WHY WERE THERE SO MANY SEEMINGLY WOKE REPUBLICANS ON TV TODAY?

I was surprised when this became a big story today:

Sen. Richard Shelby says he wants a Republican elected to the Senate on Tuesday to represent Alabama, but that he didn't vote for GOP candidate Roy Moore in the special election.

The Alabama Republican said he's already cast his ballot, and that he chose a write-in candidate.

"I'd rather see the Republican win, but I'd rather see a Republican write-in. I couldn't vote for Roy Moore. I didn't vote for Roy Moore," Shelby told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union."

This was breaking news today? Why? We've known about Shelby's vote for nearly two weeks. It was first reported on November 27.

Shelby said this today on CNN's State of the Union, while Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only black Republican in the Senate, was on NBC's Meet the Press saying this:

Sen. Tim Scott said Sunday that there is “very little that I can do about people who speak ignorantly,” a response to Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore’s veneration of the period of U.S. history when slavery was legal and Rep. Steve King’s online comment that “diversity is not our strength.”

“Well, [there is] very little that I can do about people who speak ignorantly. And you just have to call it for what it is, No. 1,” Scott (R-S.C.), the only African-American Republican in the Senate, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “No. 2, the bottom line is both when Steve King and Tim Scott arrived in this country, we were actually creating diversity because the Native Americans were already here. So that is just a ridiculous statement.”

And, for good measure, on CBS's Face the Nation UN ambassador Nikki Haley said this:

Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Sunday that the women who have accused President Trump of touching or groping them without their consent “should be heard.”

Haley’s comments, made on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” diverged from the White House position on the more than a dozen women who have accused Trump of misconduct....

Asked by CBS’s John Dickerson whether she considered the allegations a “settled issue,” given last year’s election results, Haley responded, “You know, that’s for the people to decide. I know that he was elected. But, you know, women should always feel comfortable coming forward. And we should all be willing to listen to them.”

So much wokeness from these Republicans, two days before Roy Moore is likely to win a Senate seat. If I were a cynic, I'd think the Republican establishment urged these three, or at least Shelby and Scott, to be the face of the GOP on the Sunday talk shows, in order to send the message that the party isn't really the party of Moore (or sex predator Trump).

Of course, a party that isn't the party of Moore and Trump would have rejected their candidacies, the way the party rejected David Duke's candidacy a couple of decades ago. But Republicans don't actually want to do that. They want to pocket the Moore win, as they pocketed Trump's, and persuade right-thinking citizens that Moore and Trump are anomalies and Republicans can be trusted with governance.

Republicans have been doing this for years: relying on knuckledragger politicians (Steve King, Joe Arpaio) and demogogic media figures (Michael Savage, Alex Jones) to rouse the rabble all week, after which "nice" Republicans show up on Sunday morning to reassure upmarket voters that the party can be trusted to steer the ship of state in a sober and responsible manner. The mainstream media never calls the Republicans on this, and apparently never notices that the knuckledraggers and the polite Sunday guests belong to the same party, and really have the same extreme goals.

See, for instance, Chuck Todd a few days ago:



In the MSM, they'll never learn -- or, rather, they just don't want to know.