republican party is by author M.D. Russ, published by the journal Bearing Drift under the title “Trump is the Republican President.” Russ examines the contention that trump had hijacked the party, in the light of Republican history since Gingrinch and his Contract for America. No, Russ concludes, trump did not hijack the Republican party. “He just answered the casting call.”
Splitting Image
Since it’s an open thread, I’d like to mention that the spreadingsantorum.com website is still online.
It’s dropped to third in the Google listings, though, behind the wiki entry of a man who has run for president twice and ahead of his twitter page. Every other entry on Google relates to the Savage campaign, not to the man himself.
Let Santorum’s present be the former guy’s future.
So the question is: if you had to pick a neologism for “trump”, what would it be? “Frothy mixture” is already taken.
Steeplejack
@Geminid:
I’ll check that out. There’s a nimrod in the Roberts thread who makes the argument that Trump hijacked the party:
rikyrah
@JCJ:
Looking for the lie???
rikyrah
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
5 miles???
Baud
@Steeplejack:
LOL. “How dare you say Republicans didn’t resist Trump just because we supported Trump due to the opposition to Trump from outside the party.”
ETA: If there’s one thing Republicans hate, it’s people who are preening and vile.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Nice.
Mary G
I know lots of you don’t like Twitter, but I love seeing people who come from different walks of life running into each other:
And I disagree with all three of them. The guitar work was great, but they fought over the lyrics and it shows.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Baud:
“The Democrats were so preening and vile that in a lot of states we couldn’t even have primaries or caucuses and just had to give the delegates to Trump.”
Steeplejack (phone)
@Mary G:
What is the Badfinger song with just them singing over 12-string acoustic guitar? I’ve been trying to rediscover that for 50 years!
I’ve got it hopelessly entangled in my memory with Bread’s “I Want You with Me.”
ETA: Here you go.
Amir Khalid
I’m hungry.
Steeplejack (phone)
Badfinger, “Baby Blue.”
Steeplejack (phone)
@Amir Khalid:
This is not starting well. ?
sab
@Amir Khalid: My fancy phone has a world clock converter, but Malaysia isn’t on it. 5:13 in Ohio (midwest, but east coast time.) Are you at 5:13 pm or 6:13 pm?
I wish we had Malaysian food in my US midwestern city. Midwestern food, almost by definition, is bland. We are, culturally, offended by everything, including seasoning in food. Many of us break away from the norm, but the norm is still the norm
My mother always said the best seasoning was butter, and salt. (Family runs to high blood pressure so salt is out.)
Steeplejack (phone)
@sab:
It’s 5:24 p.m. there now—12 hours ahead of EDT.
Amir Khalid
@Steeplejack (phone):
Two hours. I need to hold on for two more hours.
Steeplejack (phone)
@sab:
Midwestern spices.
rikyrah
@Amir Khalid:
???
Steeplejack (phone)
@Amir Khalid:
You can do it!
satby
@Steeplejack: Babies sleep like babies because they don’t have arthritis.
sab
@satby: Cynic!
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid:
You wish you could eat, I wish I could sleep. I think neither of will be satisfied.
sab
@Amir Khalid: I forgot. Ramadan?
satby
@Amir Khalid: Ramadan Mubarak Amir.
sab
@sab: Ramadan. I have Muslim neighbors.
I have been focused on US tax season. Neighbors have religious issues. Beyond thoughtless of me.
Thanks, Amir, for the reminder.
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
I’m always like this on the first day.
schrodingers_cat
@Mary G: I agree, I have met people who I never would have IRL.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
Ramadan Mubarak, mein Freund.
SFAW
@Steeplejack:
Sounds like he’s saying “The Demon-craps being such virulent anti-racists meant that we had to oppose them, so they wouldn’t take over
Unser ParteiOur Party!”Tony Jay
@Amir Khalid:
Just imagine how you’ll feel if we lose tomorrow night and the cameras pan across the smirking visage of Sergio Ramos sitting at his ease on the Away benches.
Appetite gone?
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
Thought of you yesterday: Deadspin (I think) had an article/opinion piece on how Jose Mourinho has broken Tottenham. To be honest, I didn’t read more than a paragraph or two, but I thought of your love of the game/League.
marklar
And with the hood on.
Chief Oshkosh
@Steeplejack: As with some many other supposed-tenets, the party of personal responsibility never, ever exhibits such. It is always someone else’s fault.
Full-on losers.
ET
They probably think tRump is the problem. He may be the GOPs biggest single problem but honestly all the people that keep showing up to these things and giving money are a bigger collective problem. They may think they will hear something different from him but that is stupid. He is never, ever going to talk about anything but himself and his grievance. It is (their) insanity to to think otherwise.
And by continuing to give him oxygen they are squandering their money by throwing it into a black hole. They GOP as a party will keep rewarding candidates that curry favor and continue the tRump Way because the funders keep proving that they will stick with the party regardless of where the train goes. If all the funders who really want to move on from tRump stopped giving to the GOP, GOP candidates, GOP PACs, and affiliated grifters, maybe things could begin to change. But they keep the train moving. So again they are just as much of a problem as they guy they are complaining about (but continue to support by giving him money).
sab
@Steeplejack (phone): Matt Groening is from Oregon with a Canadian father. American heartland, yes. Midwestern? No way.
Another Scott
@JCJ: They’ve been telling us for decades that business is better than government, that strong rugged individuals who speak their minds and earn lots of money are better than the rest of us, that capital is better than labor, that taxes are always bad, that breaking norms and “shaking things up” is better than respecting the systems left by our parents and grandparents.
Of course they’re stuck with him. He’s the personification of what they said America was about.
tl;dr – Words matter.
Cheers,
Scott.
brendancalling
@Splitting Image: “Ugh. I got high and ate three helpings of kale salad last night, and just trumped the fuck out of the bathroom. Where’s the plunger and the air freshener? I am so sorry.”
piratedan
@Mary G: cut my teeth musically with them and Raspberries. For dudes (especially young dudes like myself in my teens back then) the amount of emotional heavy lifting done by their music was somewhat cathartic. A way to express emotion thru song when your own mental vocabulary and ability was lacking.
No Dice and Straight Up were killer vinyls to have and the number of awesome songs on those (that weren’t singles even) is something else. For me We’re For The Dark and Blodwyn were just as incredible as the singles No Matter What, Day After Day and Baby Blue.
J R in WV
@Mary G:
But how will poor Sebastian G ever make a living without a propaganda arm?
We used to have such good immigration law about Nazis not being allowed into the country!
Can we deport him for being a member of a Nazi-supporting group?
J R in WV
@J R in WV:
More accurately, can we deport him for lying about being a member of a Nazi-supporting group on his immigration paperwork? Do they still ask about that, or is it now just about Communist memberships?