Writing at Vanity Fair, Molly Jong-Fast asks Is the Sheer Stupidity of Republican Politics Breaking Through?
The problem Republicans find themselves in is perhaps best summed up by Democrat Eric Swalwell, who texted me that his colleagues across the aisle could use some stronger leadership. “Typically the Speaker of the House sets a party’s agenda in Congress. But there is no functional leader of the House Republican Party. Instead, it’s made up of an ensemble cast of chaos agents providing a comedy of errors each week Congress is in session.”
He was commenting mostly on the House’s Hunter Biden hearings, which have devolved into one of the longest-running displays of face-palming stupidity in the House’s history, or at least since the invention of videos.
Every week is another episode of political satire show Veep, except with no likable characters. House Republicans are back this week with another hearing about the Bidens, with two IRS whistleblowers, as McCarthy increasingly faces pressure from his party’s extremists to target the current administration’s cabinet. As New York Democrat Ritchie Torres told me, “No one or nothing in America is safe from the sheer stupidity of modern Republican politics.” The party has “become monomaniacally anti-woke culture warriors whose ever-lengthening list of targets include acronyms like DEI and ESG, Barbie, gas stoves, Hunter Biden, trans people.” Yes, Ted Cruz called a scene in Barbie “Chinese communist propaganda.”
It’s a good article. If you click on the link and run into a paywall, just open it in an incognito window. Works for me, anyway.
Ted Cruz is allegedly a senator from Texas. Texas has real problems. Texas has been getting its ass kicked by extreme weather in recent years, for example. I understand much of Texas has been under a heat dome for a few weeks that is expected to last into August. How has the Republican-led state government responded? This is from the Texas Tribune:
In a week when parts of the state are getting triple-digit temperatures and weather officials urge Texans to stay cool and hydrated, Gov. Greg Abbott gave final approval to a law that will eliminate local rules mandating water breaks for construction workers.
House Bill 2127 was passed by the Texas Legislature during this year’s regular legislative session. Abbott signed it Tuesday. It will go into effect on Sept. 1.
Supporters of the law have said it will eliminate a patchwork of local ordinances across the state that bog down businesses. The law’s scope is broad but ordinances that establish minimum breaks in the workplace are one of the explicit targets. The law will nullify ordinances enacted by Austin in 2010 and Dallas in 2015 that established 10-minute breaks every four hours so that construction workers can drink water and protect themselves from the sun. It also prevents other cities from passing such rules in the future. San Antonio has been considering a similar ordinance.
Texas is the state where the most workers die from high temperatures, government data shows.
Six out of ten construction workers in Texas are Latinos, the Texas Tribune says. A construction worker named Gabriel Infante, 24, developed heat stroke while installing fiber optic cables in San Antonio last year and died as a result. His family is suing the employer for $1 million. Will the law offer some protection from criminal liability for dead workers? Priorities, you know.
Greg Abbott also has responded to the heat wave by dissing renewable energy and pushing “on demand energy” (fossil fuels). He also recently “vetoed a bill designed to strengthen energy efficiency in new construction, saying it wasn’t as important as cutting property taxes.” This while some sweltering Texans can’t afford to run their air conditioners.
I’ve already written about Florida governor Rhonda Santis‘s completely ignoring very real problems being suffered by Florida residents — such as a growing number of property insurers refusing to do business in the state — while he pursues ridiculous “culture war” issues to get his name in the news. Just this week he threatened legal action against Anheuser-Busch because of the Bud Light flap. And he is forcing Florida schools to teach that slaves benefited from slavery. Meanwhile, he is ignoring the dangers that climate change hold for his state.
But let’s go back to Washington. House Republicans are showing us their true priorities. Kate Riga at TPM:
To hear them tell it, House Republicans are solely focused on fiscal conservatism, on undercutting the appropriations levels agreed to in the Kevin McCarthy-Joe Biden debt ceiling law so they can “rein in federal spending.”
That’s what they’d like to be fighting about. But their actions, the riders they’ve larded up these bills with, reveal a different priority: an obsession with fighting battles in the culture war, a fixation on extinguishing any semblance of abortion access in particular, no matter the repeatedly demonstrated political radioactivity of the issue post-Dobbs.
Do read all of Riga’s article, because you won’t believe some of the stuff the House Clowns are trying to pull. All of this junk is dead on arrival in the Senate, but the extremists in the House could tie up essential appropriations indefinitely with this nonsense.
See also the GOP’s crumbling case against Biden on crime, immigration and inflation. While Republicans play stupid culture war games, the Biden Administration has been addressing the real problems. The question is, how much recognition is the administration getting? And is the public really aware of how off the war the Republican party has become?
“Now it’s just up to Democrats to ensure Americans know just how much more this could spiral out of control if Republicans actually controlled all of government,” Molly Jong-Fast writes at Vanity Fair. But are Democrats capable of getting that message across? They haven’t been good at that sort of thing in the last few election cycles. They tend to stay on defense instead of offense. That has to change.
I'd say that the clowns in the House are not satisfied that their plan to bring chaos down by forcing the US to default on its debt was derailed by McCarthy negotiating a deal with Biden that didn't deliver ANY of the main demands in the first fifteen drafts of the hostage notes.
The Biden-McCarthy deal was supposed to take the threat of a government shutdown off the table until after the election. (I don't object to Democrats who'd prefer a different candidate against Trump in '24, but if results count for anything, give the current guy in the WH some credit.) IMO, a significant number of kooks in the MAGA House want to force a government shutdown anyhow. They still think they can extort the Senate and WH into concessions.
The GOP has settled on a strategy of political terrorism that they think will allow them to dominate national politics even as a minority. They are willing and even eager to inflict catastrophe on the citizens of this country unless their demands are met. This looks like other stuff in the news: Putin threatening nukes if NATO continues to enable Ukraine. Trump threatening it would be "dangerous" to talk about putting Trump in jail. And the media has totally glossed over how Trump doxed Obama by publishing his home address, which resulted in an armed J6 fugitive visiting and getting arrested. They aren't pretending to legislate with the promises of the benefits they advocate. This is legislation under duress – they will wreck what citizens have if the majority does not capitulate.
The method, the philosophy is completely opposed to the intent of the framers of the Constitution. This is treason, even if it can't be charged. The reason it's worked so well (so far) is because the machine of propaganda and resentment is so well funded. (May Limbaugh get the level in hell he deserves.)
Rhonda Santis?!?!?
A-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!
I'm glad you liked my nickname for Rhonda. How are you feeling? Any better?
Great stage name for a drag performer!
I'm afraid that inhaling toxic fumes generated from burning Barbie dolls is not going to make them any smarter.
I still feel very weak.
But, I'm doin' ok!
🙂
A post on Crooks & Liars pointed out that Trump is posting in all caps in a series of Truth Social complaints. They are frantic and unhinged. At Salon a different post observes that Trump's lawyers are "holding him up for money." With the number of criminal trials likely to double in the next couple of weeks, the bad cash flow is just beginning.
It looks to me like a condition of employment to be a Trump lawyer is to accept Trump's direction. And the directions look to be insane. Example: the Georgia State Supreme Court shut down a bid to have the report of the Special Grand Jury suppressed and Fani Willis removed. That should end a ridiculous demand. Trump has filed a 650-page demand with the Fulton County Superior Court to have Willis removed. Essentially, Trump appealed to a lower court. And no lawyer will think a judge will be MORE impressed with a petition the length of a novel.
So Trump is telling his lawyers how to lawyer. And they're charging by the hour as King Trump shouts out decrees. Which they have to turn into paper, charging top dollar payable upfront. Don't tell Donald, but he needs to prepare for the Georgia trial with defenses to the most likely charges but Trump has determined that he WILL NOT STAND TRIAL. I say that because Trump has specified it in documents submitted to other courts and because repeated outlandish filings are pointed at holding back the tide.
The civil trial in NY scheduled for October seeks $250 million in fines The E. Jean Carroll trial was also in NY and in order to appeal, Trump had to put up the 10 million he lost plus 10%. That didn't go to Carroll – it's being held by NY. SO if Trump loses in NY this year, he will have to put up 275 million to appeal. (Shortly after that – no date set – Carroll gets another shot at Trump for defamation. )
What does this mean? 1) Trump is going to get a lot more frantic when he's facing more charges in Georgia for racketeering and in DC for J6. 2) Trump seems to be demanding the ridiculous from his lawyers who seem to be laughing all the way to the bank. 3) Trump's demands for violence are escalating – he sees violence or the threat of violence as a way to derail the prosecutions. (It may be a ticket to jail if he continues. Detention of a suspect whose deemed a danger to society is SOP.) 4) The MAGAs demand a leader who can punch down – inflict pain on the weak. As Trump looks more and more like the weak victim, the schtick for Trump will fall apart. I do not think DeSantis can overtake Trump, but if Trump has a meltdown next month after charges come down, I expect to see DeSantis get a bump.
BTW, Marcy at Emptywheel speculates that Jack Smith could go for low-hanging fruit in charges against Trump alone. She makes the case that the proof is there with what's known in the public square. If Jack keeps that simple, it can go to trial in early '24. Stuff will get real in the first week of August in GA. Jack has Trump freaking out. I'm not sure Jack is intentionally playing head games with Trump but it's working out that way.
MSNBC has got my hopes up, they are predicting that Trump will be indicted either today or tomorrow. I'll be happy with either day but, I'd prefer today. Trump has got so many pending indictments that I'm not sure what crime he's going to answer for. I think it's for the stolen election conspiracy. We'll see!
> Do People See What’s Happening in the GOP?
The remaining gatekeepers in our national discourse, having completely lost any influence over the Republican Party, now focus their efforts on denying attention to the proposition that the Republican Party is collectively crazy as so many shithouse rats.
So, as Magic 8-Ball likes to put it, "signs point to no."