Brian Beutler: How Trump “Broke” the Republican “Lie Machine”

It seems that while the Steve Bannon inspired strategy of “flooding the zone with bullshit” can have some benefits, such as sending an all too gullible main stream media off on frenzied goose chases whilst you loot the national treasury and attack beleaguered ethnic and religious minorities, there eventually comes a point where your and your allies constant repetition of lies grows increasingly ineffective, as the public as a whole becomes aware that they are being manipulated. And it also seems that Trump has so often relied on this advice advanced by his three favorite political theorists – Roy Cohn, Vladimir Putin and Bannon – that he has managed to break the Republican lie machine simply through overuse.

Or so says the astute Brian Beutler at his Substack hosted news letter “Off Message”:

The Trump Lie Machine Is Broken.

I say that as someone with very low expectations. Being an easy mark is part of the price of admission to the heights of American discourse. For a decade before Trump took over the GOP, I watched national political reporters bobble their heads in unison when Republican leaders insisted “deficits don’t matter” (because the president was a Republican) then bobble their heads some more when Republicans decried deficits as a threat to American security (because the president was a Democrat), never once catching on that their sources were just lying. They had no firm convictions on significant matters of public policy. It was all rank opportunism.

But under Trump’s tutelage, things degenerated rapidly. Republicans weren’t just situationally inconsistent about fiscal policy—to their credit, they’ve mustered surprisingly little fake umbrage over deficits during Joe Biden’s presidency. Instead, they began lying and bullshitting about everything.“

And he does mean “everything”.

Of course the Republicans have consistently lied about some things since at least FDR’s time (Roosevelt like to refer to the “Republican Fiction Writers”), such as their opponents’ affinity for communism and overspending, but they also advanced certain serious policy ideas such as fiscal responsibility, limited foreign entanglement, and free trade that defined their party.

All that, save the lies, went out the window when Donald Trump hijacked the Party and his increasing reliance on disinformation and abandonment of long sacrosanct Republican policy positions – such as Trumps predilection of interfering with free markets- combined to make him vulnerable to President Biden in the 2020 election, and proved mostly ineffective against Kamala Harris and Tim Walz:

“To me the first tell that something had changed came a bit after Kamala Harris took the helm of the Democratic Party.

Yes, Republicans tried and failed to trip her at the starting line. They peddled innuendo and attacked her mercilessly, to no avail. But to some extent, I don’t think that was a fair test. Harris benefitted from an enormous groundswell of support from relieved Democrats when she launched her campaign. She wasn’t the best-known Democrat in America, but she wasn’t unknown, and she’d been well vetted—all of which would have made it challenging for Republicans to define her under any circumstances. She’s thus seen her favorability numbers climb from 17 points under water to break even or better, a reversal that’s simply unheard of absent airplanes flying into the World Trade Center. You can hardly fault Republicans for failing to stop a force of nature.”

Maybe so, Brian, but it could also be that voters had seen these sort of tactics from Republicans too many times in the past to buy into their BS again.

“Perhaps in recognition of how little they had to work with against Harris, Republicans spent more time in the month prior to the Democratic convention subjecting Walz—the running mate—to swift-boat style smears than they did attacking the top of the ticket.

Walz had no national profile. They plucked a handful of comments and innocent misstatements he made over his 20 year political career out of context to disparage his military service and portray him as a faker. They lied about his gubernatorial record, and tried to insinuate that he was a predator and a pervert. They deployed the same kinds of tactics that helped Republicans defame and defeat John Kerry, Max Cleland, Hillary Clinton, and other high-profile Democrats over the years.”

It would certainly make for a great improvement in our National discourse if Trump is turned back and Democrats retake the House and some of the more serious members of the Republican Party realize that the days of simply about about your opponents and reaping political rewards for doing so may be coming to an end.

The true believers who watch Fox News and have not yet been sickened by the mountain of lies produced by Trump will remain a force in the Republican Party, probably to their detriment, for some time to come.

But they are a minority and to win National election the GOP will need some rational voters also.

And Trump’s lies may have driven them out of the party and broken the machine.

At least we, along with Beutler, can hope so…