At This Point, It's Either the Vulgar Talking Yam

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At This Point, It's Either the Vulgar Talking Yam or Ted Cruz
And on the other side, Bernie ought to stick around for a while.



BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
MAR 2, 2016

My goodness, Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from the state of Wisconsin, really has become a startlingly obvious prevaricator as his paygrade rises.

"When I see something that runs counter to who we are as a party and as a country, I will speak up, so today I want to be very clear about something," Ryan said. "If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasion and no games.

They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry. This party does not prey on people's prejudices. We appeal to their highest ideals. This is the party of Lincoln."

Actually, it's the Party of Atwater and Rove, neither of whom ever preyed on people's prejudices, and also of Cheney and the waterboard. If they'd rejected any cause built on bigotry, former President Dukakis would have built his library by now. And it used to be the party of Paul Ryan, too.

"Right now about 60 percent of the American people get more benefits in dollar value from the federal government than they pay back in taxes," Ryan said.

"So we're going to a majority of takers versus makers in America and that will be tough to come back from that. They'll be dependent on the government for their livelihoods [rather] than themselves."

He dropped this little appeal to high ideals shortly after Joe Biden laughed at him on television and while he was recasting himself as the Republican Ambassador to Poor People.

Biggest. Fake. Alive.

Has anyone ever looked as lost and soulless as Chris Christie did last night, standing on a stage in what may be the tackiest room I ever saw in my life? (Really, it makes anything in Graceland look like the Sistine Chapel, and you just know there were big bowls of glass grapes just out of camera range.)

He's the prime geek on the carnival midway that He, Trump has made of the Republican Party. I swear there was no light in the man's eyes as he searched every corner of the palace for a gas can with which to immolate himself.

As for He, Trump, there's going to be a lot of talk about how "presidential" he behaved in having a press conference in addition to making a speech on Tuesday night.

But before we all get to normalizing what remains an entirely absurd situation, let's note, as Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out Tuesday night, that He, Trump potentially flexed himself into some real trouble.

Addressing Paul Ryan's criticism of him earlier on Tuesday, He, Trump said that Ryan was going to get into "real trouble" with him.

Donald, Donald, Donald. As O'Donnell said, the Speaker of the House can fck up a president in about 100 different ways, starting with every bill dealing with the budget and taxation. About time to start reading the owner's manual, big fella.

Can we just say now that the Establishment Lane of the GOP currently looks like the Bay Bridge after the earthquake?

Tailgunner Ted Cruz would be a disastrous president, but I have to admit that he was absolutely right in his speech last night. (The substance of his remarks, and the reaction to them from his audience, made my blood run cold.) He is the only Republican option left outside of the vulgar talking yam.

There simply is no point to Marco Rubio's campaign anymore. I might be convinced to give John Kasich a pass until he shows me he can't do anything in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan.

If he can't win one of those, there's no point to him anymore, either. And he got beaten badly by He, Trump in Massachusetts, where he should have won. I will admit, however, that listening to Tailgunner Ted Cruz talking sweetness and light about party unity was like listening to a cobra whistle love songs.

Meanwhile, as Cruz was speaking, He, Trump was declared the winner in Arkansas, where Cruz really wanted his third win of the night. So, unless the Republican panjandrums really want a bloodbath in Cleveland, their only choices are He, Trump, who might be able to draw in other suckers around the country, and Ted Cruz, the darling of the extremist base that the GOP carefully has cultivated since 1979.

As for the Democratic primaries, one of the most intriguing results was Bernie Sanders's win in deep-red Oklahoma, especially since he lost deep-blue Massachusetts later Tuesday night. However, there is a long—and largely lost—history in that state of prairie populism and a distrust of big and distant banking institutions.

The Populist Party, largely brought to Oklahoma by transplanted Kansans in the 1880s, became a serious force in state politics over the next decade before morphing into a very strong Socialist Party by the late 1890s.

In 1908, Socialist candidate Eugene Debs got 21,734 votes for president; he nearly doubled that vote four years later. So, anyway, there may have been some old ghosts who came out to play for Sanders on Tuesday night. But losing the Commonwealth (God save it!) was a real blow.

There is no reason at all for Sanders to drop out now. He raised a spectacular $42 million in February. But the best reason for Sanders to fight this all the way to the convention could be found in one passage in Hillary Rodham Clinton's Super Tuesday speech.

Unfortunately, too many of those with the most wealth and the most power in this country today seem to have forgotten that basic truth about America. Yesterday I was at the old south meeting house in Boston where nearly two and a half centuries ago American patriots organized the original Tea Party. I had to wonder what they would make of corporations that seem to have absolutely no loyalty to the country that gave them so much.

What would they say about student loan companies that overcharge young people, struggling to get out of debt, even young men and women serving our country in the military or corporations that shift their headquarters overseas to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

Like Johnson Controls and Auto Parts from Wisconsin, that we taxpayers helped to bail out with the auto rescue back in 2008, now they're turning their back on America.

I'm interested in making things right. Let there be no doubt, if you cheat your employees, exploit consumers, pollute our environment or rip off the taxpayers, we're going to hold you accountable.

I do not believe for a moment that she would have said anything of the sort if she hadn't been pressed by the Sanders campaign, and as long as that campaign goes on, the less tenable any pivot toward "the center" by HRC will be. If we need to lay the ghost of Mark Penn to rest once and for all, this is the best way to do it.

By the time she clinches the nomination, there are going to be two compelling features of the HRC campaign: first, she is going to owe the African American voters of this country big time, and second, she is going to have a public record of supporting populist policies that she is going to have a hard time walking back.

Both of these are undeniably good things. But she has to lose the "We don't need to make America great again. We need to make America whole again" shtick. It really doesn't sing.

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