Esquire’s Charles Pierce seemingly would like a time machine to take him back a quarter-century so he could advise the Tom Foley/George Mitchell-era Democratic party. Failing that, Pierce wishes today’s Dems would at last act on his idea to persuade the American people that the Republican party is “thoroughly, deeply, banana-sandwich loony,” thereby “beat[ing] the crazy out of [the GOP] so the country can get moving again.”
“Republican extremism should have been the most fundamental campaign issue for every Democratic candidate for every elected office since about 1991,” argued Pierce in a Friday post. “The mockery and ridicule should have been loud and relentless. It was the only way to break both the grip of the prion disease, and break through the solid bubble of disinformation, anti-facts, and utter bullshit that has sustained the Republican base over the past 25 years.”
From Pierce’s post (bolding added):
It is all one long, continuous plague of Republican extremism that began quietly when the party moved west and south in its orientation…But it did not break into truly virulent, systemic frenzy until Bill Clinton got elected in 1992. This led to the rise of Newt Gingrich, and the original pack of vandals he herded into the House in 1994…
The disease…finally burst into full-blown dementia in 2008, when the country elected a black Democrat. The country responded by electing the worst Congress in history in 2010, and then somehow surpassed that feat in 2014...
Where the hell has the Democratic Party been on the most basic issue of Republican madness?...
…[I]f one of the parties goes as thoroughly, deeply, banana-sandwich loony as the present Republican Party has, the other party has a definitive obligation to the Republic to beat the crazy out of it so the country can get moving again. This is a duty in which the Democratic Party has failed utterly.
Republican extremism should have been the most fundamental campaign issue for every Democratic candidate for every elected office since about 1991. Every silly thing said by Michele Bachmann, say, or Louie Gohmert should have been hung around the neck of Republican politicians until they choked themselves denying it…The mockery and ridicule should have been loud and relentless. It was the only way to break both the grip of the prion disease, and break through the solid bubble of disinformation, anti-facts, and utter bullshit that has sustained the Republican base over the past 25 years. Instead, and it's hard to fault them entirely for their sense of responsibility, the Democrats chose largely to ignore the dance of the madmen at center stage and fulfill some sense of obligation to the country…Now, as we saw on Thursday [when Kevin McCarthy took himself out of the running to become Speaker of the House], it well may be too late. The national legislature has been broken by crazy people.
…[A]ll the Republicans are begging Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver…to [run for Speaker] because Ryan is the only one who can "unify the party."
The problem, of course, is that, on most issues, especially on the economic issues that are supposed to be his wheelhouse, Ryan is just as daffy and just as extreme as the rest of his party is…The Democratic members of the House should do anything they can within the rules of the House, and anything they can outside of the chamber, to monkeywrench any attempt to put Paul Ryan anywhere near more power than he has now…[T]he country…has no need to see more influence drain to the likes of Paul Ryan, who was an early victim, and who remains a primary carrier, of the original prion disease. It's time for a rigid quarantine, before the government of this republic gets more ill than it already is.
