The Party Backslide

It's a Famous Dance, Right up there with the Potomac Two-Step

Have you ever heard of the Party Backslide? It’s a silly, faddish dance that comes and goes. It’s been popular for AGES but seems to come around, oh, every 2 or 4 years. It goes away, it makes a comeback. One of the most popular dances of all time really. It’s not really even a dance than it is a series of postures made while dancing. The sad thing is that it makes the people who do it look false and phony, while trying to maintain a level of seriousness.

It goes something a little like the Hokey Pokey. Here are the 6 basic steps:

• You’re In with your partner. Dancing away. You two look great, inseparable.

• Then you’re out; your partner eyes a new dancer, but you try to direct your partner who’s still in getting all sorts of attention from people you don’t like.

• You’re partner does their own thing—they’re in after all—but you’re rejected. You start to do your own thing around the periphery of the floor.

• You toy with another partner, but never fully, because you don’t want to be in with them. You prefer to be critical of the people your partner is dancing with, always keeping an eye on them, trying to outdance them doing the same moves, if only your original partner would look.

• You look back at your original partner; that’s where your heart lies but you’re just out with them. After your partner dances with several other partners they look back at you and you’re eager to get back in with them again.

• You’re in with your partner again, dancing away. The backslide is complete.

It’s famous because it happens so often. You can’t help it. All that rizz and getting swept up in emotion, driving people apart and then bringing them back together. Its inevitable. Most interestingly, you can incorporate pretty much any other type of dance to showcase what’s “in”— tango, samba, the hustle, the bump, the chicken, YMCA. It’s all good. That’s what it’s all about.

I thought of that a lot recently as I read a Charlie Sykes piece on Friday (and listened to his podcast with Ben Wittes). Now I like Charlie. I love what he’s done with the Bulwark. I am an avid fan of many of the writers and podcasters at that multimedia site which I monitor daily for new content. The “Morning Shots” newsletter Sykes wrote on Friday referenced a play called “Rhinoceros” which….I’ll let him describe it:

Step 1: You’re In

And here’s the thing; Charlie, Tim Miller, JVL…pretty much every never Trumper, they had no issue actually being a Rhinoceros (and surrounded by them) in the above scenario for years, so long as they were with the “in” dancer. They’d tolerate whatever nonsense Grover Norquist promoted, they’d be on the same channels Rush Limbaugh was on and cover the same issues and messaging, they’d play to the same crowds as Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee. For crying out loud, Sykes helped promote Paul Ryan, Reince Preibus, Scott Walker and Ron Johnson to notable positions from America’s Dairyland. All while never realizing, they all had horns coming out of their heads. All that mattered at the time, is that they were the “in dancer” the GOP was with. They were the voices and personalities of the GOP. It’s easy to overlook anomalies when everything is going great, but like ostriches with their head in the sand, they really weren’t aware what was really going on around them, even while they’re serving everyone big steaming piles of rhinoceros food.

Step 2: You’re out; you’re partner has a new dancer

It wasn’t until the dynamic changed within the party, among the same voters (dancers) they courted, that that dancer rejected them in favor of a flashier version of everything they had been shoveling them for years.

It’s only then they realized they were surrounded by “fucking rhinoceroses.” Some Never Trumpers like Alyssa Farrah Griffin and Stephanie Grisham stayed on the Trump train, horns and all, doing the locomotion right up until they were forced out; only then did they choose to look and see the pachyderms they were with weren’t Elephants. Walker and RonJon? “What was I thinking?” Sykes would lament these days. Everyone else on the outside saw it the whole time. He’s had some great interviews with Paul Ryan since then but even now you can see he regrets his lack of objectivity at the time. He and the Never Trumpers/Bulwarkers have come a long way since then.

Step 3: You’re doing your own thing around the periphery of the floor

And to a lot of us (including me), that was a really good thing. Come to Jesus moments usually result in a whole lot of clarity and objectivity. Quite frankly, their perspectives have offered unvarnished looks of the right, for the left. For the first time in a generation, there seemed to be a self-assessment and critique of the right by Republicans (current and former) who have integrity on the subject, as that is where they all made their formative political identities. And the political knowledge of those rejected by the now MAGA GOP were huge; a lifetime of political knowhow now essentially free agents. They stayed engaged in politics away from the center of the GOP stage but never really leaving its orbit. They won’t leave this club for the Democratic Disco (although they have opinions of that place they’ll routinely offer); they prefer to just be wallflowers in the same club eyeing that dancer and mocking them and the dancing partner they’re with. That is what makes them so eminently watchable and attracts so much of their audience.

Step 4. You toy with other partners

So many of them started shaking their moneymakers with non-GOP/non-Fox media sites on the fringe of the dancefloor by the bar who were only too anxious to bring them in and promote them as middle of the road, objective analysts. CNN and MSNBC were popular for hosts, punditry and guest spots. Sykes created his own very popular multimedia base at the Bulwark. The Lincoln Project and Republicans for Accountability were other poles to which apostate non-MAGA republicans could gravitiate. These would also attract Democrats and Independents who loathed MAGA and loved the schadenfraude these outlets would dish out. That integrity and objectivity has given them a foundation to claim they are moderates and centrists.

Step 5. Your old partner is where your heart lies.

And this is where we are now. Make no mistake, they are generally not moderates or centrists. They’re still in the same place they always were. They are for all practical purposes, conservatives whose eyes have been opened, but who pine to be back in again with Republicans once the MAGA facade fades and Trump is no longer in the picture. You know how you can tell? Because during the GOP primaries, not a single one of them tried to make the argument that it was worth it for a moderate Republican to campaign, or to support those efforts at all. It’s so much easer to stay on the outside mocking the current “so far to the right it’s practically fascist” GOP¹.

Sure, they may have thrown some verbal support towards Nikki Haley, but Haley is campaigning to be the CONSERVATIVE alternative to Trump. And when you listened to Alyssa Farah Griffin, or Rick Wilson, or David Frum, you could hear in their voices how they pine for a “sane” Republican Party like the old days, without Trump and where their sense of “conservatism” made sense and they were in charge. You can see it on the face of Nicole Wallace, the disdain for what the GOP has become, along with all the snark provided by Charlie and the Bulwarkers toward the GOP. They could try and create a moderate position within the Democratic Party, supporting centrist and moderate candidates against the extremes of the left, but they don’t; they understand that this position in politics is tough to hold and run on. As Jim Hightower once wrote, “There’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow lines and dead armadillos.” Seldom, if ever, do they comment on the Democratic side of the ledger, unless it’s to point out far left extremism or build up Biden because they see him as weak and needing it.

What they say isn’t wrong, but you’d be forgiven if you thought it may be coming from an objective position. It’s all from the POV of wanting Trump to lose, more than it is in praise of moderation or for Joe Biden to win. They really want to go back home to a political world they feel comfortable and successful in. I hope they consider the current position as home now, but going through the GOP primary season, you couldn’t help but feel there was some unrequited longing there, of which they can still be a player down the road and direct.

And here’s the thing; that’s the same party of rhinoceroses it was before. These same figures just chose to ignore it when it was there. They want their old partner to look at them again and to dance with them some more, even though that original partner they were with….is a rhinoceros.²

Step 6. The backslide.

As I mentioned before, I’m a fan of all of them. I REALLY enjoy what they say about the state of affairs in our politics and how they say it. Tim Miller’s “Not My Party” is a riotous 2 minutes for the quick edit TikTok crowd. JVL has his finger on the pulse of where I am with most of my thinking. Sarah Longwell is great and insightful to listen to. Nothing makes me laugh harder than a Rick Wilson taunt of a MAGA nitwit. I think this is something that has been needed in our country for a very long time. If they would stay where they are right now, and build that up from the center (for both the Democrats and the Republican Party) I think American politics would be all the better for it.

What worries me is what happens when Trump is no longer the guiding light of the GOP? Whether he is in jail, loses horribly, or falls over and dies from too many Big Macs, when the center of gravity in the GOP is no longer Donald J. Trump what happens? What happens four years from now, when they look to the left and see AOC, Adam Schiff, Gavin Newsom and Pete Buttigieg running for President and want nothing to do with that? They could argue in favor of an Amy Klobuchar or Jon Tester, but won’t. Faster than you can say “Do the Hustle” they’ll line up jobs and positions within the GOP sphere once again, and make narratives about how the GOP has come back to their senses. That bulwark they made outside the GOP sphere would now become a welcome gate to come check out the new and improved GOP zoo, complete with a whole flock of ostriches.

And they can be forgiven for that. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s their home. This kind of backsliding is normal. Its where they made a name for themselves and were successful.

I just hope they don’t claim there aren’t any rhinoceroses anymore.

PurpleAmerica’s Cultural Corner

Jerry Springer, Tom Delay, Sean Spicer and Rick Perry were all on Dancing with the Stars.

Now, I have never quite understood the zeitgeist that is Dancing with the Stars and never watched the program.

But Tom Delay, Sean Spicer and Rick Perry?

“Stars” seems to be a really loose description. Jerry Springer was even a bit of a stretch but at least people know who he is and he had a following.

PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day

Dancing with the Stars has been on for 32 seasons. 32! Now, as mentioned above, the “Stars” aspect of this is pretty loose and looking at who has appeared on the show is a who’s who of the Z-list. But for my money, the least star-ish of the bunch on the list has to be Carole Baskin from Tiger King.

I guess you can’t fault her for cashing in on her 15 minutes, er….seconds of fame. Joe Exotic is still probably jealous in his jail cell.

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

Dear Never Trumpers— You never want to look like this. ^^^^^^

Just….don’t do it.

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Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. And it is VERY easy to do this. I mean dumpster fire doesn’t even begin to describe it.

2. “Every kind of animal thinks its own kind of animal is wonderful. So people getting married think they're wonderful, and that they're going to have a baby-- that's wonderful, when actually they're as ugly as rhinoceroses, making baby rhinoceroses. Just because we think we're so wonderful doesn't mean we really are. We could be really terrible animals and just never admit it because it would hurt so much.” —Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus.