Eric Boehlert: Memo to media: the GOP's Trump "reckoning" is never coming

[babylonsister]

https://pressrun.media/p/memo-to-media-the-gops-trump-reckoning

Memo to media: the GOP's Trump "reckoning" is never coming
Chasing unicorns
Eric Boehlert
1 hr ago

snip//

A Fox News headline announced, "McConnell Furious With President, Supports Move to Initiate Impeachment Proceedings." And from CNN: "Many Republican senators are staying quiet about whether they'll back conviction -- a sign that they, too, could support conviction in an effort to rid Trump from their party."

Wait, what? By saying nothing about impeachment Republicans were signaling they might support impeachment? What a strange tealeaf-reading exercise from journalists who were anxious to create a storyline about a rebellious wing of the Republican Party standing up to Trump. The whole thing was a mirage.

The press has been making this mistake for years, anxiously portraying Republicans as being deeply concerned over Trump's reckless and dangerous behavior. Last summer, the Times announced GOP members were “despairing” over Trump. "The result is a quiet but widening breach between Mr. Trump and leading figures in his party," the newspaper insisted. The breach though, was only visible to members of the press.

This kind of coverage has been predictably wrong throughout the Trump era because journalists have been projecting a rational thought process onto the Republican Party, and especially after he incited a deadly mob, leading journalists to think, ‘Of course they'll punish Trump, of course he'll be forced to pay a price, right?’

Not by this radical GOP. It was never a realistic option. The press needs to cover today's GOP for what it actually is — fringe and erratic — and not the mainstream version they want it to be.

[Wounded Bear]

1. I gave up on Repubs many years ago...

they been swirling around the sewer drain for decades.

[uponit7771]

2. K&R, M$M: "... republicans love democracy !!.." kGOP: "... lets make it harder to vote .."

Many on the left and the M$M are looking like stlalkers when it comes to getting the kGOP to be interested in democracy, they're not interested at all.

What more can the kGOP do to prove to America they don't want democracy

[Storybook612]

3. Absolutely true!

The media continues to feed the flames of hope because it's a good reliable story line. Unfortunately, it doesn't apply in the shifting Republican Party that discounted 16 other arguably better prepared candidates in favor of a recently converted flame thrower. They had the option to reign him in during the march to the Republican convention and they didn't. They had a chance to reign him in when they ran both houses of Congress and they didn't. So, this is what they have already accepted.
To believe otherwise is to ignore reality. Stop it media!

[BComplex]

4. The most rational reading of the GOP in years.

This is exactly what the press has been trying to do. Republicans ARE NOT going to convict trump. He IS the republican party, way into the future. He owns them because of his thugs. He is our Putin.

[agingdem]

5. Jordan/Gaetz/McCarthy/Greene/Boebert/Hawley/Cawthorn

This is the GOP.. they are as corrupt, apathetic, cruel, racist, immoral and vicious as their hero Trump.. the press insists on portraying this GOP as rational country-over-party when, in fact, Trump and the insurrection is a culmination of the hate garbage they’ve been spewing for decades.. Dems will forever regard 1/6/2021 as a day of shame..the party of Trump will regard that horrific day as a practice run..

[MerryBlooms]

6. r&k