We can't do this to us!

Dignity, always dignity

Wile E. Coyote is funny because he expends great effort and inventiveness to catch the Road Runner and still always winds up getting pulverized by his own devices.

But at least he has his dignity. You can’t imagine him screaming after the Road Runner, “LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!”

Republicans, on the other hand:

If the Democrats were going to do McCarthy in, I don’t see why they didn’t do it sooner — oh, right: Because it was actually the nutcake Republicans who had the power to do it, thanks to a deal they forced McCarthy to make in January to get the Speakership.

But the former Bush Press Secretary’s portrayal of McCarthy’s ouster as a Democratic hit job has been echoed across the Republican commentariat — including by McCarthy himself. (After all he’d done for them — no, wait, he continually fucked them and refused to bargain with Democrats for his job even in the last ditch.) Still, Megan McArdle thinks a better Republican Party is the job of the Democrats “in the interests of the country” and that they were mean and unpatriotic not to do it:

That last bit about how we (for some value of we) are not the Republicans’ parents is a classic bit of McArdlean misdirection, because her whole approach is a mommy-nag: “Have you ever considered that, instead of trying to beat them in elections, if you were nice to the Republicans and let them have more power, they might be your friends?”

There have been some funny permutations of this basic projection, including this from National Review’s seething baseball head, who seems to think everyone’s against the Republicans including the Republicans (though, to be fair, why wouldn’t they be):

Republican interim leadership has, meanwhile, made its position known by demanding Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, the former Democratic House leadership, vacate their executive offices. All class, these people.

A few of them are trying to play Reasonable Republicans by saying that the Democrats and the Matt Gaetz GOP faction are equally to blame — bothsiderism comes in many forms! But they just sound ridiculous.  Take GOP Rep. Garret Graves, who calls Gaetz an “arsonist” but insists Gaetz had been “played like a drum by [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)], by Nancy Pelosi and others…” This makes Gaetz sound like a simple-minded country boy disarmed by city slickers. Stop and think, as Graves clearly hopes you won’t, how AOC and Pelosi could possibly “play” Gaetz. Offer him a threeway? A key post in a Democratic leadership?

No. Gaetz is part of the clutch of rightwing shitheels who loaded up McCarthy’s Speakership with poison pills last January, and this kind of shitshow was always in the cards. It’s just like I said when McCarthy was battling for the gavel last January and all the good-taste Republican were acting as if there were some West Wing compromise that would keep intact the dignity of the House. (Remember the speech Peggy Noonan wrote for McCarthy to turn down the crown with? Go back and look, it’s even funnier now!)

The Republican Party, not much good over the past century, has become a death cult; you can’t expect anything better from them than this. If, as the bothsiders counsel, the Democrats injured themselves to repair their party, the Republicans would not get better; they would simply laugh and get even worse. Which is why I think the Democrats should stop even doing the clean-up work they’re already doing for Republicans — instead of Democratic administrations paying down the deficits Republicans always run up, they should just let that shit ride, only instead of giving the money to rich fucks they should use it to feed the poor and house the homeless. Then let’s hear these assholes cry about how, for the good of the country, the Republicans should save us!