Republicans Can't Stop Telling Us They're Assholes
Republicans rely on the public not really believing how cartoonishly evil they.
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Republicans used to be more subtle.1 They didn’t just come out and spew racism. They used dog whistles and code words. They didn’t just come out and say they wanted to privatize Medicare. They talked about letting the free market “improve it.”
These days, though? Republicans can’t stop telling us they’re assholes. They’re proud of it. They want to shout it from the fucking rooftops! And boy howdy, are they shouting.
Behold, the Republican Study Committee. What do they study? Presumably how to cause as much misery and suffering as possible because it sure as fuck is not “how to make America great again.” Here are some of the details via the White House and the RSC itself of what they plan to do if Trump steals another election:
The RSC’s proposed budget would:
Raise the retirement age for Social Security to 69 because fuck you, non-millionaires. Work until you die. Some of them are actually saying this out fucking loud
Cut 1.5 trillion from Social Security to, what else?, pay for tax cuts for the rich
End Medicare’s ability to negotiate drug prices (this is the thing that brought the price of insulin down from well over $100 to just $35 a month and saved thousands of lives)2
Privatize Medicare, which would send costs for senior citizens skyrocketing but would make billions for the medical industry
Massive tax cuts for the rich because something something “job creators”3
End the estate tax on the rich so they can pass their unearned wealth to their lazy, entitled children who never worked a day in their lives
Claw back the money being used by the IRS to hunt down millionaire and billionaire tax cheats. The IRS doing its job has been filling the right with unholy fury. We’re “stealing” billions from the rich!
Kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau so companies can rip off hundreds of billions from the public. Any agency that protects the public from greedy corporations is a problem for the GOP and the CFPB has been exceptionally good at its job. Republicans will never stop trying to kill it
And, of course, a national abortion ban because when they said they would never do that, they were fucking lying. And you know who will immediately rule that it’s constitutional? The same Republicans on the Supreme Court who just insisted that the federal government couldn’t regulate abortion. Because this was the goal all along and the only people who didn’t know it were the media who called us “alarmists.”
That’s just the top-line stuff. Republicans also want to:
End government research into climate change
Cut funding to the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration because they’re too “woke” or focused on climate change
Cut subsidies for car companies to produce electric vehicles
Gut the Environmental Protection Agency
Gut the CDC for being too “woke” because vaccines and viruses apparently have a political agenda
Eliminate the National Labor Relations Board which has been enabling the recent surge of union activity and sending Corporate America into a terrified panic
It goes on and on and on. Page after page of this crap. A detailed blueprint of how to break a country into pieces and hand it over to oligarchs.
Let’s be clear: This Republican plan will not improve the lives of their base of rabidly racist misogynists in the slightest. It will actively make their lives worse in every conceivable way. But it will make the billionaire scumbags who own the GOP happy even as the Republican base, too fucking stupid to know their throats are being slit, cheer because it made the libs cry.
So why are Republicans so open about this? They used to circulate their plans in secret while smiling to the public and promising to make things better. Now they just send out a press release bluntly stating how they’re going to fuck the American people raw without a drop of lube.
The answer, as always, is the press. This is a two-parter. The first part is that the Republican base lives in a sealed information bubble. Republicans can quite literally tell them that cutting funding for the IRS is good for America because billionaires shouldn’t pay taxes. If the evil government can do that to a billionaire, think about what they can do to you! Blablabla.
So the base will never see this stuff as it actually is because it will never be reported accurately inside their bubble.
But what about outside of the bubble? Well, that’s the second part and a whole different problem. As I mentioned numerous times before, the press works overtime to normalize and downplay Republican extremism. They do this because it would be “biased” to inform the public of just how off-the-wall insane and evil the GOP has become.
That, in turn, would hurt their bottom line as the public recoiled in horror from the monstrosity the Republican Party has become. Elections would cease to be competitive as Republicans found themselves isolated and ostracized by people with functioning moral compasses. No horse race means no horse race coverage and that is a loss of hundreds of millions in revenue for the press. Better to pretend the GOP is a normal political party and keep things interesting (and lucrative).
The result of decades of media complicity is that the public simply does not believe Republicans are, in fact, cartoon villains. It doesn’t matter how depraved they are or how brazen about it they get, the public has been conditioned by the press to shrug it off. “Oh, that’s just an exaggeration by the Democrats.” Even if it’s a video of a Republican announcing how they want to end Social Security and Medicare, it’s just brushed off as partisan bickering.
Republicans are keenly aware of this and know they can say anything they want with no repercussions. Why bother hiding how evil you are when the press will just cover it up anyway? The problem, of course, is that the GOP is now caught in a cycle of escalation from which there is no escape; a victim of their own “success” in manipulating the media.
Now that they don’t have to restrain themselves, they can only sink further into depravity and they have to move fast to satisfy the rage center of the base. The practical effect of this is screaming at the top of your lungs what an asshole you are. Look at me! Aren’t I the biggest dick you’ve ever seen?! I’ll make the libs cry for sure!
But that kind of escalation can only be covered up for so long. The press has been insisting for two years now that the Dobbs decision is no big deal. That it wouldn’t keep impacting elections. Despite these assurances, Republicans were creamed in the midterms, the off-year, and almost every special election since then.
Election night this November is going to be a very bad night for Republicans and the press because the GOP is exceeding the press’ ability to normalize them. So please, Republicans, keep telling us all exactly what kind of assholes you are as loudly as you can. More cruel budgets. More Project 2025 sadism. It’s the best campaign ad for Democrats I can imagine!
There are 224 days until the 2024 election. Vote blue like your life depends on it.
This would be after they discovered screaming the N-word at the top of their lungs and viciously beating Black protestors on TV was very unpopular with the public.
The press tried REALLY fucking hard to make it seem like drug companies did this all on their own out of the goodness of their hearts. Fuck you. Biden and the Democrats twisted their arm until they tapped out. That’s what the government is for: To beat greedy multi-billion dollar corporations into submission on behalf of We The People.
To the surprise of actually no one, the GOP’s trillion-dollar tax cut didn’t do a fucking thing except make the rich even richer. So of course they want to make those cuts permanent instead of letting them expire in December of 2025.
“Vaccines and viruses apparently have a political agenda”
While covid spared no one according to political ideology, P01135809 and Kushner tried to change its mind, by hoping blue states with higher population density would have little to no access to PPE.
Tell it Justin. Love the article.
All key points most Americans don't know but should. The message is clear. Republican party has left us with only one option.
Vote 💙 to keep our Democracy as we know it or Vote ❤️ to end our Democracy.