Conservative Claims Bush Did Not Lie Us Into War

By driftglass — May 17, 2021

Now that Trump is no longer in office, that clutch of True Conservatives (tm) who have taken over the MSNBC Green Room are still casting about for a new name, but for a while longer we'll still use the "Never Trump" monicker here among ourselves.

And what do we always say, about Never Trumpers?

That you can never trust them.

And why do we say it?

Because there is no such thing as a "former" hard-core Republican.

However, the hard-core Republican -- those who believe that if they keep the True Faith in the face of all facts to the contrary they will join Ronald Reagan in Republican Heaven -- is a different animal entirely. They will always be a junkie who, given the slightest opportunity to rationalize themselves into just one more little taste, will backslide right back into their bad habits every fking time.

Which brings us once again to Ms. Mona Charen, frequently syndicated national columnist, occasional MSNBC contributor, Policy Editor of The Bulwark and author of three books which should clue you in to exactly what she thinks of us stupid Libtards:

Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got it Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First (2003)

Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help (and the Rest of Us) (2005)

Sex Matters: How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love, and Common Sense (2018)

She is also one of those prominent Never Trump "allies" about whom I have been repeatedly and sternly lectured. Specifically, that their toxic histories, repellent core ideology and complete lack of contrition for creating the GOP that created Trump were all things we Useful Liberal Idiots were supposed to overlook and accommodate.

Y'know, for the good of the country.

This week Ms. Charen and her Bulwark podcast hosted a lengthy discourse by panelist Damon Linker on the Forbidden Topic the history of the GOP.

Mr. Linker points out that the Reagan Revolution days of the GOP are long dead:

Linker: The, ouster of Liz Cheney, I think, simply put a period and an exclamation point at the end of an era in the Republican party that had already expired. Quite a long time ago, as a matter of fact.

That Trump being able to easily "mow down" every opponent in the 2016 Republican primaries was proof that the party was definitely not the same party that Ms. Charen and Linda Chavez so fondly remember.

Linker: ...and that raises some very important historical questions.

Which puts Mr. Linker on some thin ice, because if Never Trump Republicans are virtually unanimous on any one subject, it's that Thou Shalt Not Bring Up The Inconvenient Past. Heedless of this Mr. Linker plunges ahead, and you can almost feel Mona Charen and Linda Chavez clenching up.

Linker: When did the people who joined the party for that reason [The Spawn of Reagan] lose touch with the rest of the party? Y'know, when... when did they... when did they stop understanding the drift of party? Uh, the... the idea of big, pervasive lies, uh, is not particularly new in the Republican party...

And now we are on VERY thin ice because what Mr. Linker is saying (in much politer language that I would use) is:
The base of the GOP have been racist reprogrammable meatbags for a long, long time.

Trump swept to power because he spoke to that base in the clear, deranged, hateful Limbaugh language which has been their Mother Tongue all along.

The professional Brain Caste of the GOP -- people like Mona Charen who have been making a very good living for very long time opining smugly about their deep and subtle knowledge of politics -- either never noticed or didn't care about what was actually going on right in front of them inside their own party.

Mr. Linker continues.

Linker: Remember Birtherism? Which gained a remarkable purchase among the Republican rank-and-file. Uh, people believe what they want to believe...

And this was the moment at which the awful truth proved too much for Ms. Charen to bear. So she grabbed for the oldest and most reliable tool in the hack Beltway pundit toolbox.

Charen: Well hang on one second. Can I just... I'm sorry, I just have to push back a little bit there because, yes, Birtherism was horrible and it was... and it was racist...

Can you guess what comes next?

Charen: Um...but, there was a widespread belief among Democrats that Bush lied us it war, which is also not true.

Just sit with that for a moment.

Think about how much mental evasion, revision, redaction and sheer Orwellian memory-holing had to happen for Mona Charen, in the Year of Our Lord 2021, sitting in the racist rubble of the party she spent her adult life defending, to continue blithely insisting that the Bush administration did not lie us into war in Iraq and that Democrats who believed otherwise were every bit as deluded as Birther Republicans.

Now take a step back and consider the larger issue Ms. Charen is all spun up over: the ouster of Liz Cheney.

Specifically, Ms. Charen is indignant about the mental evasion, revision, redaction and sheer Orwellian memory-holing that Republicans are engaged in that allow them, here in the Year of Our Lord 2021, to sit proudly in the racist rubble of the party they drove Mona Charen out of, blithely insisting that the 2020 election was stolen and the January 6th insurrection never happened.

You could drive a railroad spike into irony that thick.

Excerpted from Driftglass. Read the entire post here.