The GOP Examines Itself

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin . . . Working in Texas?  Or Bangladesh? . . . Getting Nerve-ous About Syria . . . Lunkhead Luntz Talks Out of Turn . . . 

 
It's been a while, ever since the Election of 2012 in fact.

You know what I'm talking about.  The election where Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan were supposed to win, right?  All the numbers (the "real" numbers that Karl Rove and all the other right-wing chatterers claimed to have) pointed to it.  The polls, unskewed, favored the Simp and the Gimp.

Until 11:15 PM, Election Night.

When the quaint and cozy delusion pattern the GOP set up for itself . . . collapsed.

Like a soap bubble.

Like a fart in a whirlwind.

Throughout the lonely months of winter - December, January, February - the Republican Party's various factions communed with each other and examined themselves.

Not unlike this, really:

And the various factions (the Establishment, the Neocons, the Theocons, the Crazies, the Zombies, and the Outright Insane) pontificated and sniped and raged at one another, furious anger and confusion fueling their mutual hatred of each other but firmly believing that they need each other.

Sort of like a meth-addicted couple who beat each other regularly, but rely upon each other for that next fix.

And the result of this soul-searching?  Was it to moderate their message?  To try to be more inclusive?  To try to stop saying stupid shit that alienates entire swaths of eligible voters?

Are you kidding me?

The Great Idea that they've come up with is that the substance of the message is fine and dandy.  What's wrong is that the message isn't being presented properly.

It's kind of like the Conquistador Coffee Sketch:

Yeah.  Like that. 

Despite what they feel is the necessity to "rebrand' themselves (as well as their constant assertions, reality to the contrary, that they are on the 'right' side of history), the GOP is still managing to brand themselves as the Party of No, the Party of Nobody But Us Elderly White Folk, the Party of the Stupid, and the Party of the Totally Bugfuck Crazy.

***

Partially eclipsed by the Boston Marathon bombings and the subsequent manhunt, shootout and capture of the two c*nts involved came this little incident in the small town of West in the State of Texas:

Quite gruesome; 15 dead and 160 injured as of right now.  Investigators are still in "What the fuck happened?" mode, but it might have had something to do with the facts that the plant was burning wooden pallets and that the owners and operators of the plant lied out their asses to the EPA and OSHA.

The first lie was that the anhydrous ammonia and ammonia nitrate the plant used and produced posed no fire hazard.  I guess people don't recall the Texas City disaster of 1947, which involved ammonia nitrate fertilizer and killed nearly 600 people in America's worst-ever industrial accident.

The other lie was the amount of fertilizer they had on hand - ten times the amount they were supposed to have, or a whopping 540 tons of the stuff.  That, a fire, and the fact that there were occupied dwellings scant blocks away from it were a recipe for disaster.

But that's Texas for you - very business-friendly.

Sort of like in Savar, a suburb of Dhaka, Bangladesh, where the government told the owners of a garment plant to shut down because the building was unsafe (the upper floors had been added without a permit).  The owners forced their low-wage employees to work, and the building collapsed.  250 dead at last report, and it could go higher.

Fortunately, Bangladesh isn't like Texas, so there's a good chance that the owners or operators of this death trap will be prosecuted.

***

The Syrian Civil War proceeds without a letup, and the West is getting antsy.  See, Syria actually has an arsenal of chemical weapons (like the nerve gas known as Sarin) and the fear is that Dr. Assad and his boys will use them on the rebels.

Well, start bracing yourselves, folks.

There are indications that Sarin has, in fact, been used.  Investigations are ongoing to confirm this.

If true, the West (and the United States) are in a pickle.  Use of WMDs in Syria have been a 'red line' that, once crossed, will require military intervention.  However, this will cause the West to butt heads with the Russians, Syria's main prop and trading partner since the rest of the world cut them off.  Despite what the Neocons may screech at you, gentle reader, you do not want to piss off the Russians too much.

***

Frank Luntz is one of those GOP "political analysts" who were revealed to be naked and masturbating in a corner when the actual numbers came in on Election Night, hugging his horn to thoughts of the unbridled hell that would have been a Mitt Romney Administration.

Like his fellows, he's been examining what went wrong, and in a talk with a crowd of College Republicans at the University of Pennsylvania a day or so ago he decided to Reveal All.

But before he would Reveal All, he said to the lone campus reporter, he'd have to speak off the record.  The reporter obligingly shut off the video camera.

And one student drew his iPhone from its holster, and recorded the thing.

Luntz held forth about the impact the right-wing media had on the perception that entire GOP apparatus, upticket and down, were a howling pack of crazed hyenas and shit-flinging monkeys who were intent on destroying everything from minority rights to women's reproductive rights to labor rights to the entire social safety net, all while giving warm, wet mouth-hugs to the upper crust, military contractors and the very people who ran the economy into the briar patch in the first place.

Luntz singled out the biggest offender of them all.

And who might that be, you may ask?

None other than The Bloviator-in-Chief; Head Party Ideologist and Leader of the Rampage since 1992, Rush "Hillbilly Heroin" Limbaugh."

Naturally the crowd gasped at this. 

Naturally they hung upon his every word.

Naturally the enterprising student gave the video to Mother Jones, who promptly disseminated it over the Web.

We shall see now whether Rush will merely let Luntz off with a severe public flogging followed by a profuse apology and an attempt to spin it in Rush's favor, or Rush unleashes the devastating power of the Zombies and the Crazies to rip Luntz into little tiny pieces for revealing State (well, Party) Secrets.

Because it's all about the branding, you know.  The GOP is trying to present itself as the Party of Rainbow-Pooping Unicorns, after all.