Some things are based on faith because that’s their nature. You know, I have no evidence that I won’t die of a heart attack or be crushed by a meteorite before I can finish this article, but I’m going to try to write it anyway. I have to believe I’ll survive the next ten minutes or I can’t really function. Likewise, Dana Milbank has to believe that America’s right-wing electorate is good and virtuous and they’re just fibbing us about all those opinions they have about Trump and science and blacks and alligator-filled moats and pollution and math and torture and turning the Middle East into a radioactive sheet of glass.
Milbank goes so far as to use Mitt Romney as his case in point. After all, if the right had been serious about that ObamaCare derangement, they would have nominated Herman Cain, amirite?
Oh yes, Dana, you are so right. In their eminent wisdom and decency, the American right nominates the reasonable and responsible candidate every.single.time. They may flirt with Steve Forbes but they can be relied upon to go with the son of a president in the end. They may say they love the military, but they’ll take the AWOL guy over the POW guy. If they seem to be temporarily taken in by the psychotic stylings of Michele Bachmann or the toxic Abramoff-Man-On-Dog mix of Rick Santorum, they’ll settle in on a real upright truth-teller like Mitt Romney.
Look, if your choice is Poppy Bush or Pat Buchanan, you’re already screwed, but we can probably agree that only one of them was prepared to deal with the collapse of the Soviet Union. If you’re offering me Phil Gramm or Bob Dole, well, I guess you have no intention of actually winning the presidency but I’m okay with picking Dole.
But the real issue is whether it’s actually true that the right in this country has been acting responsibly and can be relied on to act responsibly now. I’m not sure they’ve actually been given the option of acting responsibly, if you want me to be truthful about it. The best they have on offer is the former guest host of The O’Reilly Factor who also happens to be the two-term governor of Ohio. I’ve been predicting that John Kasich will emerge as the real “responsible” candidate for the simple reason that Jeb! Bush obviously can’t hack campaigning while dodging all the monkey poop being flung his way.
I shouldn’t have to dig into the Pentagon-sized closet full of Marco Rubio skeletons to convince you that this charlatan isn’t the modern day Poppy Bush or Bob Dole. Those guys were World War Two veterans with a decent grasp of basic reality, not the kind of fools to deny climate science while representing Atlantis in the U.S. Senate.
Carly Fiorina is some combination of Steve Forbes and Alan Keyes, with less business sense.
Ben Carson is some combination of Alan Keyes and Tom Coburn, with better scalpel sense.
Rick Perry was under felony indictment and Chris Christie should be under felony indictment.
There’s no need to go down the whole list because we know how Milbank feels about Ted Cruz. Whether we’re talking about Jeb!’s anchor babies and blacks who want free stuff, Carson’s unconstitutional Muslims, or Trump’s drug-dealing Latino rapists, I’m not seeing anything decent or responsible about any of these candidates. Again, the guy who comes closest to what might approximate decency is Kasich, and he’ll either catch on or he’ll go out like his name is Jon Huntsman Jr.
But we were talking about American Republicans, not their would-be representatives.
What are these folks currently obsessed about?
A sample: Repealing health access for more than 10 million Americans, scuttling a nuclear deal with Iran that they don’t understand, banning funding for Planned Parenthood based on doctored videos and false allegations, some county administrator in Kentucky who can’t stay married herself and doesn’t want to issue marriage licenses for anyone else, forcibly deporting Latinos by the millions, denying climate science or that there’s really water on Mars, shutting down the government, defaulting on our debts, closing an export bank that they don’t understand, and opportunistically outlawing the filibuster.
But, in the end, they’re going to do the right thing and get over their flirtation with “outsiders” like Carson and Trump and get with the program.
And everything will be okay.
Republican primary voters may be angry at the political establishment, but they are not irrational: They don’t wish to nominate a sure loser. And Trump is that. Americans, in a general election, will never choose a candidate who expresses the bigotry and misogyny that Trump has, regardless of his attributes. (Similarly, liberals love Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary race, but ultimately Democrats won’t choose Sanders, because, regardless of their personal preferences, they know a socialist won’t be elected president.)
Which one of the eleventy billion candidates isn’t a “sure loser”?
Look, they might nominate Bush or Kasich or Rubio. And they might not. But they’re completely irrational. The Conservative Movement is an irrational movement. If it wasn’t they’d never have nominated the guy who invented ObamaCare to beat the guy who made it a national law. And they’d never have been okay with Romney’s unprecedented problem with the truth if the truth meant anything to them.
Milbank says he’ll eat his column if Trump is the nominee. That’ll be fun to watch, I guess, but I don’t see how it matters, really. What difference does it make who wins this nomination? Hasn’t Milbank seen enough to know that the right has gone past the point of no return?
What does it mean to “eat one’s column”? Does he mean he will quit?
Also the columnist is Dana Milbank, not Chris Cillizza.
Oops. That’s a major fuckup on my part.
Trying to write with a five year old demanding attention will do that to a man.
Plus, they’re obviously interchangeable in my mind.
When Werner Herzog ate his shoe, they cooked it at Chez Panisse.
Still the best:
Booman, I’m ordinarily not too concerned with truthiness vs truth when not used didactically, but “…more than 10 million…”? It’s almost 17 million.
So the price he’s willing to pay if he’s wrong is he’ll eat his column? What a weenie. Doesn’t even make for a good image like “eating one’s hat.” Does he mean the print edition of his column? Or the on-line version? Will he lick his screen as he punches the delete key? He could have at least offered to eat a Trump “Make America Great Again” baseball cap. Not that anyone will ever hold him to his promise. And on their own they always find a way to wiggle out of their cheap promises.
One reason people seem to like Trump is that they think he’s putting his money where is mouth is. (Okay, didn’t work so well for Romney in 2008, but he didn’t boast about spending his own fortune and it put him on the leader board for 2012.)
Milbank’s big insight is that come election, a significant portion of GOP voters have tired of the novelty acts and go with the only available alternative that just happens to be the choice of the GOP elites. Except for 1980 — but Reagan is a GOP god and therefore, is an exception to everything.
The only reason Jeb? is even in the race is that the party honchos recognized that all they had were a bunch of turds and making one of them smell like a rose looked like mission impossible. They apparently hadn’t noticed before he entered the race that Jeb? is also a turd. Expect we’ll see a couple of volunteer suicide bombers in the next GOP debate and hope that one of those on the short list is hailed as the winner.
Like a lot of people, Milbank also overlooks the fact that Republican primary voters have already nominated outright lunatics in several senate races. And if it’s true that they played it safe the last two times with McCain and Romney, then the primary voters would actually have a pretty strong argument there: We tried it your way the last two times, and what did we get?
Emotionally, that is definitely operational this year. And the argument made by the RWNJs is that they nominated and won with lunatics in 2014 Senate races. The flaw in their argument is that the Democratic nominees were old, boring, and mostly “middle way” Democrats and the GOP nominees were young and able to project dynamism and tamp down the crazy in the general election. That’s what they want for their 2016 nominee.
I think Milbank is also overlooking the fact that Trump’s followers do not perceive him as a sure loser but a sure winner. Of course he’s a sure winner. He keeps saying so himself.
The Donald has the worlds biggest ego wrapped in a tissue paper skin. Almost 20 GOP running for president and not one had the courage or imagination to poke at that ego. The Donald has been impersonating Mohammed Ali for years. He is not the greatest.
I loved this post. Am contemplating sharing with my many conservative family members, but guess I’m not up for a flaming email war (we all speak nicely to each other in person and on the phone). But, golly, I so wish I could make them see what an almighty mess their movement is.
It’s not worth it. If they can’t see it now themselves, they are firmly entrenched in the bubble, and you telling them that they’ve been wrong for the past 35 years won’t solve anything.
At least wait until after Thanksgiving.
not the kind of fools to deny climate science while representing Atlantis in the U.S. Senate
Well, soon enough anyway.
Great post Boo.
Who is Dana Milbank’s audience?
The most important read of the day is Justice John Paul Stevens’s piece on amending the Second Amendment to say “when serving in the militia”.
Can you point us to that? I’d enjoy reading that…
https:/www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-five-extra-words-that-can-fix-the-second-amendment/2014
04/11/f8a19578-b8fa-11e3-96ae-f2c36d2b1245_story.html
If you’re going to change the Constitution, anyway, try this on for size:
28th Amendment: The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States shall apply only to those firearms in production prior to 1913. This reading shall include all components, metals, explosives, delivery devices and manufacturing techniques. All firearms restrictions shall reside with the States or those localities authorized by the states. The Federal Government may regulate any firearm that is in current usage for the Armed Forces of the US.
Add a modifier to Steven’s proposal == “except for firearms produced prior to 1913 and the ammunition and replacement components necessary to maintain the operability produced subsequent to 1913 that shall remain completely unregulated,”
#Dickwhisperer
If he had to admit that he’d have to realize that he is friends with bad people, and have to do real journalism for once.
Booman, you forgot Voter Fraud in your list.
This is another example where they feel like they have a big, important issue that is ruining America and it’s all based on bullshit anecdote.
Bottom line with the right in this country? Mean and stupid.
Great post, Booman. They are insane. I think there’s a decent chance that they will nominate Trump.
And yeah, Christie’s indictment is overdue.