GOP Playbook: Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

 I frequently mention that the first tenet of Republicanism is that whatever a Democrat does is wrong, just by having been done by a Democrat. I saw that on display again last week with this tweet from Nikki Haley (featuring an on-point counter by Rep Swalwell):

I’m not sure where this story even comes from so I’m certainly not taking it at face value. I mean, how do they even know these 66 were terrorists? Do they carry Terrorist ID Cards now? Did they find bombs in their backpacks? (Presumably looking like bowling balls with wicks stuck in them.) Or do they just have Arabic names? To Republicans, that’s all it takes.

So if these people were terrorists and were indeed stopped at the border, what’s the freakin’ problem? The system worked. Is Biden at fault because someone, somewhere dared to try to cross the border?

Well, yes. Just go back to Rule One, “Whatever a Democrat Does is Wrong.” It’s the Fox “News” Way.

They don’t care that the underlying logic is hopelessly damaged. How much sense would this make:

“666 people were stopped for speeding on federal interstates this weekend. Biden has one job: To protect America, and he’s failing. If Biden doesn’t take his job seriously, it’s up to local police to write tickets.”

Can Biden really get in the heads of millions of drivers and make them slow down? Nope, no more than he can make thousands of South and Central Americans somehow stop their plans to cross the border before they get there. All he can do is have a system in place to stop people trying to cross illegally. It would also help if there were a coherent system to guide legal immigration, but as far as I know, it’s still a major CF.

I think Republicans are still nostalgic for those good ole’ Trump days where the object was to make this country so shitty that no one wanted to come because they knew they would be detained by people whose goal it was to make the experience as traumatic as possible.

A Fox Guarding the Hens’ Bank Account

I’ve been munching the popcorn over this story, that the National Republican Senatorial Committee is running out of money.

They raised $173 million, spent $20m on ads, and have $27m left. How the hell does THAT happen, without a massive grift going on?

Rick Scott, on his way to audition for the Blue Man Group.

Anything that gets Republicans fighting Republicans is all right with me. It’s one thing to swindle the taxpayers, but swindling each other? That’s when the shit hits the fan. So let them turn on each other. I’m just waiting for the inevitable moment when they come up with a way to blame the Democrats. But this one’s going to need some serious creativity. I’d guess it’ll be something like “Antifa hackers funded by George Soros paid off BLM supporters to break into Rick Scott’s house and steal the money from under his mattress. The whole plan was explained in Hillary’s emails stored on Hunter Biden’s laptop!”

Gas Pains

This is the faux story that never seems to die, probably because the fossil fuel industry, which owns the Republican Party lock, stock, and barrel, won’t let it. I just lifted a new version from Facebook… they never seem to tire of trying to blame the president for the price of gas.

“IT WAS $2 LOWER BECAUSE THE COUNTRY WAS LOCKED DOWN DUE TO THE MISHANDLING OF COVID! No demand equals low prices, that’s Econ 101. It is willfully dishonest to compare the current prices, which have been affected by a giant shooting and bombing war in Europe and worldwide inflation to a price that cratered due to demand dropping off the table, and then blame the president for it. The prices are what they are because the oil companies want it that way. Do you see any of them taking big losses this year? The MAGAs “fall for it” every time. And I guarantee you that if TFG was still president and we had these same conditions, they’d still find a way to blame the Democrats.

“The pipelines we approved aren’t pumping enough oil because Antifa jammed them up with red tape, electric car batteries, and Hillary’s emails.”