Improv Politics
“…I don't give a hoot about what people have to say
I'm laughin' as I'm analyzed
Lunatics Anonymous, that's where I belong
Sure cause I am one till my strength is gone…” The Kings, “This Beat Goes On”
The Republican Party is no longer a political party. In fact, they shouldn’t even be characterized as a “party”. They should be called the Republican Asylum because they are a collection of lunatics.
They have no platform. Republicans are not interested in governing. They are just interested in air time on Fox News and newspaper headlines. They are an improv comedy troupe, interested in how they look and how much coverage they can get for saying something stupid.
Why else would they come up with a proposal like impeaching Pres. Biden? For what? Who knows? Maybe because he’s a better president than Donald Trump ever was? Or maybe because he named his son Hunter?
There’s never a “why” with these people. There doesn’t need to be a reason. Just because.
They are not serious people.
And of course the media has not caught on to this yet. They still think it’s 2008 and politics as usual. It’s the horse race, stupid.
As we noted last October here, this is mostly the fault of political reporters, who like the republicans, are not interested in doing their jobs, just getting their faces on cable TV so they can spout their inane theories about why Trump is benefiting from being a criminal and promoting their books.
The media spent hours crowing about Trump’s mug shot taken in Georgia. “It’s unprecedented.” “It’s historic.” “It makes him look tough.”
Huh?
Not a word about why a twice-impeached, four-time indicted, soon to be convicted, felon is still the “darling” of the Republican Asylum. Why the MAGA (My Ass Got Arrested) crazies think he belongs back in the White House.
You’d think some reporter would ask one of the patrons in “Joe’s Choke and Puke” in Iowa why they plan to vote for him again, knowing what he did (or rather didn’t do) for four years as president and all the crimes he’s committed before, during and since.
Not to mention the miscreants running for the Republican nomination “against” Trump, all of whom, save one (perennial never-has-been Asa Hutchinson), raised their hands during the first debate when asked if they’d support Trump even if he were convicted in one of his four indictments. The media is quick to tell us that former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie did not really raise his hand in affirmation, he was just waving to the moderators. (Hey there Bret!) It sure looked like he was raising his hand, though.
According to Will Bunch, in a great opinion piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer on August 27, “What we call the Republican Party is barely a political party in any sense of the word, but a dangerous antisocial movement that has embraced many of the tenets of fascism, from calls for violence to its dehumanizing of ‘others’ — from desperate refugees at the border to transgender youth.”
But you wouldn’t know it from the media, save for the occasional opinion column.
In fact, in much of the media, whenever they deign to actually analyze the Republican’s threadbare policies, they are sure to remind us that “both sides” do it, so it’s not unusual.
Case in point, the Associated Press “both-sidesing”, which we wrote about here and here.
Except both sides don’t. Not even close.
It seems the media longs for the days when politics was a horse race and both sides could be counted on to disagree, but have the country’s best interest at heart. They may have come at a problem from different angles, but they both had the same goal in mind, to make our lives better.
I guess they didn’t get the memo that that ship has sailed. That those days never existed. There’s no such thing as politics as usual.
There’s nothing usual about politics today. It would be nice if the media would try to figure out why that is and let us know.
The Inquirer’s Bunch had some sage advice for the media in his column.
“These are the stakes: dueling visions for America — not Democratic or Republican, with parades and red, white, and blue balloons, but brutal fascism or flawed democracy. The news media needs to stop with the horse race coverage of this modern-day March on Rome, stop digging incessantly for proof that both sides are guilty of the same sins, and stop thinking that a war for the imperiled survival of the American Experiment is some kind of inexplicable ‘tribalism’.”