The GOP Is What Happens When You Have The Self-Awareness Of A '71 Ford Fairlane
"To the manor born" isn't a cogent ruling philosophy, is it?
Do you think it’s EASY being White and knowing what’s best for America? It’s a helluva burden!
As a party, self-awareness has never been standard equipment in the GOP toolbox. Republicans have never been very good at self-examination- the art of looking at election results to determine what went wrong, what they could’ve done better, and how they might’ve better connected with voters. That requires a degree of honesty and the willingness to accept harsh truths that Republicans as a party simply don’t possess at scale.
No, their approach has always been, “OF COURSE, we’re the party with the best ideas. We can’t help it that Americans are too f*****g stupid to see what’s right in front of them. So let’s keep doing more of the same until the maroons figure it out.” Yeah, that’s a horribly ineffective strategy for winning elections and consolidating power over the long run.
(‘Cuz first you have to make a habit of winning elections, don’tchaknow?)
In fact, it’s no strategy at all. If any of y’all remember the effort the GOP put into the “autopsy” the party did in the aftermath of the 2012 elections, in which they were dumptrucked by Democrats, you know what I’m referring to.
In 2013, after the GOP lost seats in both houses of Congress while failing to defeat Barack Obama, the Republican party embarked on a round of deep soul-searching. Known as the "Republican Autopsy," the resulting report sought to answer the question: why do young voters despise the GOP?
"Public perception of the Party is at record lows," they wrote at the time. "Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country. When someone rolls their eyes at us, they are not likely to open their ears to us."
The report's authors, who included Bush's press flack Ari Fleischer and Henry Barbour, a Mississippi RNC committeeman and the nephew of ex-RNC Chair Haley Barbour, delivered some tough love to the GOP: If the party didn't quit being so gross and racist, pass immigration reform, and stop saying horrible shit about women and their bodies, it would never win the popular vote again.
Yeah, about that “autopsy”….
Long story short: The GOP didn’t stop “being so gross and racist,” and they didn’t “stop saying horrible shit about women and their bodies.” If anything, they dialed up the racism, sexism, and misogyny so it became even worse and more obvious. Fewer of their candidates and elected officials bothered to shroud their language in words that allowed for plausible deniability. They hated those who weren’t White Conservative Christian heterosexual males…and they had little, if any, qualms with making those feelings known.
They were racists, bigots, sexists, homophobes, Islamophobes, and misogynists, and they didn’t care who knew it. I may have left a negative descriptor or six out, but you smell what I’m cooking, right?
So what was true in 2013 is true now- “Public perception of the Party is at record lows.” What, the perception that they’re knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who hate everyone not like them and believe that America is the property and playground of White Conservative Christian heterosexual males? That perception?
Yeah, that sums it up nicely.
Nine years on, and some of the reasons might be a wee bit different, but the enmity is much the same. Republicans may be the party of the people, but only the very wealthy people- the oligarch class.
Republicans are the party of the working class in the same way Donald Trump was a deeply philosophical President who spent four years quoting Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Rick and Morty, and Beavis and Butthead.
Four years later, the GOP ran exactly the same gross, racist playbook, and ran the table. But after Democrats took the White House and Congress in 2020 and the GOP barely managed to claw back the wildly gerrymandered House in 2022, Republicans are going back to the well. Time for Autopsy 2.0, which we could just easily call the "It's Definitely Not Trump, Do Not Say The Problem Is Trump Or Those Fucking Lunatics Will Murder Us, And Maybe Not With Votes" Report.
Politico got the deets, and they are goddamn delightful:
The RNC is tapping nearly a dozen people to serve in what it’s calling a “Republican Party Advisory Council” – a group that includes former Donald Trump White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, evangelical leader Tony Perkins and a pair of Senate candidates who ran this year.
One of them was Arizona’s Blake Masters, who did everything but campaign in an SS uniform, sing the Horst Wessel Song, and read from Mein Kampf at his campaign rallies.
He may have had a thing for Sam Browne belts, but I’m not much of a clothing critic. If I can’t do it in a t-shirt and a pair of jeans, what’s the point?
OK, so his primer on weaponry may have been helpful to those planning to conduct mass shootings, but did it do anything to tell Arizonans how he would make things better for their state and their country? No, it was the usual vomitorium of Right-wing talking points, condemnation of Joe Biden, etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
Blake Masters was Kari Lake in a cheap suit. Though I’ll bet Lake would look pretty hot in an SS uniform. In a cougarish, soccer mom sort of way.
Fortunately, the good people of Arizona saw through Masters’ lunacy and sent Democrat Mark Kelly back to the Senate. Not even they were ready for a Senator with the intellectual and moral heft of a bag of dicks…even if he was endorsed by Mango Mussolini, who actually looks like a bag of dicks.
Oh, yeah, get that weird fashy dude who ran four points behind every other Republican in Arizona, in a cycle where the GOP got wiped out in the state. He'll know what to do!
“Our party needs to modernize. We’re fighting against Big Tech, the media, and now, the Democrats’ GOTV early voting machine,” said Masters, a candidate who was little more than a sock puppet for big tech billionaire Peter Thiel. “I look forward to working with Ronna[McDaniel] to make sure the party effectively supports our candidates and wins big in 2024.”
Put him in a room with Tony Perkins, the whack job who heads up an anti-gay hate group that opposes birth control. Those two will know just how to repair the party's image with voters under 40!
"Americans of faith are the heartbeat of the Republican vote,” Perkins said. “I have witnessed firsthand how Chairwoman McDaniel understands this, and I am thrilled to continue to work with her to advance these core values.”
Oh, and Chairwoman McDaniel? That would be Ronna ROMNEY McDaniel, who dumped the “Romney” when being associated with the Senator from Utah became politically inconvenient. He wasn’t Trumpy/fascistic enough. No, the GOP demands that its elected officials these days be quasi-fascists, something which Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) steadfastly refuses to countenance. As a result, he’s become something of a Republican pariah. None of the cool kids in the Senate GOP Caucus will eat lunch with him anymore. They probably throw cold pizza and orange slices at him.
A party chairman is supposed to help set the tone for the gaggle of arrogant, self-absorbed politicos who chose him or her to be their leader. That means helping to guide the party into the future and determining which battles it should fight. Instead, Ms. McDaniel is too often trying to keep her job by proving how thoroughly fascistic she can be. This means making ridiculous statements and absurd accusations, all in the name of advancing the Republican agenda.
She’s about as authentic and transparent as a plastic three-dollar bill. She thinks that she talks like a fascist, but she has no idea how to seal the deal. When all is said and done, she sounds like Pee Wee Herman making a YouTube masturbation lesson.
In doing so, Ms. McDaniel looks less like someone setting the tone than someone reacting to events in the hope that they don’t overtake her. This means not pissing off Donald Trump (no mean feat) and keeping track of the racism, misogyny, homophobia, and lies spread by prominent GOP voices. That’s got to be a full-time job and then some.
Why she’d even want the job is difficult to imagine. It seems as if she’s managing the daycare at a sewage treatment plant, except that the sewage runs directly through the daycare center. That means she’s dealing with snotty children and shit all day long and most weekends.
Talk about a crappy job, eh?
Oh, and she also has to figure out how to convince women voters to return to the warm, loving arms of the GOP. How can she do that? Well, perhaps by convincing Republicans not to mess with women’s bodily autonomy. That would be a very good start.
Nah, that’ll never happen.
But Ms. McDaniel does know how to talk to women, which is good, seeing as how she happens to be one. Just ask Kellyanne Conway, who’s an expert on such things:
"The Republican Party stands for freedom, fairness, security, opportunity, prosperity and individual liberty. Ensuring that voters, candidates and Americans of all backgrounds know this and can communicate it in an affable, accessible, actionable manner is the key to growing a party that under Chairwoman McDaniel's leadership has increased support among key stakeholders. This means finishing our sentences, offering specifics and solutions, and converting the double-digit trust the GOP has earned on key issues into wins at the ballot box. Democrats are unified - on how to divide America. Republicans must be unified - on how best to help a broken nation."
Youbetcha…the GOP “stands for freedom, fairness, security, opportunity, prosperity and individual liberty” in the same way I’m the Queen of Denmark- and I look terrible in a tiara. The rest of Conway’s quote is pure Grade A, top-shelf, 100% pure, USDA Prime horse shit. Not a single word of that, except perhaps for the quotation marks, is true.
But, if there’s one thing Republicans stand for, it’s horse shit. You might know it by the more technical term- “propaganda.” They wouldn’t/couldn’t tell the truth if they were provided a priest and several sodium pentothals on the rocks.
Of course, Ronna McDaniel is now up for re-election as GOP Party Chair, and so she’s announcing a new initiative to set up the party for the 2024 election cycle. I suspect that will get about as much play as the 2013 "autopsy,” but she’s got to do something to save her job, so a committee it is!!
Why not just remove the cover from the 2013 “autopsy” and put a new one on it that says “TRUMP 2024!! NO MORE BULLSHIT!!” She could save the GOP a couple million dollars; talk about fiscal responsibility, eh??
Yes, because all the answers you need are there in the GOP’s “autopsy.” The answers are simple. Listen to voters. Stop being dicks to women. Stop elevating White Conservative Christian heterosexual males over all other sentient life forms. And stop treating oligarchs as if the world is their playground.
Oh, and stop “being so gross and racist.” None of this is difficult. It really just means y’all should really make an honest and concerted effort to be decent, caring, and compassionate human beings.
Then again, I did just pick three qualities none of y’all possess, didn’t I?
Maybe it’s time y’all got used to being the minority party.
