The Crash and Burn Party

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First, enjoy the highlights of Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards congressional testimony yesterday:

Charles Pierce explains how the Democratic Republic of Congo got mixed up in this:

You may be baffled by the sudden appearance in the colloquy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, arguably the worst place in the world right now. What the fck does Chaffetz care about the DRC? That’s because you do not spend 20 hours a day marinating in the right-wing media crackpot crockpot. Here are the ingredients: a) the fact that the DRC is a nightmarish place where children are forced into prostitution and trafficked freely; b) that there is AN E-MAIL! that revealed that Bill Clinton once did not speak at an event at which Joseph Kabila, the vampirish leader of the DRC would be in attendance, and c) PP is active there in trying to make sure that the women caught up in an epidemic of brutal sexual violence stay relatively healthy and that they do not get pregnant by their rapists if they do not want to do so. It’s Fetus-Fondling Bingo. Oh, and by the way, the staunchly red state of Missouri concluded its investigation of Planned Parenthood’s activities in that state.

Like the several other states that have investigated Planned Parenthood since the hoax videos came out, Missouri found nothing.

Conventional wisdom says that right-wing crackpot Kevin McCarthy will be the next Speaker. McCarthy is expected to become the next John Boehner in other ways as well. Norman Ornstein writes,

The major issue in our current dysfunction is the struggle within a Republican Party that is not the traditional battle between moderates and conservatives — there are no moderates any more to speak of — but between radical insurgents and right-wing realists. The realists, like Boehner, understand that divided government requires compromise; the radicals’ credo is “never give up, never surrender.”

Paradoxically, the radicals were encouraged in those views by establishment conservatives who channeled their anger and outrage into House and Senate G.O.P. majorities in 2010 and 2014 by promising that they could defeat Obama and along the way bring him to his knees; the radical outrage now has been amplified by the failure of those promises. Boehner’s departure does not heal the breach; it enhances it. Radicals have won, forcing Boehner out. Now the big target will be Mitch McConnell, and Boehner’s successor, almost certainly Kevin McCarthy, won’t be far behind.

McCarthy is as right-wing as they come, but news stories say he’s a “pragmatist,” meaning he has a dim idea that reactionary Republicans are unlikely to gain absolute power by throwing temper tantrums. This will be McCarthy’s doom.  Gary Legum:

If McCarthy wants an example of what can happen to a congressional leader who makes promises to the extreme conservatives and then doesn’t deliver, he should look not to his friend John Boehner but to one of his co-authors of the 2010 book “Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders.” The cover of that book shows McCarthy smiling with Rep. Paul Ryan and then-House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, a one-time Tea Party favorite who helped hold the Republican coalition together to fight every legislative initiative proposed by the Obama administration. Then he was booted from office by a hardcore conservative named David Brat, who promised to not only fight Obama, but also roll back his legislative successes.

That there is no plausible path to this goal so long as the Republicans do not have a filibuster- or veto-proof majority in the Senate, or while Obama and his veto pen remain in the White House, does not dissuade Brat and like-minded conservatives, who still think Republicans can force the president to sign legislation repealing all of his accomplishments if they only try super-duper really extra hard.

Currently McCarthy’s chief rival is Daniel Webster of Florida, who unfortunately is not THE Daniel Webster. The new Daniel Webster is arguably a worse whackjob than McCarthy:

Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL) is running as the alternative to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to succeed John Boehner as Speaker of the House. He also has a decades-long affiliation with the Institute in Basic Life Principles, the controversial ministry whose founder, Bill Gothard, resigned last year after more than 30 women accused him of sexual harassment. As TPM reported earlier this month, IBLP subjected young followers to victim-blaming “counseling” for rape, as well as grueling work schedules at its facilities for little or no pay, requiring women to engage in gendered tasks that included scrubbing carpets on their hands and knees.

Webster’s association with IBLP and its homeschooling program, the Advanced Training Institute, made national headlines when he first ran for Congress in 2010. Alan Grayson, the firebrand incumbent Democrat, criticized Webster, who had served 28 years in the Florida legislature, in an ad characterizing him as “Taliban Dan.” The ad showed clips from a Webster speech to an IBLP conference during which he spoke of a biblical command that wives submit to their husbands. Webster, who went on to win the election, insisted the clips were taken out of context.

IBLP also is opposed to public education, contraception, “humanistic” laws, and rock music.

12 thoughts on “The Crash and Burn Party”

  1. 20 hours a day marinating in the right-wing media crackpot crockpot

    My only question is why no one coined the phrase “right-wing media crackpot crockpot” sooner.

    Also, I assume it’s unfortunately not THE Kevin McCarthy, either, if I’m correctly remembering the name of the actor who starred in the original “Body Snatchers”?

  3. “Bill Gothard, resigned last year after more than 30 women accused him of sexual harassment”

    Shocking that almost never (I mean always) happens to these godly christian types? Whenever I hear or read a moderate or lefty pundit refer to “Tony Perkins of the Family research council” I really wish they would just refer to him as “Tony Perkins Josh Duggars old boss”!

    The GOP’s display yesterday, grilling Cecile Richards over absolutely nothing, showed that not only are they whacked out of their fucking minds they are incompetent lay-abouts incapable of mounting a serious challenge to anyone who knows a fact or two. It was really a display of know-nothingness like I’ve never seen before from our do nothing GOP congress critters!

  4. You are not judging them by their own standards. To succeed in their own terms, they need not pass legislation; on the contrary, they need to prevent legislation.

    Remember that for the radical right, the term “conservative” is Orwellian. They do not want to conserve anything. Given any policy choice whatsoever, they will automatically side with the more destructive option. I therefore recommend re-naming them “destructivists”; and in destructivist terms, they are very successful indeed.

  5. When it comes to American exceptionalism and the GOP, Trey Gowdy fits right in. Pointy head and all. He’s an exceptional asshole….Maybe I shouldn’t say this…but Trey has what appears to me something of an inbred quality about him..Dueling Banjos?

  7. Well, if I was picked to be the grand inquisitor for the select committee to uncover Hillary Clinton’s wrongdoings in the terrorist attack on Benghazi..I might be a little prideful myself. Sin or no sin it’s quite a merit badge to be entrusted with such an important GOP undertaking.

    Maybe it’s me, but isn’t it normal to be cognizant of how you are being perceived, or at least expect to be perceived? I was kinda taken back by Gowdy’s instantaneous shutdown of Richard’s reply to a question he had posed to her. How obnoxious can someone be without being concerned as to how they’ll appear to an audience they are playing to. Gowdy didn’t even offer a pretense of reasonability or common decency.
    Talk about a power trip! I guess you don’t have to look to far to see the dysfunction in Washington.

  8. “Maybe it’s me, but isn’t it normal to be cognizant of how you are being perceived, or at least expect to be perceived”

    Well I know it’s not polite to make fun of ones appearance but when you look like a 1960’s science fiction TeeVee space alien it’s a good bet good old Trey gave up being concerned with how he is perceived long ago!

  11. There we go again! I was going to say that Trey isn’t such a bad looking guy. It’s just the portion above his ears that is hard to comprehend. His hair style isn’t in sync with the shape of his head. For some reason he looks like someone cracked an egg over his head.

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