I am late to the party, as usual, but fortunately Scissorhead Bluegal is not, and so she tweeted this the other day:
No Labels lifeboat alert #BurnTheLifeboats @Mr_Electrico @Tengrain @ElieNYC @CharlesPPierce This is attempt to rebrand Republicans post Trump. NO MORE TEA PARTIES. (Watch Morning Joe promote this I’ll bet five bucks.) American Enterprise Institute is on their GODDAMN LETTERHEAD https://t.co/dQRIlzXWgp
— Frances Langum (@bluegal) July 3, 2019
And so once again we must burn the lifeboats and not let the Republicans off the hook when their on-going experiment with fascism blows up in their faces, as it always does.
A little history is required…
You might recall after Chimpy McStagger’s Reign of Error that overnight the Republicans rebranded themselves as the Tea Party (with a lot of money from the Koch Brothers and an infinite amount of coverage from Pravda, er, Fox News), because as they created the Infinite War for Oil (with infinite war crimes) crashed the world’s economy and were soundly rebuked by We The People when we elected Barack Obama to be President and took both Houses of Congress (paper-thin margins, but it counted!), they had nothing to do and nowhere to go (H/T The Ramones).
So like good Germans they burned their uniforms, put on funny hats, and declared that “Imma Tea Partier, not a Republican, and you cannot blame ME for all that!” Constitutional Conservative replaced Chimpy’s Compassionate Conservative almost overnight. “Dubya? Never heard of him.”
In other words, they ran for cover, as decent people and children pointed at laughed at them.
At the end of the Kenyan Usurper’s Presidency, suddenly they all became Republicans again. Even our old pal One-L couldn’t run for office as the chairperson of the Tea Party Caucus. Go figure.
And as things now look like crash-and-burn time again, the challenge returns to figure out how to escape the blame when Comrade Prznint Stupid burns the GOP to the ground.
Hence our call to burn the lifeboats. Make them pay for what they bought.
So what are the lifeboats this time if Tea Party is done away with?
Famously, Traitor Joe Lieberman’s No Labels comes to mind, the Centrism Project, and the newest entry, Purple: The Project for Democracy:
Purple is a non-partisan coalition, campaign and movement.
We span the breadth of American society to rediscover and recommit
to our democratic values and institutions.
Purple, get it? The blended color of red and blue!
Still need a hint: Both Sides.
Look, Purple, if you want to recommit to democratic values and institutions, you start by getting rid of amply be-chinned Mitch McConnell, who happens to be a Republican. And then you get rid of Concentration Camps at the borders created by the Republicans. And then you address Climate Change legislation, long-blocked by Republicans. I could go on (and on), but I won’t.
The point here is that Both Sides are not destroying us, it is one side, the Republicans who have gone nuts ever since Saint Ronnie started the boulder rolling down the hill that has resulted in the avalanche that has taken out our democracy and all of our democratic institutions.
Call our problem by its name: The Republican Party.
Mock Paper Scissors 
Hello TG. I maintain that there is no Republican party anymore. It is the cult of tRump party. No one who doesn’t support tRump can belong to the cult formerly known as Republican party. In the cult no dissension is allowed and doing everything possible to prevent the deal leader from getting his feelings hurt even if that means breaking the law or blocking people from exercising their rights. Hugs
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I disagree Scottie: Trump is the product of the Republican party, he IS the Republican Party: they elected him.
There will be more Trumps, figuratively if not literally.
Rgds,
TG
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Hello TG. I guess I was not really clear in what I was trying to say. Because he is the party and they are all afraid to cross him I think anyone who tries to call them selves Republican while not supporting tRump is not a Republican. What I was trying to express is the Republicans are the cult of tRump now. Due to it being a cult now there can not be any lone members who are not in the cult. I see it like claiming to be a creationist while disagreeing with everything creationist believe. Hugs
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I’m most def with TG on this one, Scottie….Trump is the symptom not the disease. Maybe a terminal symptom, but a symptopm, nonetheless.
The Republican Party has been strapped into this path since Nixon invited in the
KlanSouthern Democrats, and Ronnie invited in the Dominionist Theocrats. There’s a direct line between Nixon wooing the Wallace voters to trump locking kids in cages. Hell, considering the involvement by people like Roger Stone and Roger Ailes, you could say it’s not even a path, but a direct, ongoing deveiopment of the same strategy by the same people.LikeLiked by 1 person
Hello brucedesertrat . I agree. I also agree with TG. My only point I was trying to make is at this point in time can you be a Republican if you do not support tRump? He did not create the Republican disease but he has infused himself into its DNA. I was simply thinking of the people who tell me they are still Republicans yet they don’t agree with anything the party is doing. I just wonder if they can still rightfully be called Republicans then? Hugs
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Throw in a two term black president to get em all het up and here we are. I also blame WWE wrestling, where Trump supporters learned about fake good guys and fake bad guys and how to act at large public events.
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Just like the bush years.
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Comment as to form, not content: PLEASE correct to “its” in the headline.
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Fixed, and thank you.
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It’s an important point. The Republicans must always be branded as the party of Trump from now on. Never let the voters forget.
I would say the same about the Evangelicals, who have gone all-in on supporting Trump despite the almost superhuman levels of hypocrisy required. They bound that millstone around their own necks and they must never be allowed to remove it.
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This is all true. No rebranding.
Republicans = Trump
and
Trump = Republicans
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Possibly the only good thing about the appearance of FatNixon is the impact he’s having on the Evangelicals. I’m starting to see articles about how the hypocrisy of supporting him is starting to fracture them. The way their leaders pimp themselves out for FatNixon has the benefit of turning off some of the members who still think. That has to be a good thing.
Perhaps the support of FatNixon will have the same impact on the snake-handlers as the child abuse has had with the Catholics. Lots of empty buildings hitting the real estate market.
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I’ve seen the same. It’s particularly the younger Evangelicals who can’t take the hypocrisy. The older ones have had decades of experience of excuse-making for pastors who hoard money, have extramarital affairs, etc., so they were kind of prepared for doing the same with Trump. Younger people can see the corruption.
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First thing that came to mind when I read they were using purple…when I worked at IBM Canada Ltd. H.O., a couple or so decades ago, the executive suite of offices was all carpeted in purple, the only area to be so. The suite included the offices of the CEO of course, President & Vice Presidents, lawyers & the economist plus all of their staff. It was set apart…one didn’t end up there by accident.
Purple has always been the colour of royalty and power and wealth.
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That does it. I’m changing my MPS screen-name. To goat-head…
No, wait. Not that. To caterwaul. Which is what we are all doing now, caterwauling into the ether, calling on Shit-Hitting-the-Fan Karma Spirit (or the Dimocrats…yeah, sure) to raise the scuppered Ship-o’-State.
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Well-played, Caterwaul.
Give me some time to get used to it.
Rgds,
TG
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Moi, aussi.
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Not goathead? I have mixed feelings about that. The goat heads around here can puncture a bicycle tire, although I think it takes a Russian olive to puncture an auto tire. They look like little caltrops, and grow into innocent looking plants. No one ignores them.
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Goathead, also called puncture vine, is a real curse. For tires, animals’ feet, on the soles of your shoes, thence tracking them into the house, whereupon later that day, while walking barefoot inside, you step on one of those suckers…Criminy! Those little spines don’t break. The backyard of a house a couple doors down from mine is a carpet of that plant. Really. It’s the lawn; nothing else growing there. I have never seen such a mat of goathead. Today I’m going to photograph the “lawn” from the alley and send a pic to the City. (Snitch!) There is an ordinance about removing goathead from one’s property in town. It spreads so fast. The seeds are viable for years.
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That’s the stuff! The plants look so innocent to me, but where I grew up there was a plant, nearly a twin to this one, that we used to pick and wrap around our wrists and its whiskers held it there. There is also a house plant called a sensitive plant that looks similar.
But these guys! We would take off our shoes before we walked inside in order to keep them out but some would still get in. We’ve moved now, so there aren’t as many. What we have around the new place is the Russian olives – they brow thorns that can easily be a couple of inches long. We tried to help a friend patch a flat tire on his truck, but it had one of these things piercing the sidewall, so there was nothing we could do. What the prior owner was doing driving through a group of these suckers I do not know.
I can see why you would reject the “puncher weed” title, but they are hard to ignore.
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There. To hell with purple.
But damn. It’s my favorite color sector. Suppose I could go with violet or lilac or lavender or mauve or amethystine or plum or magenta or mulberry or livid.
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I can’t remember how to write one, one thousand, fifty-one, six or five hundred in Roman numerals. I’M LIVID.
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Methinks they have chosen poorly. Down in Possum Hollaerville, purple also means ‘no trespassing’. They should have gone with orange to reflect their inclusiveness.
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There was a Christianist College I used to coach against. Hated them and their praying before and after games, and the “truth, not tolerance” bumperstickers in the parking lot. They went by the moniker “the Purple Pride” which always made me snicker. A gay rights group contacted them and thanked them for their support, which resulted in a costly rebrand.
Just an anecdote. Take from it what you will. Back to whiskey and metal.
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Well done, gay rights group! I love hearing stories like this.
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“Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.” Herbert Marcuse
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