Over at the anti-Trumpy Dispatch, Christian Schneider explains why even anti-Trump conservatives like himself would be cawazzy to wish for Republicans to lose the Senate as well as the presidency in 2020: “Why Are Some Conservatives Rooting for the GOP to Lose the Senate? Yes, many Republican politicians have behaved badly. But a Biden presidency with Democrats control of Congress could yield a torrent of progressive policies.”1 After that head, Chris gets more specific, taking a look back at 2008:
At the time, there was a strong view among conservatives that punishment at the polls would correct the GOP’s ideological drift leftward. Traditional conservatives had seen eight years of George W. Bush expanding Medicare, approving government regulation of political speech, and pouring money into the federal government, leaving many feeling their Republican Party was no better than the Democrats.
In 2006, even up-and-coming Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan spoke of the need to purge the “bad apples” from his Republican Party. “We don’t need a feather duster; we need a fire hose,” he said about cleansing the party of “RINOs.”
Schneider links the Paul Ryan quote to a worshipful article Chris wrote himself on Paulie Boy for the July 2010 issue of the Wisconsin Interest, not quite adequately noting, in my opinion, that Paulie made the statement after the GOP got pretty well fire hosed in the 2006 congressional election. Nor does Chris note that Ryan himself made all the “bad apple” votes for George Bush’s “crazy” (my term) spending that Republicans decided after the fact were a bad idea. “We lost sight of our principles,” they moaned then, and which Chris moans now.
Hello, Republicans, aka Hypocrites! Here’s the real reason you got hammered in both 2006 and 2008: IRAQ, MOTHERFUCKERS! IRAQ! FUCKING IRAQ! MOTHERFUCKING IRAQ! You lied and led us into a disastrous counterproductive war that sent thousands of young men and women—none of whom were named either Paul Ryan or Chris Schneider—home in body bags, charging the American people trillions of dollars for murdering their sons and daughters! That’s why you lost! That’s why!
Schneider, with a perfectly straight face, warns of a “torrent of progressive policies,” pretending that “those who still believe America’s greatness lies in small government solutions”, i.e., Paul Ryan Republicans like himself, want and need Mitch the Bitch McConnell to keep wild man Biden in check.
Small government solutions, Chris? When has the Republican Party ever done anything but cut taxes and increase spending, blowing up the budget and increasing the national debt over and over again? Republicans did not lose in 2006 and 2008 because they spent too much on “progressive policies”, but because they got too many Americans killed. And the same can be said for Barack Obama, because if Barack had had the common sense to resist the strange allure of regime change, and thus had stayed out of Libya, there would have been no Benghazi, and Hillary Clinton, with all her baggage, would have defeated Trump easily. Why is looking the truth in the face so hard? Why?
Afterwords
I guess it’s fair to say that I dislike Paul Ryan as much as Chris likes him. Plenty of thoughts on Lyin’ Paulie right here.
1. If I fail to distinguish adequately between “conservative” and “Republican”, I apologize. NOT!
