As I have mentioned once or twice, of all the revered establishment institutions which the Reign of President Stupid has strained to the breaking point (or simply blown to flinders), nothing has the Beltway chattering classes more completely freaked out than the gaping cracks appearing in the load-bearing walls of their High and Holy Church of Both Sides Do It.  That mighty cathedral of false equivalence where the Sober Men of The Establishment have hidden out for decades in decadent comfort, prattling about the K'rupt Duopoly, the Culture of Washington, and how awful it is that Both Sides have let things get so out of hand...






...while outside the Republican Party danced nekkid around the roaring bonfires they were making out of civility, comity, and good governance.

Until, at last, their Il Douche arrived:

The Nigerian Prince Who Was Promised.

He whose path to the White House had been made straight by decades of open, smirking Republican perfidy and sedition:

Because Donald Trump did not, not, not spring full-formed from the head of Steve Bannon sixteen months ago.  Donald Trump is only the latest and worst product of a Republican Monster Machine whose construction has been aided and abetted every step along the way by a Beltway media always too happy to look the other way while the GOP used the Party of Lincoln's dead husk as an egg sac to incubate a genuine, out-and-proud American Fascist Party.

So how bad have things gotten for the Cult of Both Siderism -- now that, as Jennifer Rubin wrote just this week, "The GOP ‘Has Become the Caricature the Left Always Said It Was"?  Now that the Republican rough beast we on the Left have been warning about for decades is here?  That its hour has come 'round at last? That it has finally slouched its way through both houses of Congress and all the way up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

Well, as one annoying Liberal jerk once wrote, 

[The] rapid-fire Republican bullshite that The Bastard President has unleashed on our national politics has reached such a toxic cadence so fast that the Quislings of the Beltway High and Holy Cult of Both Siderism have had to resort to fortifying their house of worship with whatever material they can find at hand.  But since there is no usable material at hand, rather than finally folding up their filthy little scam and getting out of town, they are using whatever ridiculous little scraps...they can pull out of their collective asses.

How bad is it now that they have run out of places to hide, or lies to tell that anyone in their right mind still believes?

So bad that Shuck Todd had to decant Ron Fournier out of the PR scam respectable public relations outfit he now fronts and put him on the teevee one more time just so he could -- as in the days of old -- once again speak aloud the Magic Conjure Words that make the Beltway media's toes collectively curl with nostalgic delight (to which I have added a little emphasis to draw the eye.)

FOURNIER: I think the bigger problem here is that our institutions, including the presidency and the Justice Department are under attack first by just the forces of change. Our country and society is changing so fast that our institutions aren't keeping up with us. And you have two parties that wage asymmetrical warfare against the institutions when it suits their needs. that's going on in a big way.

FOURNIER:  The real problem is what is being done to the institutions of the presidency and the Justice Department when you have attacks coming from political parties and other institutions, don't you think?

FOURNIER: [Comey] is tied up in knots. To my point, you had in that same election for several weeks you had the Democratic Party attacking Comey and for several weeks you had the Republican Party attacking Comey. You can't win for losing when we have this asymmetrical warfare against the institutions...

Mr. Fournier is so far gone that it never even occurs to him that the criticism from Democrats was entirely within-bounds and legitimate by any standard you care to name, and that attacks from Republicans are the hysterical reaction of a corrupt and depraved enterprise trying like mad to protect itself from exposure to the light of day.

Also I gotta say that Shuck Todd's desperate, verbal flailing were f*cking adorable.  I especially enjoyed his attempts to explain the existence of a terrible Partisan Trap in which he and his noble fellow Beltway pundits him now find themselves ensnared as if it were some immutable and mysterious law of physics  --

TODD: It is as always tell people, I am aware it's the a trap. It doesn't matter. The trap was built around me.  I didn't walk into it. it just is.

--  as opposed to a moat he and his fellow Beltway goof built around their High and Holy Church of Both Sides Do It for the expressed purpose of keeping vituperative foul-mouthed Liberals like you and me the hell out.

And thus once again America's Sad Clown of Centrism proves that you can take the hack out of the Beltway, but you can never take the Beltway out of the hack.