Rewriting Village history
by digby
MSNBC’s Luke Russert went on the 700 Club the day after David Brat defeated Eric Cantor and told Pat Robertson:
It was a shocking upset last night in Eric Cantor’s home district. And while a lot of people are making this out to be a sort of Tea Party vs establishment and there is an element of that but I look at South Carolina with Lindsay Graham facing a lot of Tea Party challengers and he was able to beat them back, Mitch McConnell was able to do that a few weeks ago and now you see there’s a runoff in Mississippi between Chris McDaniel and Thad Cochran, McDaniel the tea party backed candidate. I think in Cantor’s district specifically it’s the age-old thing which often happens — a politician goes to Washington, they become big, they have a national profile, they go around the world, they’re always on television. Some people feel that they begin to lose touch with the voters in their district. Eric Cantor is a fascinating example. He’s somebody that out-spent his opponent 15 to 1, he spent $168,000 on steak dinners for his campaign. His opponent spent 200,000 for his entire campaign. So when you look at this you see he lose 56-44 there is a lot of folks who were disenchanted with Eric Cantor, the power of incumbency.
In fairness, Russert wasn’t alone in this. The aftermath of the Cantor defeat had all the Villagers blandly waving away any suggestion that this was due to right wing craziness instead insisting that Cantor just wasn’t filling the proverbial potholes, “all politics is local” blah, blah blah.
Today Russert said this in the wake of McCarthy withdrawing his candidacy for Speaker:
I honestly think this all goes back to when David Brat beat Eric Cantor last year in 2014. Anything is possible now with House Republicans. Anything is possible in the Republican party. There’s a fight for the soul of the party. It’s happening today on Capitol Hill, it’s going to happen next year out there in those primaries and no one knows who’s going to emerge from this but I’ll tell you one thing, we’re seeing right now the chaos that’s happening between these two divergent schools of thought, the establishment and the conservatives. It is playing out in full force and it is very ugly for Republicans who like to keep this stuff behind closed doors. They hate this playing out, this is not the way they like to do things, Kate.
I don’t know who “they” are — the wingnuts are having the time of their lives.
What Russert just discovered today has been true for a very long time. And yet the Villagers all seem to discover it every few months after which they rush to discount what they’ve learned and go back to the assumption that the “grown-ups” are in charge.
They aren’t in charge and haven’t been for a couple of decades. Look at the record: endless partisan witch hunts, impeachment, stolen election, war with Iraq, defense of torture,more partisan witch hunts, immigration lunacy, Ben Carson and Donald fucking Trump. And that’s just for starters.
It’s not as if this is any surprise. They just keep doubling down. At some point the political media is going to have to wrap their minds around this.
Unfortunately, it isn’t happening today. Just as this chaos was reigning on Capitol Hill this morning, Chris Matthews and Andrea Mitchell were explaining that Hillary Clinton’s opposition to the TPP is a sign that the Democrats are just as in thrall to the “far left” as the Republicans are to the far right and that both parties are equally off the rails with their extreme policies and cutthroat politics. Why, Bernie Sanders is a socialist who refuses to become a Democrat and the liberals are all making Clinton “bow to the extreme.”
So, if anyone thinks they are in any way wised up to the reality of American politics, think again. It’s the same old, same old.