For Republicans, Hate Is Enough

By Bill Maher

Last Friday we did a new rule about “Tuckface.” That’s the face Tucker Carlson makes at the loony left-wing archetypes he invites on his show each night. “This Bennington dance professor thinks gay students should have their own bathrooms!” (Cue Tuckface.)

It’s not exactly hard-hitting news, but I didn’t mean to suggest that Tucker doesn’t know what he’s doing. I suspect Tucker knows exactly what he’s doing, and that’s giving the right-wing, Fox News-loving base what it wants: to hate liberals every night of the week. Because that’s all the modern day Republican Party is – a vehicle through which one expresses their animus toward liberals. They don’t have policy stances. That’s why, for instance, Republicans screamed about Obamacare for eight years, but when it came time to repeal and replace it they didn’t have a clue what to do to. Because that would involve understanding health care policy. It’s just about hating liberals. A Republican politicians is only talk radio incarnate. Trust me, if one takes the view that the Republican Party exists to do two things — cut taxes for rich people and hate liberals — only in rare situations will you find yourself asking the question, “What the hell is the Republican Party doing??”   

And that’s what I thought before I read this: Jason Chaffetz, former chair of the House Oversight Committee, has been telling people he’ll “take on what one source calls a ‘substantial role’ in on-air talent at Fox News Channel.”

Sometimes it all comes together, doesn’t it? The Republican Party: Why be a legislator when you can just be a hater?