Back in the innocent days of the Watergate scandal, when there still were some segments of the American government that were not up for sale, the phrase, "To the best of my recollection…" became a running gag. This was because most of the guilty parties of the Nixon administration used it to cover much of the great honking bullshit that would send so many of them to the federal sneezer. Now, as the policy prescriptions of the Republican party are slithering through the process of becoming law, even as the president* and his White House team are floundering in the big vat of borscht they built for themselves, there is a new punchline making the rounds.

It comes this time from people covering what passes for policy debate at this particular moment in time.

Refused to Say If…

How it works is this: Some member of the administration—Betsy DeVos, say—goes before a congressional committee and some troublemaker, usually a Democrat, asks her a question based on what everybody knows is the truth, but that DeVos or whoever has learned from long experience not to say out loud. The headline then reads, "X Refused to Say If the administration wants to boil puppies for rocket fuel," or something.

For example, here's DeVos last week, when asked about whether or not she will allow federal funds to flow to private schools that discriminate against certain students—most specifically, against LGBTQ students. Under questioning from Congresswoman Katherine Clark from right here in the Commonwealth (God save it!), DeVos tried to crab-walk around the topic. From The New York Times:

Representative Katherine M. Clark, Democrat of Massachusetts, asked how Ms. DeVos would respond to a state that gave federal funding to a school that denied admission to students from lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender families. "For states that have programs that allow for parents to make choices, they set up the rules around that," Ms. DeVos replied. Though she said the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights would vigorously investigate any discrimination claims, Ms. DeVos declined to say how, specifically, she might protect students' rights by intervening in state funding decisions. "I'm shocked that you were unable to find one example" of discrimination against students that the secretary of education should oppose, Ms. Clark said.

DeVos' entire public career, which does not contain a single moment in which she actually worked in a school, has been dedicated to the privatization of public education for the benefit of the for-profit education industry, and on behalf of an ongoing effort to infiltrate a certain strain of evangelical American Protestantism into the public schools. Everybody in that room knew that. But that is not something that people like Betsy DeVos say in front of potentially hostile audiences.

So she Refused to Say.

Then we have Congressman Adrian Smith, Republican of Nebraska. Over the weekend, Smith went on NPR to chat with Scott Simon about the farm bill and the Trump administration's proposed shredding of the SNAP program. What resulted, here via HuffPost, was nothing short of amazing.

But Simon pressed Smith on his views about the program's underlying philosophy. "Let me ask you this bluntly: Is every American entitled to eat?" he asked. "Well, nutrition obviously we know is very important and I would hope that we can look to ―" Smith began."Well, not just important, it's essential for life," Simon interjected. Smith conceded that nutrition is essential to life.

And they say Republicans have no respect for science. We continue.

"So is every American entitled to eat and is food stamps something that ought to be that ultimate guarantor?" Simon persisted. "I think we know that given the necessity of nutrition, there could be a number of ways that we could address that," Smith answered. As Smith later observed, a president's budget is merely a set of suggestions that reflect the president's fiscal priorities. It is up to Congress to allot the funds for federal programs. The president can then sign or veto budget legislation they craft. Smith refused to rule out reductions in SNAP spending as part of that process, however. "I want to look at our entire budget, look at all of the details," he said.

So Congressman Smith Refused to Say whether all Americans are entitled to eat, although he did concede that humans need to eat in order to survive. That must make Smith one of those Republican moderates we've heard so much about.

This is the real problem of which the president* is merely the most garish outward sign. The Republican Party—and the modern conservative movement, which is its only energizing force—has prospered through a deft and extended campaign of misdirection. They honestly believe that there are Americans who, for various reasons, most of them cruelty in Calvinist drag, are not entitled to eat. (After all, when you're committed to the notion that healthcare is not a human right, food is not really that much of a leap.) They honestly believe that laws and regulations designed to help certain classes of people overcome discrimination are illegitimate at their foundations. These are not ideas that are overwhelmingly popular on their face, so the strategy up to this point has been to identify and stigmatize The Other so deeply that people lose track of their own economic and social self-interest.

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What has happened since last November, however, in many circles, is that American conservatism—and the Republican Party—has found it harder and harder to use its inside voice. Ironically, the ascension of a president* with no filter at all, and with the Republicans in control of all three branches of the federal government, has created a dynamic that is forcing them to act on their most dearly held, and most deeply unpopular, policy prescriptions, and to do so openly, and out loud.

For all the scrambling that respectable conservatives are doing to distance themselves from Camp Runamuck on Pennsylvania Avenue, this is the primary symptom of the prion disease that conservatism first acquired when Reagan fed it the monkeybrains in 1979, and which it transmitted to the Republican Party through close ideological contact. Unless the Republicans distance themselves from that, the next Donald Trump, who might be far better at being president than this one is, is completely inevitable.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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