After a long hiatus, Jordan Klepper went to a MAGA rally in New Hampshire and found the same reality-denying cult members. It is so easy to turn their words back against them because they are so oblivious.
There is widespread acceptance outside the MAGA cult that the Republican party has ceased to be a political party in any accepted sense. Even within the MAGA movement, there are those who have contempt for the Republican party, seeing it as part of the establishment that is not fully accepting of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT). The rot did not begin with SSAT’s takeover of the party, though. The rot started earlier, and John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin has his running mate in 2008, and the way she was embraced by so many, was the first serious sign that it had ceased to be a serious party. But the surest indication that a political party has gone seriously off the rails is when a demagogue with no serious policy agenda but instead spouts a series of grievances is seen as a savior and becomes its unquestioned leader, leaving it as just a hollow shell. The brutal ouster on Kevin McCarthy as speaker, someone who tried to have it both ways as a establishment figure as well as a MAGA cult member, was seen as the stripping away of final veneer of any political credibility.
Politico had an interesting roundup of opinions from academics and journalists about how it went so horribly wrong for the Republican party and what needs to be done to make it into a party again. I picked out just a few of the many contributions and the gist of the things they said.
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Choices have consequences.
Incidentally, it appears that it was McCarthy who ordered the immediate eviction of Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer from their courtesy offices on the very day of his ouster. This kind of pettiness is not going to help the GOP when the time comes from them to seek help from Democrats to get them out of messes of their own making, as McCarthy found out, when after repeatedly going along with the Trumpian demonization of Democrats, he expected them to throw him a life-preserver when his own job was on the line.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the Kevin McCarthy loyalists are seething with anger over his ouster from the position of speaker. It would be understandable that they would be angry with Matt Gaetz and the seven other Republican congresspeople who voted for him to go. But they seem to be even more angry with Democrats for not voting to keep him in his position, acting as if it were an unprecedented betrayal, even though it has always been the case that it was up to the majority party to vote in and keep the speaker and that the minority party always voted against.
At his press conference, McCarthy blamed the Democrats for what happened but Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez was having none of it.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) railed against former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calf.) for blaming Democrats for being ousted from his leadership role in a historic vote.
“Does anyone believe for one minute that McCarthy would help elect a Dem speaker ‘for the institution’?” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “McCarthy’s hubris is a theme. He loudly stated he wouldn’t negotiate [with] Dems, called virtually none, trashed those who helped w/ [a continuing resolution], and then expected Dem votes for free?”
(WuMo)
If you get the joke in this cartoon, then you likely have seen the 1960 film Spartacus starring Kirk Douglas in the title role and Tony Curtis as his loyal friend and ally, that was directed by Stanley Kubrick with the screenplay by Dalton Trumbo.
Here is the scene.
Trumbo had been blacklisted during the McCarthy era because he had refused to provide names to the congressional committees seeking to identify Communists working in Hollywood and it is assumed that this scene was designed to praise those who refused to betray their friends and colleagues.
The scene has become iconic and I assumed that it had seeped into the popular culture by now so that at least people of my generation would know of it. But it is not the case. I once told a story to a couple my age of a person who would give his name as Spartacus to the baristas at coffee shops so that when they called out his name, he could stand and say, “I am Spartacus!”
My friends had blank looks which told me that they had no idea what the point of my story was so I had to explain it to them, which of course ruins any humor.
In the comic strip Pearls Before Swine, Rat is the most unpleasant character, someone who is rude, self-centered, and cynical. So it is disturbing how often I find myself agreeing with him.
Actually, I did go camping once. Just after we completed college, a group of a dozen friends spent a week on a beautiful, isolated stretch of beach in Sri Lanka. I had a lot of fun but part of the enjoyment for me was the novelty. Now it is a case of ‘been there, done that’ with no desire to repeat that experience, though some of my friends on that trip continued to enjoy going camping all their lives.
Actor and singer Dean Martin, early in his career, was part of a comedy duo with Jerry Lewis, where he played the straight man to the more antic Lewis. Later he hosted a live variety TV show. Bob Newhart was a great comedian, known for his hesitant manner and his deadpan delivery. On one occasion, he was a guest on Martin’s show and they did a sketch together. Legend has it that Martin never rehearsed for his show but simply read his lines from the off-screen cue cards, sometimes seeing them for the first time while on live TV.
On this occasion, he clearly did not anticipate how funny Newhart could be and you can see the result.
