Image from: David Horsey

I've never gone wrong betting on the racism and arrogant ignorance of the Right: I've only erred occasionally on the point spread. And predicting Conservative behavior is dead-easy because traditionally they only have four basic settings:

Arrogant triumphalism: The aforementioned "We won! You lost! Bush is a genius! Suck it Libtards!"

The aforementioned "We won! You lost! Bush is a genius! Suck it Libtards!" All-out denialism: The aforementioned "Everything I see on non-Fox teevee is fake! Terrible lies by the terrible Murrica-hating Libtard media conspiracy!"

The aforementioned "Everything I see on non-Fox teevee is fake! Terrible lies by the terrible Murrica-hating Libtard media conspiracy!" Bargaining: It doesn't matter whether or not I'm a brain-washed moron...because Both Sides!"

It doesn't matter whether or not I'm a brain-washed moron...because Both Sides!" Running Away: As I pointed out back during the first Great Skedaddle back in 2009, because Conservatives are by nature abject moral cowards, their last "out" is doing like German soldiers did after the fall of Berlin: stop running away from the catastrophe they created only long enough to burn their uniforms. See, "I'm an independent."

The big difference this time around is that the implosion of the Failed Trump Administration is coming on so much faster and more spectacularly than the implosion of the Failed Bush Administration, that we now need to include a fifth basic setting for Conservatives:

Pleading Ignorance.

Of course Conservatives are ignorant -- deeply and malignantly ignorant. This comes from letting lying demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity take a dump in their skulls for the last 20 years. But since the GOP OnStar only emits turns in one direction, traditionally the only way Conservatives have been permitted to be "wrong" about anything was that they were "not Conservative enough!". From Crain's, October, 2015:

Why Paul Ryan isn't hard core enough for the right

After which there is usually a show-trial, followed by the offender crawling back to Limbaugh and giving him a big, wet one right on his gargantuan ass. From Politico, March, 2009:

Steele to Rush: I'm sorry Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says he has reached out to Rush Limbaugh to tell him he meant no offense when he referred to the popular conservative radio host as an “entertainer” whose show can be “incendiary.”



“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”... But this time the Pig People's Retreat from Moscow on the Potomac is being forced down their throats over a matter of weeks not years... From PBS: Keystone pipeline won't use US steel despite Trump pledge.

And -- surprise! -- a whole lot of that steel has come from...Russia!

Republicans Are Hiding Their Healthcare Plan in a Basement Because Everyone Hates It The Party of Personal Responsibility had seven years to work on this. They loudly and proudly voted on it 62 times but now they're hiding their plan in a shoe-box in Paul Ryan's locker. Because there is no plan. Because there never was a plan. Because they're liars who got lazy in their lies because, let's face it, the average Conservative is a moron who will believe anything, so why not piss in their ear and call it Evian. Because that's how you win with the Pig People.

From Vox again: Mike Pence used private email as governor, and it got hacked It was everything Clinton's critics alleged. Lock him up! Lock him up!

And there's the rub.

If the current trend continues, there is simply not enough time to burn all the MAGA hats and there is no decontamination shower powerful enough to hose off the stink of their vote in such a hurry. So as giant slabs of Trump bullshit burst into flames and fall into their personal lives, expect to see more and more Trumpkins reduced to flapping their arms and pleading that they wuz just plain flim-flammed by Orange Julius Caesar.

From The LA Times:

She voted for Trump. Now she fears losing the Obamacare plan that saved her life. After struggling for years without insurance, the 55-year-old former small-business owner — who has battled diabetes, high blood pressure and two cancers — credits Obamacare with saving her life. Watson also voted for Donald Trump, believing the businessman would bring change. She dismissed his campaign pledges to scrap the Affordable Care Act as bluster. Now, as she watches the new president push to kill the law that provided her with a critical lifeline, Watson finds herself among many Trump supporters who must reconcile their votes with worries about the future of their healthcare. Watson, a proud, salty woman who was uninsurable a few years ago, isn’t ready to renounce Trump. But she’s increasingly frustrated by his vague promises to replace Obamacare with something better. “I’ve been through enough,” Watson said recently, sitting on the patio outside her mobile home, down a sandy road in a rural corner of northern Florida. “I don’t want to go back.” Passage of the Affordable Care Act finally offered some relief, thanks to a small temporary program created in 2011 for people like Watson who had been denied coverage. She was able to get on a plan that ultimately cost $363 a month and is now cancer free...

Ten years ago, the Right had the time and money and (most importantly) the Beltway media complicity necessary to build two different-but-interrelated Bush Era Accountability Escape Modules. For Beltway hacks and other public persons who had accumulated long and ineradicable records of cheer-leading for Team Cheney, they erected the High and Holy Church of Both Siderism.

And, boy howdy, the pews have been packed and the collection plates overflowing ever since!

And for the Great Unwashed party base they created the Fabulous, Tea-Baggulous Bush-Off Machine. Where...

For the price of their souls and a couple of bucks

The Bush-Bellies could now buy some nips and some tucks.





But now there is no time or money for such craftsmanship. Now, there is just an urgent need on the part of Beltway elite to get as far away from the Trumpocalypse as fast as possible, which is why "respectable" Conservatives and Both Siderists in the media are now frantically trying to pretend that, somehow, Trump is not a Republican. and that "Trumpism" is some bizarre anomaly which no one could possibly have seen coming, and not the logical and obvious apotheosis of a Party and Movement which they have spent the last 30 years building.

David Brooks NYT, January 31, 2017:

In the first place, the Trump administration is not a Republican administration...

This time, because of the breakneck speed at which The Bastard President is losing his mind in public, there is no time to build a great, spacious ark with Both Siderists in the first-class cabins and the Pig People down in Tea Party steerage capable of carrying the whole, miserable mob of them to safety.

This time the Beltway is throwing together a lifeboat out of whatever they can lay their hands on: a lifeboat just big enough for themselves and their pals. So unless Pence and Ryan and McConnell conjure a way to get Don the Con removed from office very soon and then stage a massive "He Fooled Us All!" parade down 5th Avenue, there is no one coming with a magic machine to absolve the party base of their malignant idiocy anytime soon.

And that should make the next several months very interesting indeed.

Excerpted from Driftglass, Full post here.