Erick Erickson promised last week that he’d not send any more emails to non-subscribers to his newsletter, and I sighed with relief. Aaaaaaaand … then he sent more emails. He thinks he’s doing a public service by conveying facts and opinion about the COVID-19 outbreak to non-subscribers, countering right-wing skepticism along the way. Maybe he’s right.
But he’s insisting on writing in political opinion, and I can’t help but laugh.
Senate Republicans have been spending like drunken sailors for several years. They have shown zero fiscal restraint. It is pretty damn impressive that as a virus sweeps across the nation, the private sector goes on lockdown, and the death toll rises that suddenly the GOP is interested in fiscal restraint.
As if he should be surprised. Erickson apparently has forgotten – or never accepted it occurred – the behavior of Congress, both wings, 2001-2007, when the Republicans held Congress and the Presidency, spent money like mad on all their pet projects, started two wars and refused to up taxes to pay for them, and generally behaved in a most irresponsible manner. The Party of Fiscal Responsibility became nothing more than a joke.
Here’s the thing – one incident, even a six year long incident, may be an aberration. Two, though, is a trend. Give the Republicans control of government and they turn into wastrels. Split control with the Democrats and they become fiscal hawks. We know the name for this behavior. It’s hypocrites.
But, worse yet, that trend means the Republican Party, and all those who adhere to it, are party to a toxic political culture. For all that Erickson likes to cite scripture and draw back in horror from liberals – his phrase from an earlier email, “baby-killers” – he doesn’t really seem to like to admit to the truth – that the Republicans’ behavior is congruent with a Party of hypocrisy, power-grubbers, and liars, all types of people who are ill-suited to being in the government of the United States.
Erickson should really ask himself how he can have such a flawed judgment that he embraces such an anti-intellectual position as calling abortion “baby-killing,” while tacitly endorsing the election of people who are so ill-suited to the task of running government that they’re actually damaging the United States.
And then trying to rationalize it all by labeling anyone who’s against Trump as having “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” while ignoring the documented fact of 16,000+ lies, prevarications, and unsupportable boasts in his idol of worship. Is this what Jesus approved?
Maybe it’s good that he’s trying to spread facts and thoughtfulness to a population of Americans who are known to be skeptical about official information, who think they can, with neither experience nor training, reason their way to their preferred outcome – “it’s all a hoax to damage Trump!”, to summarize a WaPo article I read today – but if he’s going to try to mix politics into it, even politics critical of his own Party, then he opens himself up to charges of guilt – and not just guilt by association.
