Jiu-Jitsu Red to Blue: Crushing MAGA Under The Weight of Their Own Arguments

When smoke gets in your eyes... and the fire is thousands of miles away, it’s time to stop denying climate change. When a million extra people die in the peak year of a pandemic, it’s time to stop equating COVID-19 with the flu. When the prevalence of guns and that of gun deaths both happen to skyrocket, it’s time to stop feigning blindness to any connection between the two. When the President of the United States orders up an insurrection, it’s time to stop pretending that he had no idea he’d actually get one. MAGA has long since made a habit of painting all these catastrophes as a string of amaaaaayyyyzing coincidences about which Americans and their leaders can and should do nothing. Therefore, host Tish Durkin argues, it’s way past time for the rest of us to treat their movement like a Canadian forest, and burn it to the ground. 

What does a great British thespian-turned-lefty-firebrand-parliamentarian have to do with the congressional arm of the American right? In this  Summertime Short, host Tish Durkin riffs on the coincidence of two events in one recent week: the death of rags-to-resplendence actor/politico Glenda Jackson and the issuance of the MAGA-minded Republican Study Committee's budget proposal for fiscal 2024. Jackson exemplified the massive human potential that can be unleashed by the much-maligned "government handout"… which the RSC prides itself on cutting to the bone, and beyond. “This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen,” said Jackson, as Lear. And MAGA's cold attitude toward struggling Americans will do exactly the same.   

Another scandal, another round of Republicans trying to spray the stench of Donald Trump all over his adversaries. Ever since the unsealing of the stunningly specific federal indictment of Trump, Republicans from the Speaker of the House on down have been crying foul over Trump’s being criminally charged for document-handling infractions they deem very similar to those taken by the former Secretary of State and the current president. Democrats (and a few lucid Republicans) have rightly stressed that Hillary’s basement plus Biden’s garage does not equal Trump’s toilet. But  MAGA  does not seem to realize the implications of doubling down on that equation anyway. Host Tish Durkin points out the logical conclusion of the GOP’s illogical post-Trump-indictment party line: if it were true that Clinton had imperiled national security in the way that Trump is alleged to have done, and the Obama Justice Department chose to ignore it as Trump acolytes now claim that it did, that would indeed have been an egregious wrong — and it would have been  Trump’s duty, as commander-in-chief,  to right it. Why didn’t he? And if the documents recently found by Biden’s Corvette were of high sensitivity and import, why didn’t the Trump administration, in all its four years, notice they were gone?

In Iowa last week, Ron DeSantis meant to summon the best of Winston Churchill as he called for a war on “woke.”  What he actually evoked, though, was the worst of Margaret Thatcher. Host Tish Durkin points out the eerie similarities between the present-day DeSantis “don’t say gay” (or Black) assault on education, and Thatcher’s 1980s version of the same.  That version found its most potent expression in the infamous Section 28 — a homophobic provision that lasted 15 painful, pointless years before being so discredited that the Tories officially disavowed it.  Yes, Ron, we all know that two plus two equals four — but we all should know that one old set of bad, bigoted policies plus one new set of bad, bigoted policies does not add up to anything that belongs in America’s schools.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis has officially entered the race for president, positioning himself as the young, brash right-winger who can deliver Trumpism without Trump. In one media-hyped announcement after another, DeSantis has served up such chunks of MAGA red meat as recruiting military vets to teach in public schools, creating a law enforcement unit exclusively devoted to fighting “election crime,” and very publicly sending a planeload  of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard while vowing to dump many more poor, displaced people in many more rich liberal playgrounds. Once the cameras are gone, though, the realities set in, the results skew down, and even by MAGA standards, Ron’s supposed strength and smarts start to fade out. Host Tish Durkin compares this Florida man’s rhetoric to his results.

No matter what their political stripe, nice, normal Americans all seem to agree on one thing: while Republicans may have gone crazy-far to the right in recent years, Democrats have gone just as crazy-far to the left. Host Tish Durkin urges nice, normal Americans to snap out of this consensus because it is built on nothing. Having previously tackled health care, child care, voting rights and the economy, Durkin moves on to climate change, immigration and free trade to make her point, which is: Democrats are, by and large, where they have been for generations. It’s Republicans who have moved miles rightward — and backward.

Not to be out-Foxed in its quest for right-wing viewers, CNN recently hosted a town hall that amounted to a Trump rally. That spectacle has come and gone, but consider what remains:  the distinct sense of a mass media willing, yet again, to play on Trump’s terms. Host Tish Durkin looks back in anger — and forward in apprehension.

Lately, many Americans have  accepted the theory of political relativity. This is the oft-expressed notion that while Republicans may have gone far right in recent years, Democrats have gone just as far to the left. This theory is baseless, and issue by issue, host Tish Durkin debunks it. On health care, child care, voting rights and the economy, Democrats are, by and large, where they have been for generations. It’s Republicans who have moved miles rightward — and backward.

Abortion is a serious matter, but host Tish Durkin can’t help but laugh out loud at parts of the recent Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on Abortion and Women’s Health. The biggest joke: the travelogue of abortion restrictions in “civilized” Europe offered by MAGA Senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz. U.S. senators really ought to access Google before they deny access to abortion based on foreign legal frameworks of which they clearly know nothing. The vast majority of America’s women would not enjoy Lindsey and Ted’s Repellent Adventure — and far too many of America’s women would not even survive it.

Now that President Joe Biden has officially announced that he is running again, his supporters and detractors alike have launched into a fresh round of fixating on his old age. But as host Tish Durkin points out, it’s his opponent who will be the candidate of old ideas….very old ideas.  Whether the GOP nominates Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, or someone else, that nominee will have to bear the standard of today’s Grand OLD Party — a party whose stances on issues from abortion to climate change to public health to voting rights literally belong in a museum of the 19th century, not a playbook for the American future. Rather than wince over the candles on Biden’s cake, Democrats should pounce on the anachronisms in the Republican agenda. Democrats need to say this early, and say it often: Better a president who can remember the 1940’s than an entire party that wants to take us back to the 1840’s.