Panicking GOP lords: we want just 5 words from you.

I'll get to those five words -- the only five words that the masters and manipulators who have ruined American conservatism deserve to speak -- toward the end.  But first ...

The buzz, a week or so ago, was that some of those lords, Mitt Romney, George Bush and others, appeared set to endorse Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. Whether or not they do this, the question resounds: Can the Libertarian Party candidates – former Republican governors Johnson & Weld – top 15% in the polls and thereby get onto the Presidential debates? And what would be the consequences? 

Paul Ryan can see aspects to relish – if no candidate wins 270 electoral votes, the choice goes to the House of Representatives, which Ryan feels he owns… (though in that case I’ll bet some libertarian electors - perhaps even republican ones - will defect, first). 

On the other hand, if Johnson lures ten million more-sane-than-confederate and non-fundamentalist republicans into the Libertarian Party, it's likely Ryan and Rupert Murdoch will never get them back. (I can live with the LP being the loyal opposition, instead of the now-drooling-insane and utterly non-loyal-to-America GOP.)

And yet, the dems have worries, too, if J-W gets into the debates. There will be some democrats draining to Johnson-Weld… not as many as flee from Trump, but when Johnson pulls out a marijuana joint and lights it, onstage, you can see a real wave form! Moreover, can you imagine how it will revive radical Bernie-or-Busters, who’ll scream for the Green Party’s Jill Stein to be on-stage too? Even if she’s far below the 15% threshold?  Hillary won’t want to stir that pot back to a boil.

Me? I’m sending Johnson a fraction of what I am sending Clinton. Oh, I do this every election, hoping the Libertarians will rise and draw more-sane-than-confederate and non-fundamentalist republicans into the LP -- so that the party that's legitimately opposing the Democrats is one that has some intellect, some rationality and some belief in science. And staying out of our bedrooms and bathrooms and bodies. 

== Red-Blue Comparisons ==

Are we ready yet for those five words?  Nope. Hang on a bit.

Time and again we’ve heard sneers at “New York Values.” All my life I've experienced - and so have you - the endlessly-ranted litany that city-folk and educated people are corrupt and indecent. Claims that Red America - the land of "real folks" - is where you'll find less-tainted, less sin-drenched and more moral living. 

We've also had decades of preaching for ‘Supply Side’ economic theory, which demands we slash taxes for the rich and ease the extraction of resources from public lands. Economies will skyrocket! Deficits plummet! So go the narratives.

But according to almost every metric of economic success, blue states are generally outperforming red states even while heavily subsidizing them. Blue states are where entrepreneurship, inventions and wealth generation take place, generally under higher marginal tax rates on the wealthy that allow investment in schools and infrastructure. These charts are simply staggering.

How many decades must folks put up with "California is an overtaxed hell," that businesses are fleeing like rats from a sinking ship? Yet, every year the state gets more creative, bursting with enterprise, well-led with both far-seeing investment and fiscal health.

Opposite case in point, Kansas, whose radical Tea Party governor oversaw huge tax cuts for the rich and eased extraction rules… followed by exploding deficits, cancelled months of schools, collapsing highways and economic decay. Oh, Kansas and similarly governed Oklahoma have experienced a sharp rise in fracking-related earthquakes. 

(Didn't feel any while there for the World Sci Fi convention last week... but tremors are normal at worldcons, and George Martin hired a kick-butt band for the Hugo Losers Party!)

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Demonstrating the old saw about Insanity, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback now calls for solving the problem by cutting high tier taxes further and selling public lands cheap. 

Values? Shall we try values? If we subtract outliers like Utah and Detroit & Chicago, name a metric of moral and healthy living that is not worse in Red America, from teen sex, STD and pregnancy rates to obesity, dropouts, smoking, divorce and domestic violence, gambling and so on. Name... one... exception.  Other than abortion which is a disagreement over fundamentals. Abstinence sex education – in particular – was an interesting experiment that has failed utterly, having exactly opposite to intended effects. Sane people would learn from such direct and blatant evidence. 

Hence the war against science and every evidence-based profession.

This article actually tries to be fair! Indeed, elsewhere I have pointed out that Red State exceptions like Utah, Colorado, Texas, North Carolina, Arizona, Virginia and Florida all heavily invested in their universities.  With two results:

(1) They’ve done better than other red states.

(2) But thereupon Colorado, North Carolina, Arizona, Virginia, Florida and to a lesser extent Georgia are rapidly turning Purple and – in several cases – blue.  Whole swathes of Texas are now blue and the GOP grip there would fail, but for cheats like gerrymandering. 

Sorry, that’s what happens when you try to do well by your people, by investing in them and in education.  It’s only a ‘bad thing’ if you choose to twist and view it that way. You don't have to. 

== Let's hear from Trump's enablers ==

Okay.  It's almost time.

What are the only five words I want to hear from Ryan, Romney, McCain, Murdoch, the Kochs & Co?

Soon. But first... it’s not surprising that Donald Trump now polls at or below 40%. What’s shocking is that one-third of U.S. voters don’t care about his daily spew of maniacal cackles that would have suicided any other major politician, or even a local dog-catcher. 

Sure, a rolling tide of decent Republicans defecting from the GOP has been joined by members of the studiously apolitical intelligence community and military Officer Corps, whose near-religious devotion to neutrality was shattered by the prospect of a solipsistic carnival barker with nukes. (See below.)

— Oh, read this former head of the CIA, ending his lifelong stance of eschewing politics.  Because an American patriot has to, this time.

But what stands out is how SLOW this hemorrhage is! Or the strength of Denial. For the most part, we see an array of monkeys with hands over eyes, ears and mouths. Conservative columnists like Jennifer Rubin and David Brooks and even the despicable George F. Will have been standing up, saying “Trump’s Enablers Will Finally Have to Take a Stand…”

…but none of them yet is willing to accept the true diagnosis. Calling TRUMP the ‘disease,’ instead of what he truly is... a mere symptom of rot that they helped to infect into susceptible American conservatism. 

Foremost, a bilious war on science, economics, law, diplomacy, journalism, medicine, civil servants, skilled labor and every other fact-centered profession or clade in American life. That is the core, element - that war against the part of America that works in facts - a deeper campaign that has nothing to do with classic “left” or “right”.

The Kochs, Murdochs, Saudis and other financiers of this movement - this revived Confederacy - thought they could stir resentment of “smartypants” and use it against their perceived leftist enemies… much as 1860s plantation lords got a million poor, white Southerners to march and die against their own best interests. 

Or a better example: the Junkers-caste 1930s prussian oligarchs, who thought they could control a populist beast they helped stir into hydrophobic frenzy.

Surprise, surprise! In its froth, the beast threw its riders and a gifted svengali leaped aboard, grabbing the reins. He is not to be blamed as much as the beastmasters who wielded the whip for three decades. 

You, who thought you could control this panicking creature were not - (especially Mr. Will) - anywhere near as smart as you thought you were. History would have predicted this. If you bothered to learn any.

No, I have vastly more patience with Trump and his followers than with Ryan, McConnell, McCain, Romney and the other heirs of Dennis Hastert, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush - leaders of the GOP who got no mention at all, during the recent Republican Convention (think about what that means). 

Their lordly whimpers and winces and whines draw no sympathy. Contempt for a mob you created wins no sympathy. You traitors gelded the United States Congress for 20 of the last 22 years, turning the world’s greatest legislature into the world’s most corrupt and by-far laziest in our nation's history.  

You are in no position to lecture anyone.

We want only five words from you:

“OMG, what have we done?”