Romney, The Wrath of Rockefeller

A NeverTrumper trip down the river

…The Republican Party is thoroughly MAGA and will be for the foreseeable future, and there is a small but influential number of Republicans who are deeply opposed to what their party has become but not prepared to shed their political identity and join the Democrats.

For this group, one viable course remains: create a Republican Party in exile, a counterestablishment dedicated to recapturing the party from the outside.

— “There Is a Way Out of MAGA Domination,” Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner, New York Times.

[1560. Eerie music by Popol Vuh. A raft moves slowly down the Amazon. Several white men dressed as conquistadores, half stupefied with fear and hunger but still retaining their vaudevillian characteristics, slouch or lay about the vessel.]

DAVID BROOKS OF LINCOLN PARK: The trend certainly does seem bad, but these things go in cycles. While we appear to be penetrating more deeply into the jungle, history teaches us that it is darkest before the dawn. I believe Teilhard de Chardin said that, though I have not my almanac to verify.

JONAH GOLDBERG OF GEORGETOWN: Can it be true there is no food aboard? That parcel certainly looks like pork belly.

TIM MILLER OF OAKLAND: That is a royal proclamation to be read aloud when we arrive at El Dorado. Were there food aboard, you, Goldberg of Georgetown, would most certainly have found it. In fact I think you have been eating your own shit. Never have I known a man to fart so foully, and in starvation yet, pfah!

JONAH GOLDBERG OF GEORGETOWN: He who has smelt it has dealt it.

LIZ CHENEY OF CHEYENNE: Perhaps an alteration in our course would bring us out of this morass!

CHRIS SUNUNU OF NEWFIELDS: LOL no.

JOHN THUNE OF PIERRE: LOL.

BILL BARR OF THE PERMANENT GOVERNMENT: LOL LMFAO.

ROMNEY OF MASSAUTAH: Steady, men. I don’t want to be a pain but if you deviate from the program I’m gonna have to cut you into a thousand pieces.

A NAMELESS FACTOTUM: Well, fuck this.

[NAMELESS FACTOTUM jumps from the raft and swims for it.]

ROMNEY OF MASSAUTAH: Now, see, this has not ended well for him. The blowdarts of the natives have found him and he drowns.

SARAH LONGWELL OF KALORAMA: What blowdarts? He seems yet afloat —

[ROMNEY OF MASSAUTAH shoots LONGWELL with a flintlock pistol; she topples overboard.]

ROMNEY OF MASSAUTAH: It could have gone worse for her — she could be stuck with the Lincoln Project. Let all take heed!  I, Romney, the Wrath of Rockefeller, command all true Republicans to penetrate the heart of darkness on a moderate path, and MAGA falls at my feet! Hogan of Maryland, what say you?

LARRY HOGAN OF MARYLAND: You bet!

ROMNEY OF MASSAUTAH: Hogan, do you hew to a moderate course, endorsing huge police budgets and strangling mass transit while mouthing Black-Lives-Matter-for-Dummies platitudes?

LARRY HOGAN OF MARYLAND: Ha! Easy peasy!  

ROMNEY: And do you preach self-reliance and small government while lavishing tax breaks upon the wealthy?

LARRY HOGAN OF MARYLAND: Every day and twice on Sundays!   

ROMNEY OF MASSAUTAH: Ah, but Hogan of Maryland, here is a tricky bit: Will you endorse an amendment to enshrine abortion rights?

LARRY HOGAN OF MARYLAND: [Sputtering] Well, there’s no need for that, women’s rights are secure, I don’t see the problem, you don’t want to go making a fuss and changing —

[A pistol shot is heard; HOGAN falls overboard with a tremendous splash, on account of he’s so fat.]

ROMNEY OF MASSAUTAH: Who has slain Hogan of Maryland?

DAVID BROOKS OF LINCOLN PARK: The assassin slipped over the side, only saying as he went that he was the shade of Roy McGrath.

LIZ CHENEY OF CHEYENNE: Verily I would have shot him myself, he so annoyed.

TIM MILLER OF OAKLAND: You all so annoy! As I am a college graduate, this bullshit makes me sick at heart —

[Sudden blowdarts find him and several others.]

Ah, sweet relief of death!

[MILLER and all the others die — GOLDBERG while gnawing on the proclamation — except BARR, THUNE, and SUNUNU, who have somehow secured a canoe and are rowing toward a galleon with TRUMP emblazoned upon the bow, and ROMNEY. Spider monkeys descend upon the raft. ROMNEY addresses them.]

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it —

[The raft, caught in an eddy, circles endlessly.]