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Kick Me, Kill Me
It seems that the Republican establishment will never learn the lesson of the schoolyard: Act like prey, get treated like prey; Allow a bully to slap a “kick me!” sign on your back, expect his flunkies to line up behind him at the invitation. The Democrats, however, do understand this lesson: both to appease fellow-traveling tyrants and to further their own agenda, they have slapped a “kick me!” sign on America so often that doing so is practically in their party platform. And while the Democrats appease their fellow America haters, the Republicans, while paying lip-service to the dangers of appeasement, insist on “reaching across the aisle” to those same Democrats and slapping a “kick me!” sign on their own backs. The Republicans then they wonder why their base — ungrateful for all their “great work”… work that happens to come with a constant and mocking kick from behind — has abandoned them. Their base understands that a bully emboldened and unchecked seldom stops at just the occasional sadistic kick.
This era of Republican appeasement of Democrats began as soon as Ronald Reagan left office and George H. W. Bush assumed it. It was then that President Bush introduced his policy of a “kinder, gentler conservatism.” And it is this policy, in one form or another, which has informed and advised the Republican establishment ever since: a refusal to even deign to put on a pair of gloves and enter the ring. And with each Republican sniff and refusal to fight, the Democrats have become emboldened. They have not only dropped their gloves, they have left the ring and now hang out in a back alley, brass knuckles and baseball bats at the ready.
The progression of Democrat hostility is not difficult to discern, if one is unafraid to look: from the slanders of the Justice Thomas confirmation hearings, to Hillary Clinton’s claims of a “vast right wing conspiracy,” to assassination fantasy plays and “Snipers Wanted” graphics targeting President George W. Bush, to the mass media mocking of Sarah Palin, to the harassment of her family and late night comedy “rape jokes” about her daughter, to the Tea Party being broad-brushed in government reports as a potential terrorist movement, to the media blaming the Tea Party for every atrocity before any evidence could possibly be gathered, to Republican citizens being physically assaulted in town hall meetings, to President Obama’s street rhetoric of “get in their face” and “punish our enemies,” to the IRS targeting conservative groups, to Candy Crowley throwing the 2012 CNN Presidential debate, to the Democrat party cozying up to a group which condones the assassination of police officers, to a talk show host being vilified as a crypto-nazi, to an old man who wore a Trump shirt being assaulted with a crowbar… to this week when pop culture icon Will Smith remarked about supporters of the Republican presidential candidate, “We get to know who people are and now we get to cleanse it out of our country.”
“Cleanse.”
Admittedly, the preceding list is very, very incomplete. But what, over the past twenty-eight years, has the Republican establishment response to each item on this list been other than to reach across the aisle for yet another fresh “kick me!” sign. And worse, some in the establishment, as Democrat hostility became more aggressive, have also decided that it would be easier to become flunkies rather than to remain victims: to malign their own base as “wackobirds” and “hobbits,” to openly sabotage their own candidates like Chris McDaniels, to play the spoiler in their own presidential primary debate, and now to openly support the Democrats’ presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, she of the “vast right wing conspiracy” claim.
Much political hay has been made of the “unpresidential temperament” of the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, some of it with merit. And many political opinions have been offered as to why the Republican base chose Trump over candidates far more qualified. A good many of those opinions have settled on motivations of “anger” and “revenge.” Such opinions are misguided at best and possibly an admission of sour grapes at worst. Much closer to the truth are the motivations of “frustration” and “fear:” frustration at the Republican establishment for consistently dismissing their base in the face of ever increasing Democratic hostility, and fear that the Democrats’ political culture has begun to inform the Democrat popular culture that words like “cleanse” are now borderline acceptable.
Published in Politics
Yes, and our side still has lots of appeasers who plan to vote for Hillary.
Preach it.
I would add that they really kicked into high gear after 2000. They were pissed off about Florida and they have never gotten over it. It’s been total war ever since.
Edit: Dems, I mean.
Unfortunately true. Thanks for reading, MJ.
Definitely true about 2000, a “high gear” that was met with G.W.B.’s “New Tone.”
Thanks for reading, JM.
Not me. We have a choice between pure unadulterated evil and an egotistical blow hard that we don’t know what he will do. I will take my chances with the ego. We know that the evil has already received the money but we do not know what the payoff will be. We don’t know what will be demanded from Hillery in exchange. However, we do know it will be Islamic and Communist countries making the demands. What we don’t know about the ego, will he meet the demands? If he is a supporter of Hillery he just might do. I’d like to see him have a chance to stop her evil.
Or me. Thanks for reading, Kay.
Thank you for an excellent summary!
If Hillary doesn’t go to prison, I’d like to see some of these guys there. Not for crimes, although they are likely guilty of something, but for the experience. Well that would be cruel because they wouldn’t last long. Maybe at juvvy. Anyway, they do not understand how pathetic they look wearing their “kick me” signs on their backs
I wonder what Bill Kristol would say? Oh, nevermind…
And thank you for reading, Franco.
We have so many essays of this vein on Ricochet – “the Republican leadership is nothing but feckless weasels who do nothing but cower below the Democrats” – but none of the authors ever address the obvious question:
If the Republican base has been so fed up with their elected leaders for nearly 28 years now, why do they keep electing (and re-electing) them?
The Republican base has been and remains the majority bloc in primary elections. And as described in the post, the complaints voiced here aren’t new. At some point, there are enough data points in a trend to suggest that the long-term pattern reflects reality. And in this case, that reality may be that the Republican base actually prefers squishes but is in denial of that reality.
That is not, primarily, what this essay is about – it is about Democrat political culture informing Democrat popular culture that words like “cleanse” are now borderline acceptable. I’ve not seen another post about Will Smith’s comments. I looked. If I missed it, I apologize to the author for retreading their ground.
The base has been trending away from electing them. Jeb Bush was roundly rejected. The presidential primary field was ridiculously wide. Incumbents across the country have faced and are facing primary challenges. I would assert that the base does not want squishes, they want an alternative to Marxists. If the party machinery works against that wish, as we saw in Mississippi with Chris McDaniels, then the base revolts and offers up a Trump: not close to ideal, but not a squish.
The most fitting example of my previous comment is probably the House of Representatives, which is where so much of the caving and acquiescence has taken place over the years.
If there’s any legislative body the base should be able to mold in its image, it’s the House. There are several hundred safe Republican districts in which the primary election determines the de facto winner. House primary election voters tend to skew much more conservative than other elections. And an election cycle of every two years means any sins of an incumbent are still fresh in constituents’ minds come next primary season.
And for all that, the House was not able to agree on anyone more confrontational than infamous peacenik Paul Ryan to lead it. The same Paul Ryan who just cruised to re-election, in the same week Tim Huelskamp lost, all in the year of “we hate the GOPe”.
We disagree on what meaning to take away. I see it trending one way, you see it trending the other. We shall both see which of us is correct.
Do you have a comment on the main thrust of the piece: Will Smith’s comment and the Democrat culture of hostility?
Why does Charlie Brown keep trying to kick the football?
Part of it is that each election, the GOP repeats a variation of this time we’re really gonna sock it to ’em. Primary challengers aren’t easy to come by. And I think that a lot of us actually believed the “experts” who kept reassuring us they knew what they were doing.
And if the conservative loses the primary, the establishment can (correctly) say that the Democrat would be so much worse, so you vote the squish back in.
Pretty much true. Thanks for reading.
Do you have a comment on the main thrust of the piece: Will Smith’s comment and the Democrat culture of hostility?
Rick, sorry if I misread the intentions of your post.
I agree that the base does not want Marxists. But I don’t they want the opposite of Marxism, either, and that creates a distorted dynamic:
Democrats want big government, full stop. So the obvious rallying cry against Democrats is “small government!”
However, my theory is that the Republican base doesn’t actually want small government. They don’t want Sweden-sized government either; but most of them (on a national level) do want government to be bigger than the Ted Cruz/Rand Paul vision.
That creates a dichotomy between the rhetoric the base wants to hear (full-on anti-Democrat) and the actual policies they would like to have (semi-Democrat policies). This, in turns, puts perverse incentives on elected Republican lawmakers in which they have to be vocally anti-big government while somehow maintaining the semi-big government their voters still want. And that perverse incentive leads to elected officials who talk loudly and carry a small stick.
My main reaction is that I have little patience for what entertainment celebrities on either side of the aisle (or in the case of noted entertainment celebrity Donald Trump, both sides of the aisle) have to say about anything serious.
The term cleanse is obviously disturbing. However, I also read militaristic language about the left on prominent right-wing publications on a nearly daily basis (including sites which loudly tout their own civility *cough*). In other words, both sides like to use similar language to describe the other – it’s just that one side is currently accepted by popular culture.
Most probably true. Possibly because the Ted Cruz/Rand Paul vision, as much as I would like it and more (or possibly “less” in this case), is not attainable without incrementalism back from the leftist brink. So, it’s not so much “compromise” that this piece is calling out, but rather compromise in the face of abuse, i.e. appeasement.
As do I, unfortunately, they shape opinion. Just ask your common low information voter (Democrat) who said, “I can see Russia from my house.”
That may or may not be true, I can’t speak for other writers here or elsewhere. However, for myself, I do not say things like “cleanse,” rather I say things like “shun” until they “touch the stove” (experience socialism first-hand) and then, if (and only if) they learn from the experience, welcome them back into your circles.
BTW, @Mendel, thanks for reading.
I didn’t mean to imply I’ve ever read similar language from you, sorry if it came across that way.
However, there are a number of writers here who use quite strident language in describing what they would like to do with the left – never as harsh as “cleanse”, but seeing as how Ricochet prides itself of politeness, those comments are still quite nasty. And the statements (by both anonymous nobodies like us and named authors) made regularly at some other right-wing outlets make me cringe.
It did not. I was just clarifying.
Why should I care if crazy coastal liberals offend so many prospective Democrat voters? Let them. The RNC should pay them for offending/motivating so many middle America voters to despise liberals (much like the DNC should pay Trump). Its led to 2 landslide losses for Democrats out of last 3 elections and Hillary Clinton being hated. Sorry….I don’t think killing the Republican Party is a good solution to the “Liberals are vile and the MSM supports them”.problem. Just deal with it imo.
Thanks for writing!
I literally have no idea what you are trying to say here or how it relates to the post. Sorry.
Rick, you are quickly becoming one of my favorite contributors!
Not a contributor, just a member. But thanks for the upgrade! And thanks for reading, AIAC.
Your stuff frequently, and deservedly, makes the front page. You’re a contributor! ;)
Ok, you’re making me blush. Thanks for that.
Nice article. Smith Wants Genocide would be the title if that was a conservative.
Thanks, DocJay. The left jumped right on the opportunity to turn Laura Ingraham’s wave into a salute. I can only image what their reaction would be if a conservative used the word “cleanse” in a similar context as Smith. Thanks for reading.