The Republican Party was started as a vehicle to oppose the expansion of slavery. The most glorious Republican president ever was also its first, Abraham Lincoln. Under Republican leadership, the 13th Amendment was passed, banning slavery. It’s been pretty much all downhill from there.
With the Lincoln administration as its taproot, the nascent party looked to grow tall and strong and proud. Instead, it immediately attracted all manner of grifters, a tradition that continues to this day. The mighty taproot shriveled, and by all rights, the Party shouldn’t have survived the Hoover Administration.
Beset with corruption, rot, and parasitic fungi, the once-mighty taproot, in desperation, sent out a long rhizome. Ironically and unfortunately, the rhizome pushed its way under a fence and into a Confederate grave-yard. Mycorryzae fed the rhizome strange organic compounds and alien DNA. The rhizome became more and more twisted and hairy as it sent up a new shoot into the world. The tender shoot was tended by Nixon and Reagan, in turn, nourished with bull crap, watered with the blood of gunshot victims and mulched with dollar bills.
Despite all that tender loving care, the tree that the shoot became was never very healthy, and barely staggered through the George W presidency, losing much of its leaves and all of the principles it had left.
A new group of botanists took over. Bannon and Manafort grafted on a limb derived from a lichen-encrusted Russian elm. Putin took over care of the grotesque hybrid. As it’s grown, the tree drips poison, killing off all the plants around it. While from a distance, the tree looks fully alive, if you stand next to it you can see that all of its branches are on the right side, many are cracked and occasionally some pus drips out of a knothole.
The Republican party has evolved (sorry, Republicans don’t evolve) transmuted itself into a wholly new form, the ReRussiaKlan party. This strange creation is infested with internal contradictions. And as with any corporate merger (new metaphor here, try to keep up), there are redundancies and malcontents, as well as a scramble to remake the organizational chart. Who reports to whom is not entirely clear. And of course the new corporation needs to rebrand itself, to make clear its mission.
I propose that we help the GOP RRK rebrand itself. We need to give their members new names in recognition of their new purpose as a party: to turn our messy democracy into a smoothly-functioning unit of the Russian criminal oligarchy.
Nicknames are common among sports teams, as they contribute to the esprit de corps. Plus, they are playful and fun and help to describe the inner person in a way that given names cannot. I think this will help ReRussiaKlans to realize they are all playing on the same team. Maybe it will relieve the intra-party turmoil. Maybe it will slow the flood of distressing retirements of the party’s duly elected legislators.
We have already seen the success of Moscow Mitch. Which was followed almost immediately by Leningrad Lindsey. Obviously, alliterations are good, as well as Russian place names.
Unlike Shower Cap’s free-form insults (eg Tangerine Idi Amin, Treason Weasel) , there are rules to this game. A part of the nick-name must include a recognizable portion of the recipients given name, so that it will be recognized by the non-cognoscenti. Russian nicknames can include well-known Russian words, Russian or at least Slavic sounding names, Russian characters from literature, etc. Klan names should refer to some aspect of the KuKluxKlan, or the Confederacy.
So here are some that I am suggesting (along with some explanation):.
Putin’s Puppet Drumpfsky
Vice-Puppet Pencsky (nice bumper sticker, Drumpfsky / Pencsky, 2020.
Moscow Mitch (stick with what works)
Leningrad Lindsay
Rand Paulovich (means the son of the original Paul, the only reason he was ever elected)
Comrade Cornyn
Politburo Pompeo
Stepnov Mnuchin
Wilbur Rostropovich
Kommissar Kavanaughsky
Kiev McCarthy
Gimnasticheskiy Jordan
Baba Yaga de Vos (Baba Yaga is a famous Russian witch)
Borscht-face Bannon
Strange Fruit Gohmert (because of his obsession with cantaloupes)
Steve KKKing (pronounced with a stutter, k-k-King)
Please tell me which one you like the best or supply one of your own. I tried to include a poll, but it wouldn’t go. Too many choices maybe?