Charlie Pierce is just a brilliant writer. His blog at Esquire consistently turns up gems like the title of this post, his comment today, upon learning that Ed Meese, Reagan henchman and attorney general led a "loose-knit coalition of conservative activists" to plot the shutdown scenario to force Obamacare repeal.
Continues Pierce:
Will the sad detritus of the Saint Ronnie administration ever stop fouling American public life? We have Our Lady Of The Magic Dolphins on the teevee almost every weekend. We had a whole clutch of the foreign-policy fantasts rehabilitated during the late reign of C-Plus Augustus. And now, this guy, who once advocated concentration camps for student demonstrators, who personally oversaw the most embarrassing "investigation" into the porn industry ever conducted, and who functioned as lookout and getaway driver for the Iran-Contra crooks, up to and including the increasingly dim president himself, comes back to help screw up the nation again.I had the same reaction when I read Meese's name in the Times piece about this cabal, featuring an unholy alliance between the ghosts of '80s porn sniffers and the billionaire Bircher Koch boys. Ed Meese -- someone you had (thankfully) not thought about or heard about for years, resurrected to lead the well-bankrolled Pickett's charge against the ACA. As Forrest Gump would say, "Loathesome is as loathesome does."
So now we have the 'teens version of the "Elves," the group of Federalist lawyers teamed with Arkansas low-life racists and the likes of Anne Coulter to plot the destruction of Bill Clinton shortly after he became President.
Pierce also reminds us that the latest Reagasm release is from ostensible liberal Chris Matthews' new book Tip and the Gipper, a fond look at how Matthews' mentor Tip O'Neill and Reagan began the evisceration of the New Deal in those wonderful early '80s days of -Democratic capitulation- bipartisan cooperation. I would sooner sit through all 21 hours of Ted Cruz's faux filibuster than read a page of that book -- which will further elevate the Tip-Reagan dealmaking as the apotheosis of statesmanship, rather than the beginning of the war on the middle class. Ugh.