(Diarist's note: this is complete fiction. My brother and I had some fun making this up last night [and stayed up way too late to do it].)
It won't be news to some of you that my brother and I have taken recently to making fun of the hilariously easy to mock GOP -- they take our best ideas (numberless budget) and make them reality.
But even we were surprised when a longtime GOP strategist e-mailed me late last night -- my brother's visiting for a family event -- and asked if we'd like to come over to his apartment to talk about where he sees the party going.
Needless to say, I thought this guy was nuts, but he seemed more desperate than nuts. "I guarantee you'll want to hear what I have to say," he said. "Guaran-damn-tee it. You won't get this shit anywhere else. Oh, and your name isn't actually Ponder, is it?"
And that was the sign that told me this guy can actually think critically.
We got to his apartment in Old Town Alexandria, rang the doorbell and were greeted by a guy in shirtsleeves, designer jeans and loafers. (No flag pin, amusingly.)
Stereotype city.
He welcomed us and offered us drinks. Now, I don't drink alcohol -- it smells about as good to me as a sewer does -- and neither does my brother, but that didn't seem to bother Perry, our Republican host.
So there we sat, drinking coke and waters (he didn't have root beer) and talking about how Marion Barry's in the news again for breaking the law again. "White people have -- had -- Paris Hilton, and black people have Marion Barry."
And we talked about the weather for a bit -- it's hot in a lot of places, it seems, including his father's summer home in Maine -- and then it started.
"You know, I have to be honest. My father grew up in New England, sort of moderate Republican stock, and so I have some of those biases, and I gotta say, you look a lot like a hippy," he said, pointing to my brother, whose hair is as long as his diaries.
"But you," he said, pointing to me, "I don't know if you're an MIT grad student or what, but I can't place you at all except for your Daily Kos stuff, which I read sometimes, keeping tabs on 'the enemy'."
Flattered though I was by the MIT namedrop (I go to a far less prestigious [and less expensive] undergraduate school, and as yet I have no stomach for more schooling), we were there to get the dirt on how hard this guy thought the party was going to fall, and ... well. By the way the guy mixed his drinks and downed them, his liver was going to be racing his mouth to the finish line, wherever it was.
"So obviously I read Daily Kos sometimes, keeping tabs on the 'enemy,'" he said, then took a sip of his Jack Daniels. "I mean, you're no hippy; could be ex-military from the hair, but you look a bit young to be in and out already. Anyway . . . god. 'The enemy'. Didn't used to be like that."
"Didn't used to be a lot of things," my brother said. I shot him a look to keep quiet lest we ruin this thing early.
"Well, yeah, but that's on both sides," he objected. "Your president wants to talk bipartisanship, but he got no House votes on that stimulus bill. Sure got some on his own side against him, though."
We both just nodded. I wanted to say so many things about the Party of No, but this guy had promised us the goods on the Party of No Shot.
"So bipartisan. Let's start there, eh?"
We nodded.
"God, what a joke. "It's true what that Kos guy says about bipartisanship meaning Democrats do what Republicans want. And it doesn't help that your Senator Reid has less of a spine than a loaf of bread, but my party could probably propose something other than tax cuts and making Jesus an honorary American. That was some funny shit, man. Some of Boehner's staffers got a kick out of it -- once I explained what satire is. God, Buckley could have eaten these guys for breakfast."
We just nodded again.
"Hey, come on! You gotta give me more than a nod! Am I right about Reid, or not?"
"We like him less than you do," my brother said. "If I lived in Nevada, I'd toss him an angry letter, which would be even less effective than pissing into the wind."
"Bench there is pretty sad on both sides." I added.
"And I'm not saying that just because of this situation. If Daily Kos was his constituents, he wouldn't win the race for dog catcher tomorrow. Whatever skills he had as a boxer, he forgot how to guard against getting his nose broken by a guy with no chin."
"OK, so Reid is weak," Perry said, nodding, then took another sip of his Jack. "But these guys on my side of the aisle -- "
"Some of whom are okay. Notice nobody ran against Dick Lugar in '06." I interjected.
"Lugar's a good guy," Perry said approvingly. "He's got a good head on his shoulders, and he doesn't usually let party get in the way of country. But goddamn! OK, let's take Gitmo."
"Let's take it apart, more like," I offered weakly.
"See, here's my view. We make prisons to handle people like Ted Kaczinsky. People who have killed Americans, real nutjobs. Really, genuinely dangerous people. And we're so proud of our criminal justice system -- and deservedly so! But we can't take Osams bin Laden's fucking limo driver and put him in a maximum-security prison? Ignore if he's innocent or guilty -- and don't you take that the wrong way -- but we are really, really good at locking people up, and all of a sudden some guys in fucking turbans have us scared shitless of putting some criminals in jails."
"Fuck, it's not as if we had the hijackers. As Jon Stewart said, these guys are thugs and jackasses, not Magneto," I offered.
"Oh, you didn't hear?" my brother asked with mock gravitas. "They're all superheroes. Able to scare Republicans in a single terrorist scream!"
"Jon Stewart's a funny guy," Perry allowed. "Don't always like what he says, but ... He pokes at both sides. Unfortunately, my side's been a lot easier to poke these days. Even when we could actually win a goddamn election, we looked like angry old white guys who could barely do anything right. That was practically our motto. 'The government fucks everything up, so we should be in charge and make double-damn sure it does.'"
"And then as soon as the Democrats are back in control of Congress, Bush is all 'Hey, no wasteful spending out there!'"
"And now the guys who eagerly voted for trillions in tax cuts decry billions for millions to get health care. They call themselves fiscal conservatives." I was trying to let him talk, but sometimes I couldn't help but put in my own two cents.
"Bush," Perry repeated, and then took a longer swig from his bottle. "Bush has endangered more white males than Sonia Sotomayor ever will."
"Sotomayor ... shit. At the rate we're pissing off Hispanics, Texas will be swing in 2012. And forget about Florida and the entire Southwest. Goddamnit, where did we go wrong? *hic-"
I shot my brother a look, and the look he gave me told me to just let this guy drink and talk. As far as we were concerned, this was amateur political therapy.
"You know what? If Obama were white -- hey, don't look at me like that, dude -- but if he were white, with the way this country is turning off to republicans, Okla-goddamn-homa would be in play a cycle from now. That's how bad it is."
"Oklahoma hasn't been in play for the Democrats since the only Roosevelt in American politics was some county clerk named Ted."
"God, this blows."
"All we've done is take Appalachia after Clinton won it, and without two guys we painted as extreme liberals and one who was black, we wouldn't even have done that. Next credible Democrat will win West Virginia to Louisiana. "
"Had to go after gay marriage. They just had to. Of course, they owed Dobson and all of those guys, who didn't care about anything but the power. And now more Americans support it than oppose it, or if not, it'll be there soon. We've lost women, Latinos, Asians, blacks, the young vote and the college-educated vote. Unless by some miracle we apportion votes by number of guns owned, we're out of the white house for the next two cycles."
"People say the party has to recover. The pendulum always swings back. Look at fucking history, dipshits. Who was the next Whig President after Mill- Millard Fillmore? Nobody, that's fucking who. *hic-"
"If Schweitzer gets the nod in 2016, we might as well just fuckin' abanon shit. ship. Ship."
"Wait, you say. Rooselt and Tooman won five times in a row, and Eisenhower still beat Steens'n easily twice. Yeah, well, that was when we didn't fuckin' spit on Rockefeller 'publicans and take their lunch money."
"You know what? Fuck Eisenhower. He beat a nobody candidate twice, and he wasn't a conservative. He won World War II. That's why people voted for him. Who fucking votes for a guy named Adlai? I'd lie and say I voted for him, but I didn't!"
"And Nixon. God, Nixon. Nixon wanted to win so bad he tried to actually sabotage the other party."
"And then who comes crawling back to destroy the party AGAIN but his goddamn underlings."
"Sometimes I swear I don't know why I'm still a Republican." He takes another long pull from the bottle, finishing it. I'm not sure he noticed.
"That jackass what'shisface said Obama ran the best moderate Republican campaign since Eisenhower. First of all, we were calling him a fascist commumunist Muslim terrererist in October, and now he's a Republican? Second of all, dammit, Democrats have a better claim to Ike's legacy than we do now."
"Did you guys finish this bottle? What was I drinking?"
"The label says it's Jack Daniels," my brother said quickly.
"Shit, labels. Labels. Gay, straight, white, black, labels. You know who didn't care about labels? Ike. Ike did what worked for the good of the country, and he didn't waste time on point ... less dividable bullshit like gay mahh-riage. *hic-"
"Labels. Fuck, we're supposed to be about cutting taxes, and Obama's turned us around so hard he got every Republican in the House to vote against cutting taxes. Republicans! We cut taxes before breakfast!"
"Labels. You know what? Fuck labels. I fucking hate labels. What, so it isn't OK to love someone if you both got dicks? Know what? You two right here, you're brothers, right?"
I nodded.
"Well, if you weren't, and you wanted to get married, why put a bad label on that? Oh no, two guys can tell the neighborhood they love each other, whoop de fuck! Far as I'm concerned, you pay your taxes, keep your lawn mowed, vote in city elections, I don't care if you have the gayest sex that ever was. Just don't ask me if I want any."
"You know what, I got a gay uncle. Seems like everyone these days does."
"And no, I don't like the idea of ... screwing a guy, but I also don't like the idea of screwing my mother. And I'm sure as hell not going to agigate -- agitate -- against that."
"What am I going to drink now?"
He was asking the two driest guys (one of whom was nauseated from the stench of Jack on his breath) in the state what he should drink.
Might as well ask Tom Coburn about good gay bars in Oklahoma.
"God, I need a drink. This party is screwing itself so hard. You know what? At this rate, we're going to win six, maybe seven states in 2012: Alabama, maybe Alaska, Mississippi, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and Olka ... okal ... okla ... homa. Oklahoma. I mean, OK, maybe we'll regain some fuckin' sanity and take some of the south, and the dakotas are kinda our turf, but fuck, man. It'll be like that IQ map of people who voted for Bush verse people who voted for Kerry. ANd if we keep doing this stupid shit like fighting reform, we're up the fucking creek."
"Gay marriage. I hear a few weeks ago that Nate Silver, that 583 guy, says there'll be gay marriage everywhere by 2020."
"If there's gay marriage everywhere by 2020, there will be no repallican parry in 2020. siiiimple as that!"
"Only way marrate pulcans are going to s'vive nesh year, given what we're doing to them," he said, pointing to himself, "is fuckin' pretend they don't know us. God, I'm slurring. I'm sorry. It doesn't usually take ... I have to drink more most of the time. Anyway. Where was I?"
"Moderate --"
"Mah-rate Re-publicans. Right. Ignoring the base. Works for Sallins and Coe, whatever the fuck their names are, and Specter actually did it flat out, no exaggeratin'. You guys hear bout that? He called a presser, says the party left him! And oh my God! This is the guy who cleared the way for Clara Thompson back in 1991!
I looked at my brother curiously. He mouthed "Thomas" to me.
"Well, Mike Castle could change his firs' name to Frank and hope the fuckin' comic book dorks get a stiffie over votin' for the Punisher, but hell, if I were him, I wouldn' even wanna stay in the goddamn House! Don' get no goddamn respec', and that fuckin' toolbox Boner won't let him be the guy who keeps gettin' re-elected by fuckin' Delaware.
"Maybebe he could run fer Joe Biden's old seat, but fuck, Joe knows everyone and everyone knows his son Beau's gonna run an' win next year. State hasn't voted for a Pubbie Senner since nindy-four or a Pubbie Prez since eighty-eighty-eightyeight, and why would he wanna go from one toothless minoritity to a slightly more prsetifig - prestigidieiafuckit - high-class one. God, what the hell is in my mouth."
He seemed to sober up somewhat now.
"Al fucking Franken, man. That joker Coleman lost to a wrestler and a comedian."
"Permanen' Republican Majority. What a fucking crock o' shit."
His head drooped and fell into his arms, and he softly began to snore. We let ourselves out.
"Nobody's going to believe any of this," I said to my brother.
"They've believed crazier," he counseled me.
"Hell, I hope they don't believe it, since we just made the whole thing up bullshitting for fun the past coupla hours."
"Yeah, no way a New England Republican is getting drunk on Jack Daniels. They're more single-malt scotch people."
"Wonder if Douglas went on a bender after they overrode his veto, like Sanford did."
"Huh? Sanford?"
"Yeah, Limbaugh blamed Sanford cheating on his wife on Obama and the stimulus."
"Given that the affair began when Obama was a state senator, dude's got some mad skills."
"Well, he is the magic-"
"No."
"Yeah, kinda poor taste even to refer to it."
"Time to go home now?" "Yeah."