If you were fortunate enough to miss Erick Erickson's post-shutdown meltdown disguised in a frenzy of reinvigorated fight, then your luck just ran out. I'm here to give you some choice quotes, each of them carefully stylized in the conspicuous absence of any thought whatsoever. We're talking classic Erickson here, full of vim, vigor and vapidity, a textbook study in the human perils of animalistic passion; a mass of incoherence set against the disordered backdrop of mass hysteria, induced by said incoherence.
The thrust of "Advancing, Ever Advancing" is, as you might guess, self-celebratory rallying in the face of wholesale defeat. Yet the title alone might fail to drive this point home to the dispirited throngs, so Erickson peppers the content with Goebbelsesque repetition:
[W]e must advance ... Now conservatives can keep advancing ... Conservatives must advance--ever advancing against the Republicans who have folded in the fight against Obamacare ... 2014 must now be about advancing, ever advancing, even through the ranks of the GOP to have the fights that must be had.
Got it? Good. But don't get too comfortable. For you've now the challenge of resolving an immense contradiction in Erickson's screed which Erickson himself seems to assume is too easily resolvable to bother with on our behalf. On the one hand he writes:
Men like Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, and others have preached a great sermon against Obamacare, but now conservatives who supported them see that these men have refused to actually practice what they’ve been preaching ...
but on the other, discombobulating hand he observes:
Ted Cruz and Mike Lee may not have been able to strike a death blow to Obamacare today, but they ... have now made it less and less possible for Republicans to collaborate with Democrats to fix or stabilize Obamacare.
So the the wicked, poltroonish Establishment Republicans who "have refused to actually practice what they've been preaching" are in reality more likely now to practice what they've been preaching. Erickson just told his readers that. So his enduring complaint about the now-purified establishmentarians is ... what exactly?
Who the hell really knows. But he wants a fight, a big fight, a big, brawling confrontation, in which the rabble's victory is, according to Erickson, virtually guaranteed:
This fight ... will break apart the GOP. There will not necessarily be a new party from it, but there will be a fundamentally altered party of new faces fueled by a grassroots movement now able to connect with each other and independent from Wall Street and K Street funders.
And therein lies the self-unobserved key in Erickson's doom: His demographically diminishing masses shall "connect with each other"--without anywhere, electorally, to go.
Of course Erickson doesn't really mind. He's making a mint on bamboozling the fools.
Shorter EE, "I'm here to help Democrats."
Posted by: BobB | October 18, 2013 at 08:14 AM
I'm loathe to assume Erickson is not one these aforementioned fools and actually believes this nonsense. I suppose only time will tell.
Posted by: Kath | October 18, 2013 at 09:37 AM
Advancing, advancing, advancing. Why must these things always in terms of war on the right, and always written by people who've never served a day in the military in their lives? But the fact that there are people who see this guy as relevant, means that the old saying attributed to P.T. Barnum is just as true as it ever was.
Why are anti-government people always so hungry to live off the government? And if these anti-establishment types stay in government then won't they become establishment themselves? Won't they then run the risk of being primaried by someone even nuttier than they are?
Posted by: AnneJ | October 18, 2013 at 09:37 AM
"[W]e must advance ... Now conservatives can keep advancing ... Conservatives must advance--ever advancing against the Republicans who have folded in the fight against Obamacare ... 2014 must now be about advancing, ever advancing, even through the ranks of the GOP to have the fights that must be had."
If memory serves, Robert E. Lee thought he was winning the battle of Gettysburg, and by extension, the first round of the Civil War, until about 30 minutes into Pickett's Charge. That's about where I'd put Erik now.
Posted by: shsavage | October 18, 2013 at 09:57 AM
You'll notice if you read the commentary that many thank Erick for his leadership and what at least one person called his "erudition". I don't about you but Redstate is one of my favorite right wing comedy sites.
Posted by: Peter G | October 18, 2013 at 10:02 AM
And to continue the Civil War analagy, I'd say Ted Cruz reminds me of another firebrand Texas general -- John Bell Hood. He was all for advancing...Advancing...ADVANCING! He lost the use of an arm at Gettysburg, lost a leg at Chickamauga, lost Atlanta to Sherman, and destroyed his army at Franklin and Nashville. But he was always ADVANCING...just like our beloved Cruz missile.
Posted by: shsavage | October 18, 2013 at 10:03 AM