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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
They didn’t and that is why Republicans were sent to the wilderness in 2006.
I disagree because the elections of 2010 and 2014 were not about electing squishes.
Rick, I think you do a nice job detailing the culture of hostility. Democrats et al used to veil their priorities with good intentions and compassionate rhetoric .
I thought since Obama they don’t even care to try and hide it any longer, but you make a good point about the acrimony extending back to 2000. Good piece of analysis.
Thank you, Brent. And thanks for reading.
As to whether we are electing movement conservatives or squishes, I had a good lesson last week in my district. Our congressman chose not to run for re-election, so we had an open primary for a safe Republican seat.
We had sixteen candidates. The guy who won could be safely characterized as a squish, but not a bad one, and not part of the surrender caucus. I hope he surprises me on the upside. He doesn’t scare me.
The big lesson is that the entire field finished in the order of the money they spent on the campaign. Money really is the mothers milk of politics. Also, in addition to money, the winner had both our popular Republican governor and Mike Huckabee campaign for him, so big-name celebrity endorsements.
I voted for a really solid social conservative; he came in seventh. There were other solid conservative choices. It was too bad that they split up the vote so many ways.
It looks like that’s the current strategy.
Great post Rick.
Cleansing of Jews; cleansing of ethnic minorities; cleansing of religious groups; cleansing of the feebllminded and cleansing of the political opposition.
Will Smith who so often plays the affable, intelligent, hero underdog, is in real life it seems someone much less admirable. Knowing so little about Faschism, he lacks even a modicum of embarrassment for its wholehearted embrace. What an ignorant, self important jerk. (Since to my knowledge Mr. Smith is not a Rico member, maybe the COC won’t apply, we shall see.)
Thank you, Dustoff, and thanks for reading.
I can’t claim what Smith does or does not know. However, if his intention was not just to virtue signal against Donald Trump but to make a case to vote against him, then he failed spectacularly: affirming for Trump’s supporters that the Left has, indeed, gone dangerously lunatic.
I post this yesterday and then I wake up this morning to read that BLM is burning Milwaukee.
Why hasn’t anybody started suing BLM for inciting mayhem?
Because they have the correct political allies.
Political allies who like seeing business burn? What’s with the Chamber of Commerce? If every business in the country dropped their membership maybe some action would be taken. I understand they are a very powerful lobby. What about the insurance companies that cover these businesses? No joint action from them either?
It’s probably because they have no money.
What judge would hear the case? If a sensible judge could be found, he’d just be overturned by a higher court. If the higher courts uphold the sensible judge’s ruling, then Obama would find some way for BLM to weasel out.
The point isn’t to get money out of the BLM, it is to get an injunction to shut them down. If a court orders them to reimburse the businesses will they have any money to hire more people to start more demonstrations and more riots? A court order can tie up any assets they have, as well as assets of their backers such as Soro. I’m not an attorney, but there has to be somebody out there with a $ or $$ and some brains to figure out how to stop them!
Soros has money though, and I’m pretty sure he’s funneled money to BLM.I’m also pretty sure that Soros has funneled money to BLM. I’d really like to see him RICO’d, but again, who’d hear the case?
Dead right. Even Nixon tried to appease the liberal media. It can’t be done for exactly the reasons you say, they are bullies not journalists. And indeed our frustration is that they are even bigger cowards than the Republicans. Newt showed before Trump that you just smack them on the nose. Trouble is many Republican are joining in to cheer on the bullies. It’s disgusting.
And then they turn around and “stick it to the man” by nominating a guy to the left of the people they’re complaining about. The sad reality is that most Republican primary voters apparently wanted these left wing Republicans. They just wanted one now who “fights.”
So true. The real problem is the corporate media who are able to make in-kind contributions 24/7 to the causes and the political party of their choice. It’s not just the journalists or the news divisions, it’s all their on-air personalities, producers, writers and executives. Of course we all know this, but this is still the water that us fishies swim in. We forget how pervasive and influential this monster is even on those of us who are skeptical.
Until this issue is dealt with, there is no hope for conservatism or a meaningful Republican Party. Watching these morons pile on Trump alongside these people who will use (and have used) these same smears against them is nauseating.
And just you wait. These people think they can distance themselves from Trump ? Nope. Only if Trump is elected will these traitors be seen as renegades. Otherwise the media will lie about them too and smear every one of them. They will be used in the grand show-trial, denunciating and denying participation in witchcraft.
I come to Ricochet and in every post about Trump, a large chunk of the responses are Trump supporters demanding a purge of half their fellow Republicans. I then look toward NR and hear no shortage of talk about a “reckoning” for those who supported Trump. Last month at the RNC, Trump stood hand-in-hand with the GOPe in an organized hit-job to drub Cruz out of the party (“his career is over!”). When this kind of rhetoric is being used everyday by people claiming to be on one’s own side, it’s kind of hard to get worked up when some blowhard Hollywood actor makes a similar comment.
One day I think BLM and its pawns are going to make the connection that all of this supposed injustice is occurring in locked down Democrat cities and the Democrats are going to have to deal with the hell they’ve wrought.
Good to see this up front.
Than you, and thanks for reading, IW.
That’s usually what happens in Socialist/Communist revolutions, yes.
For those interested, Sharyl Attkisson has a different take on the polls.
https://sharylattkisson.com/clinton-lead-over-trump-shrinks-to-margin-of-error-bloomberg-poll/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SharylAttkisson+%28Sharyl+Attkisson%29
We forget how much they hated Ronny Raygun, who was evil, senile, all-powerful, and bent on world destruction.
That animosity is probably why G. H. W. Bush tried his “kinder, gentler conservatism” approach in the first place. After twenty-eight years, can we finally call it a failed policy and be done with it?
If there is one thing I absolutely cannot abide; it is a supposed ‘conservative’ using the term ‘compassionate conservative’.
It Basically makes the argument that conservatives are not compassionate, and only those that denote themselves, are.
When Bush used it I was poleaxed, then realized what a fool I had been….. Sometimes you need that smack on the head to wake up .
Yes, Thank you for that Kay. The ole usual lie of omission……of course in
thier mind it’s not a lie at all, but they’re past masters at fooling themselves.
I actually think that you can resist- and we (including Ryan and McConnell) have resisted- a lot of the worst statist policies where we have the power to do so while working soberly and without emotional age 4 tantrums and the accompanying Trump middle finger, or the preachy Gingrich self-serving scolding of media. Neither of those approaches accomplish a thing except to give some short-lived by ultimately ineffective emotional satisfaction while staring into a cheap beer.
The fact is, the public likes the existence of some form of social security, and some form of Medicare. It does not agree with the Cruz approach to the Constitution, and clearly does not understand either complicated foreign affairs or free market economics.
Our task is not to issue screeds against elected officials on our side who fail to win every battle (the other side gets to fight also), it is to win the trust of the educable portion of the public so that they believe us when we say that entitlement reform is essential, the US needs to be reliable in credit markets, free trade is a positive and always has been, and alliances with Putin or gutting NATO are bad ideas.
William Brennan was the ultimate effective SCOTUS justice and he never whined about Byron White or Rehnquist. He just kept whittling away from the inside and ignored the lefty firebrands who thought that they needed to “win” every propaganda exchange.
I was think along the same lines last week , I may be wrong but perhaps many of those Republicans who last week came out for Hillary are the same people or of the same ilk as those GHWB supporters who only came to Reagan reluctantly in 1980 and then between 88 and 92 reached across the aisle again and got their heads handed to them creating the opening for these two-bit Arkansas grifters because as usual they were playing country club golf against a chain wielding street gang.
After the 200 election was finally settled I said to my wife, Bush will be the last Republican president because the press will never let this happen again . It was the swift boat vets who saved his bacon in 04 , Bush/ Rove never even said thanks.
Speaking of Reagan and the press, in 1980 he was older than Hillary is now, if there was a picture of him having to be helped to get up two steps, do you think the press would have been interested? It would have been pushed and pushed for months with never ending health questions