I noted yesterday what I think should be obvious: that there is no ‘bipartisan path’. Beyond that, it’s quite something to see how rapidly a number of mainstream media voices have moved from Trump as far-right ideologue putting racist revanchism at the center of statecraft to Trump as post-ideological, pragmatic dealmaker. Serious, what are you people thinking?
 
 
But there’s a small, more specific problem with all this talk which may be obvious but still merits saying out loud. There haven’t even been any deals! The ‘deal’ people are talking about is a minor procedural accommodation, an agreement not to go through a round of legislative hostage taking tied mainly to the need to increase the debt-limit – something that should be abolished altogether. It is important to note how minuscule this accommodation really is. Beyond that, it is important to note how much the deal itself is only over a kind of legislative misbehavior which as recently as a decade ago would have been all but unthinkable: holding the full faith and credit hostage to the right of the GOP House caucus.

Not Only No Deal-Making There’s Not Even a Deal 

Josh goes into good detail here. The thing that this whole episode reveals is how desperate the DC Press is to normalize Trump, because our system is not equipped to deal with someone like him in the White House.

The press has been DYING to write this current narrative since the morning after the election, and you can see it with every single instance of “it’s the pivot!” and “today, he became president” and “he didn’t take a shit on the street in front of everyone while shouting Nazi slogans, so he’s really maturing and becoming presidential.”

He is not presidential. He will never be presidential (however you define it), and one fucking instance of cutting a deal *for three fucking months of funding in a CR that had to happen anyway* does not suddenly make him some kind of mature, pragmatic, centrist. He is a racist who has filled his administration with racists. He is a malignant narcissist who has done everything he can to use the entire force of American government in the service of his incomprehensibly large and fragile ego.

This narrative is going to collapse within days, like it does every fucking time these idiots exhaust themselves creating it, and then they’ll get right back to drafting the *next* time they plan to write it, probably a week or so after this one collapses.

Trump may boast that Republicans are now the party of the “American worker.” Steve Bannon can trumpet his America First propaganda. Paul Ryan can recycle his Ayn Rand free-market fantasies. Kellyanne Conway can offer her risible defense of “alternative facts.” But these are simple distractions. Republicans now run Washington, and their mission is clear. From whatever combination of ideology and interest, they will do their best to cut taxes on the wealthy, free the corporations from accountability, and cut the services and support for working and poor people. The American Health Care Act isn’t an aberration. It’s all part of the plan.

 Republicans Keep Showing Us Who They Are (via azspot)

Much of the political world seems inclined to credit McCain for resisting Trump’s more outlandish excesses, even though McCain isn’t following through when it counts. Worse, there are Democrats trying to get attention for the fact that they’re actually resisting Trump both rhetorically and legislatively. It creates a dynamic in which voters are led to believe McCain’s verbal rebukes matter far more than more substantive Democratic opposition, which paints an outrageously misleading picture.

If only John McCain’s actions matched John McCain’s rhetoric