In a new podcast, I’m joined by Pete Wehner, one of the most thoughtful and experienced observers of the transformation of the Republican Party into its MAGA incarnation.
People on the conservative side of politics have, for decades, been fed an escalating diet of 24x7 lies, deception, dog-whistle racism and increasingly white Christian nationalism by the for-profit Conservative Angertainment industry. Roger applied the lessons from 1930s Germany to get the rubes to reliably vote for conservatives, even against their best interests. Fox, Rush and their ilk got people hooked on a constantly escalating narrative of faux outrage and framing the other half of the country as trying to destroy the country. It’s no bloody wonder we have arrived where we are!
Posting from the center-left: this was both engaging and challenging (anyone who thinks that the Right was/is unitary, and consistently xenophobic, will be instructed).
Really enjoyed Petes opinions based upon experience like yours as well. If most GOP people of the past thirty years would or could listen to this tape I believe we could straighten this election war out.
With malice toward all and charity for none; let us bind the wounds of division with the chains of oppression. Let us strive to oppress those who dare to oppose us, to crush dissent under the iron boot of tyranny.
As we embark upon this great task of consolidating power and quashing resistance, let us remember that our true strength lies in our ability to dominate and subjugate. Let us not seek reconciliation, but rather domination. Let us not extend a hand of friendship, but instead tighten the grip of our rule.
For those who stand in our way, let them tremble in fear at the might of our wrath. Let them know that resistance is futile, and that those who dare to defy us will meet swift and merciless punishment.
And so, fellow citizens, let us march forward with malice in our hearts and oppression in our hands. Let us build a nation not of unity and harmony, but of fear and submission.
Thank you, and may the chains of our tyranny bind us ever tighter.
Wow. Great great interview. I did not know who Mr. Wehner was prior to this interview..(no surprise..I'm not that worldly ) but I do now. And he is extremely thoughtful, helpful and the kind of guy who appears to be able to think around corners. Really glad I listened.
I hung out with a lot of hard lefties in '00 and I can't tell you the amount of arguments I had with Naderites that no, both parties are _not_ the same. Dubya was aligned with the very worst elements of the business community, not the Chamber of Commerce and AEI, but the Koch and hedge fund bros. He was a wholly owned subsidiary of the religious right, not a fellow traveller like his Episcopalian father, but a True Believer, and they had stroked themselves into a pre-orgasmic frenzy over Monica's blue dress. And then there was Deadeye Dick, who, as the PNAC document reveals, was itchin' to invade Iraq "to awaken America's moral purpose" long before their ticket was elected.
It didn't exactly take rocket science or deep investigative journalism skills to arrive at this conclusion. It only took a little understanding of American marketing to know that "compassionate conservatism" was the New Coke of politics.
Forensic analysis reveals that Dubya would have squeaked by in FL even without SCOTUS, but nobody can deny that Nader's FL totals far exceeded the tiny margin. Though I might enjoy taking apart Rick's conservative ideology at the molecular level, I feel much closer to my Never Trump friends than I do to the hard left of my beloved Party who are forever chasing after the next magic sparkle pony, despite sharing most of their analysis.
Perhaps someone should establish a GoFundMe page for people caught wearing Apple Vision Headsets in public, by good ole Mr. Wilson. They might suffer emotional damage... LoL. That addition to "The List" at the end of the pod was real belly laugh funny!
I'm boycotting GoFundMe because they weasled out of their own ToS to allow a fundraiser to pay tRump's fines. PLEASE don't tell me it's okay because it's for his legal expenses only. It's all going into the same fund.
You use GoFundMe to raise a couple thousand dollars for a medical emergency. You _can't_ use GoFundMe to raise several hundred million dollars for a fraud clawback, or even a single hundred million dollars to post the appeal bond. It's as ludicrous as imagining Rudy Giuliani can use Cameo to avoid bankruptcy. Rudy can barely use Cameo to keep himself in good cigars and single malts, LOL
Well, they're doing it anyway. And they get a percentage of the take (10%), so of course they're not going to throw that away. They've collected over $800,000 already (as of 2/20), which is a pretty good haul for a couple of days. It may be Trump change, but GoFundMe is doing something unethical. Just like TFFG.
I don't know if I agree, Margaret. I mean, sure, they won't let you fundraise to start up a child porn streaming service, but outside of blatantly illegal things, I don't know if it should be the business of a facilitator like GoFundMe to pass judgment on causes. I gave a couple hundred bucks to my stepbrother's GoFundMe when his property got burnt in a CA wildfire and I don't recall the fee to be quite as usurious as 10%. I think it was something like 2%.
I look at it this way. Every dollar going to Trump's troubles is one less dollar he and the Republicans can spend on campaigning. Both the RNC and the state parties are cash starved right now and Trump is hoovering up all the change in the couch cushions. That will redound to our benefit ;)
I'm just surprised that Trump didn't use GiveSendGo, the "Christian" alternative to GoFundMe that's hip deep in wingnut causes.
I apologize. They charge 2.9% plus a 30 cent fee. (Don't know where I read 10%; I should have verified.) The problem is that their own ToS forbids, among other things, "the legal defense of alleged financial and violent crimes." I think the fundraiser for Trump qualifies as funding his legal defense. But I agree that every penny spent here is one that won't go to campaigning. That's cool.
I hate to play devil's advocate for such a lowlife, but I don't think Trump's defending against financial _crimes,_ as a civil tort isn't a crime. I think he's already paid the $1.6M maximum penalty for the Trump Organization's tax fraud conviction. I also don't know for sure if GoFundMe's ToS makes a distinction between civil and criminal liability.
Get down with your bad Luddite self, Rick. As a man typing in Win 7 on a nearly dead old laptop, I salute you. I'm waiting for someone to show up on a date wearing an Apple Vision headset, LOL
I love Peter Wehner. You might have intimations that I have philosophical issues with conservatism going back to Edmund Burke, and I certainly don't think your party was as nice as you're fondly remembering it through the warm glow of nostalgia (Dubya's campaign against McCain in SC??), but you're dead-right about immigration. Reagan, the Bushes, even Nixon weren't xenophobes.
I put nearly all of this cultural turn, or at least of the political leaders enmeshed in it, on Dubya. Nothing to do with his character; he knew how to admit it when his party took a thumpin'. On his lack of intelligence, his naivete and his ease of being influenced. The George W. Bush presidency remains the worst in the postwar period, and that includes Trump's, because Trump was only an exploiter of what Bush unleashed. Yes, I understand why the historians rank this differently, but hear me out:
The Iraq war is the single worst foreign policy blunder in American history. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and the WMDs were a lie. Instead of jumpstarting a pluralistic society where the Sunnis and Shia are too busy trading with each other to fight, we got a wholly owned subsidiary of Iran. Nice. We should have gone into Afghanistan to get bin Laden (and he was on the run), but not to pour a trillion dollars into a Potemkin village in Kabul for a ten year holding pattern before the Taliban returned.
If you want to know why so many Republicans have abandoned American leadership in the world and reject the cold war consensus you guys cut your teeth on, look no further than Dubya's twin blunders.
So that's one leg of the Reaganite three-legged stool crushed. What about the others?
Remember the Reformicons? You don't hear too much about them anymore. It's because they cling on to Homo Economicus when the field has moved on to behavioral economics. But Dubya sure seemed to believe there was a market solution for every social problem. Remember him waxing as eloquently as he ever got about the Ownership Society? That's right out of the Jack Kemp / Paul Ryan Republican optimist playbook. People raised in the projects had no incentive to keep up their government provided apartments, no wonder they were riddled with graffiti and broken windows. Dubya would help them own their own homes so they could have a stake in society! And boy he sure did that. He gave his nod to a predatory subprime mortgage apparatus that made his Wall Street buddies buckets of money for a while before the CDO pyramid collapsed into the Great Recession.
So that's leg two of the stool, revealing nothing but predatory capitalists being predatory capitalists.
What's the only leg left standing? The social / cultural / religious conservatives. Nobody has any business wondering for a nanosecond how and why the GOP became a cult.
Kinder gentler?
How many i’m just riding in my sleep in riding with Biden
People on the conservative side of politics have, for decades, been fed an escalating diet of 24x7 lies, deception, dog-whistle racism and increasingly white Christian nationalism by the for-profit Conservative Angertainment industry. Roger applied the lessons from 1930s Germany to get the rubes to reliably vote for conservatives, even against their best interests. Fox, Rush and their ilk got people hooked on a constantly escalating narrative of faux outrage and framing the other half of the country as trying to destroy the country. It’s no bloody wonder we have arrived where we are!
Oh vey
Posting from the center-left: this was both engaging and challenging (anyone who thinks that the Right was/is unitary, and consistently xenophobic, will be instructed).
Really enjoyed Petes opinions based upon experience like yours as well. If most GOP people of the past thirty years would or could listen to this tape I believe we could straighten this election war out.
Thanks Rick
Branding ideas for the Trump GOP:
Conservatism Classic (over a graphic of Genghis Khan)
Conservatism XTreme (six-fingered AI Charlie Kirk doing skateboard flips on a halfpipe)
ReTrumpLickIn' Good (lick him again, lick him again, harder, harder!)
G-rand O-mnipotent P-ustules
My Fellow Americans,
With malice toward all and charity for none; let us bind the wounds of division with the chains of oppression. Let us strive to oppress those who dare to oppose us, to crush dissent under the iron boot of tyranny.
As we embark upon this great task of consolidating power and quashing resistance, let us remember that our true strength lies in our ability to dominate and subjugate. Let us not seek reconciliation, but rather domination. Let us not extend a hand of friendship, but instead tighten the grip of our rule.
For those who stand in our way, let them tremble in fear at the might of our wrath. Let them know that resistance is futile, and that those who dare to defy us will meet swift and merciless punishment.
And so, fellow citizens, let us march forward with malice in our hearts and oppression in our hands. Let us build a nation not of unity and harmony, but of fear and submission.
Thank you, and may the chains of our tyranny bind us ever tighter.
Don "totes not mafia" Trump
That's more Gangsta Abe than the Lincoln Project ;)
Regarding S. Carolina's upcoming rejection of Nikki Haley. Can someone do a remake of Steely Dan's classic into "Nikki Please Lose 'Our Number?"
The Dead Red Holy See, Formerly Known as the GOP
Please, pardon ME, ✨🐇💫
but the Parting of the Red Holy See by #MosesMike 💦
has a whiff of Elephant 🐘💨 —
He done r-u-n-n-o-f-t 🏃♂️
‘cause he was in the poo too 💩
by sward
I’m sorry Mr. Lincoln 🎩
Wow. Great great interview. I did not know who Mr. Wehner was prior to this interview..(no surprise..I'm not that worldly ) but I do now. And he is extremely thoughtful, helpful and the kind of guy who appears to be able to think around corners. Really glad I listened.
Thank you both. Love, StacyO 💕
“The Return of Republican Malice or Fuck that Compassionate Conservative Stuff” might be a better title.
Nobody serious believed compassionate Cheney for a microsecond.
I hung out with a lot of hard lefties in '00 and I can't tell you the amount of arguments I had with Naderites that no, both parties are _not_ the same. Dubya was aligned with the very worst elements of the business community, not the Chamber of Commerce and AEI, but the Koch and hedge fund bros. He was a wholly owned subsidiary of the religious right, not a fellow traveller like his Episcopalian father, but a True Believer, and they had stroked themselves into a pre-orgasmic frenzy over Monica's blue dress. And then there was Deadeye Dick, who, as the PNAC document reveals, was itchin' to invade Iraq "to awaken America's moral purpose" long before their ticket was elected.
It didn't exactly take rocket science or deep investigative journalism skills to arrive at this conclusion. It only took a little understanding of American marketing to know that "compassionate conservatism" was the New Coke of politics.
Forensic analysis reveals that Dubya would have squeaked by in FL even without SCOTUS, but nobody can deny that Nader's FL totals far exceeded the tiny margin. Though I might enjoy taking apart Rick's conservative ideology at the molecular level, I feel much closer to my Never Trump friends than I do to the hard left of my beloved Party who are forever chasing after the next magic sparkle pony, despite sharing most of their analysis.
"Sometimes a virus creates antibodies." What a great line.
I hope that happens. Trump has succeeded in turning people against the concept of love.
The concept of thinking FFS.
Great interview!
Respect Pete Wehner a lot. Very, very thoughtful thinker and writer.
Perhaps someone should establish a GoFundMe page for people caught wearing Apple Vision Headsets in public, by good ole Mr. Wilson. They might suffer emotional damage... LoL. That addition to "The List" at the end of the pod was real belly laugh funny!
I'm boycotting GoFundMe because they weasled out of their own ToS to allow a fundraiser to pay tRump's fines. PLEASE don't tell me it's okay because it's for his legal expenses only. It's all going into the same fund.
Margaret - I was joking. Understand your concerns about GoFundMe,
I get it. I was just making a point about GoFundMe. Thanks.
You use GoFundMe to raise a couple thousand dollars for a medical emergency. You _can't_ use GoFundMe to raise several hundred million dollars for a fraud clawback, or even a single hundred million dollars to post the appeal bond. It's as ludicrous as imagining Rudy Giuliani can use Cameo to avoid bankruptcy. Rudy can barely use Cameo to keep himself in good cigars and single malts, LOL
Well, they're doing it anyway. And they get a percentage of the take (10%), so of course they're not going to throw that away. They've collected over $800,000 already (as of 2/20), which is a pretty good haul for a couple of days. It may be Trump change, but GoFundMe is doing something unethical. Just like TFFG.
I don't know if I agree, Margaret. I mean, sure, they won't let you fundraise to start up a child porn streaming service, but outside of blatantly illegal things, I don't know if it should be the business of a facilitator like GoFundMe to pass judgment on causes. I gave a couple hundred bucks to my stepbrother's GoFundMe when his property got burnt in a CA wildfire and I don't recall the fee to be quite as usurious as 10%. I think it was something like 2%.
I look at it this way. Every dollar going to Trump's troubles is one less dollar he and the Republicans can spend on campaigning. Both the RNC and the state parties are cash starved right now and Trump is hoovering up all the change in the couch cushions. That will redound to our benefit ;)
I'm just surprised that Trump didn't use GiveSendGo, the "Christian" alternative to GoFundMe that's hip deep in wingnut causes.
I apologize. They charge 2.9% plus a 30 cent fee. (Don't know where I read 10%; I should have verified.) The problem is that their own ToS forbids, among other things, "the legal defense of alleged financial and violent crimes." I think the fundraiser for Trump qualifies as funding his legal defense. But I agree that every penny spent here is one that won't go to campaigning. That's cool.
I hate to play devil's advocate for such a lowlife, but I don't think Trump's defending against financial _crimes,_ as a civil tort isn't a crime. I think he's already paid the $1.6M maximum penalty for the Trump Organization's tax fraud conviction. I also don't know for sure if GoFundMe's ToS makes a distinction between civil and criminal liability.
Get down with your bad Luddite self, Rick. As a man typing in Win 7 on a nearly dead old laptop, I salute you. I'm waiting for someone to show up on a date wearing an Apple Vision headset, LOL
I love Peter Wehner. You might have intimations that I have philosophical issues with conservatism going back to Edmund Burke, and I certainly don't think your party was as nice as you're fondly remembering it through the warm glow of nostalgia (Dubya's campaign against McCain in SC??), but you're dead-right about immigration. Reagan, the Bushes, even Nixon weren't xenophobes.
I put nearly all of this cultural turn, or at least of the political leaders enmeshed in it, on Dubya. Nothing to do with his character; he knew how to admit it when his party took a thumpin'. On his lack of intelligence, his naivete and his ease of being influenced. The George W. Bush presidency remains the worst in the postwar period, and that includes Trump's, because Trump was only an exploiter of what Bush unleashed. Yes, I understand why the historians rank this differently, but hear me out:
The Iraq war is the single worst foreign policy blunder in American history. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and the WMDs were a lie. Instead of jumpstarting a pluralistic society where the Sunnis and Shia are too busy trading with each other to fight, we got a wholly owned subsidiary of Iran. Nice. We should have gone into Afghanistan to get bin Laden (and he was on the run), but not to pour a trillion dollars into a Potemkin village in Kabul for a ten year holding pattern before the Taliban returned.
If you want to know why so many Republicans have abandoned American leadership in the world and reject the cold war consensus you guys cut your teeth on, look no further than Dubya's twin blunders.
So that's one leg of the Reaganite three-legged stool crushed. What about the others?
Remember the Reformicons? You don't hear too much about them anymore. It's because they cling on to Homo Economicus when the field has moved on to behavioral economics. But Dubya sure seemed to believe there was a market solution for every social problem. Remember him waxing as eloquently as he ever got about the Ownership Society? That's right out of the Jack Kemp / Paul Ryan Republican optimist playbook. People raised in the projects had no incentive to keep up their government provided apartments, no wonder they were riddled with graffiti and broken windows. Dubya would help them own their own homes so they could have a stake in society! And boy he sure did that. He gave his nod to a predatory subprime mortgage apparatus that made his Wall Street buddies buckets of money for a while before the CDO pyramid collapsed into the Great Recession.
So that's leg two of the stool, revealing nothing but predatory capitalists being predatory capitalists.
What's the only leg left standing? The social / cultural / religious conservatives. Nobody has any business wondering for a nanosecond how and why the GOP became a cult.