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10 tweets,
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1. Can we please call a moratorium on toothless mea culpas like this one, from a guy who entered congress in the 90's as one of Newt Gingrich's bomb throwers but who now, apparently, is terribly sorry? washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama…
2. "This troubling chapter in U.S. history has one author — and his name is Donald Trump." No. This troubling chapter has many authors, including one @JoeNBC. The authors include all of the people who helped build a GOP electorate that so quickly & easily fell in love with Trump.
3. I'm happy to see that Joe now thinks Obama was a much better president than Trump. But until Joe accounts for the role that he & his buddies in the GOP leadership played in building the party rank & file that Trump has now commandeered, I find it hard to take him seriously.
4. And also, Joe's proposed remedy here (a Constitutional Amendment to give Obama 2 more terms) is absurd. I assume he's kidding, but regardless, this is not serious political commentary or action. This is silly escapism from someone whose job it is to take politics seriously.
5. How many Republicans who voted for Joe in the past ended up voting for Trump in 2016? Has he tried to engage with them to change their minds? (A genuine question. Perhaps the answer is yes?)
6. Joe worked with Newt Gingrich back in the 90s. They were fellow travelers. Has Joe worked that relationship (or any of his relationships with GOP leaders) to try to move his former party in a more reasonable direction? (A genuine question. Perhaps the answer is yes?)
7. Those sorts of actions might actually make a difference in the world. An op-ed like this, however, is just Joe trying to get on the right side of history decades too late. It will not change a single mind. It also won't buy absolution from future historians.
8. For years Joe repeated the pablum mantra that "those big government Democrats are out of touch elitists who don't respect your culture and your churches" and now he's appalled that Trump won the presidency with exactly that narrative. Face it Joe, you helped build this.
9. I'd read the heck out of a long-form piece by Joe reflecting, in hindsight, about how he and others in the GOP sowed the seeds for where the party is now. That would be a meaningful contribution to our national discourse.
10. But these "OMG, Trump is so terrible, how on earth did it ever happen" pieces by former Republicans are just tiring, and feel like retroactive ass-covering more than genuine analysis.
