Why the Republican Party is like a Ford Pinto.

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flyingfordpinto

I can’t believe I actually found a picture that perfectly illustrates Rachel Maddow’s analogy — that was used in a completely different context.  (Picture credit: Drivetribe.com)

Not only is Rachel Maddow, anchor on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show (now the MOST popular primetime cable news show, overtaking everyone else because of her courageous in-depth research on the Trump-Russia investigation), scarily smart, she’s also wickedly funny.

She was interviewed in Rolling Stone magazine for the June 27, 2017 issue by Janet Reitman, and here’s what she had to say about the Republican and Democratic Parties:

I’m not a huge fan of the Democratic Party.   I’m also less interested in the Democratic Party as a topic — the Republican Party is much more fascinating to me…I’m like a sociological student of the Republican Party — even absent Trump.   There is a robust, well-funded, decades-old, superorganized, focused,  competent conservative movement that exists outside the Republican Party that yanks the party’s chain whenever they want to.   The Republican Party is like an old burned-out husk of a Ford Pinto that blew up ’cause its gas tank was in the wrong place, but it’s attached to a giant jet engine.  The Democratic Party is like a Honda Civic.  It putters through the world in a predictable way, and you like it or not depending on if you find small, unpowerful things cute.  But the Republican Party has this incredible propulsion and no way to steer it.

I can’t think of a more accurate description of both parties.  Maddow is referring, of course, to the unlimited corporate funding that funnels into the GOP, with the Koch Brothers at its helm.   Seriously, Maddow is one of the few things keeping me sane these days.   She’s a beacon of truth in a sea of misinformation and Trump-enablement in the mainstream media.   She’s not afraid to actually go where few others dare to tread and is still able to make me laugh.

7 thoughts on “Why the Republican Party is like a Ford Pinto.”

  1. As a registered Democrat, the metaphor of that party as a Honda Civic reminds me of on I owned long ago. A month after I broke my piggy bank (so to speak) to get the CV joints replaced, the cam shaft broke on a curved overpass (i.e., no shoulder) at the bottom of a long grade at 2am. I about burned out the starter motor creeping it to where I could get it out of the traffic lane (thanks to a manual transmission). That is kind of how I feel about the DNC.

    As for the GOP, yep, Rachel nailed it. They’re all dressed up, with a no-limit company credit card, and too drunk to figure out where to go.

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    • Your experience with the Civic sounds terrifying! I’m not sure the Democratic party is THAT broken, but they’re like a 4 cylinder car running on only 3. It can still run, but not too well.

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      • It was scary. I just had a thought about the Democratic Party, that it is more like a tree with healthy roots that has been badly pruned or wind damaged (seen a lot of that around here lately) in the top.

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  3. I see the GOP as a group who is desperately wanting to run the clock back to a time when things were simple and men ran things. That time was not good for everyone. We are in a civil war involving progressives and conservatives/traditionalists.

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  4. Gilded age (m.t. and sam. Dudley warner) – or perhaps another, yet worse time – a time also gilded – the gold being the hoard of a great airborne ‘fire-spewing dragoon’.

    Gilded yes, and plenty of ‘hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and oxides of nitrogen’, too.

    A worse-still dystopia than any Orwellian nightmare…

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