The much-touted American Democracy as somehow a beacon and "shining example" of how other countries should behave and aspire to has taken a severe battering since 2016. And as many howled over President Joe Biden's characterization of the Republican Party's MAKE AMERICA GREART AGAIN (MAGA) movement as a fascist political organization born of the mini-monster, the now defunct Tea Party, it's become crystal clear that Ole Joe was right on the money. Moreover, the "American Exceptionalism" brand is now completely shattered and scattered into so many useless pieces as to make it irrelevant in the 21st century.
Today's Republican Party has no interest in governing, seeking common ground or compromise that is required in politics 101. Instead, they see any dissent or disagreement - on any and all issues, large and small - as "enemy action" and they've brought this silly and idiotic hardline to the United States House of Representatives. Never has there been so many ill-equipped, ill-prepared and bats*it crazy Republicans to sully and soil this once respected place. Of course, I could speak of the January 6 insurrectionist storming of the county's seat of government by a Republican mob doing the bidding of the worst and most unprepared president of the United States in the country's entire history.
And just when you thought that the Trump Republican Party could sink no lower or surprise no one, they outdid themselves - one more time. It's if every time they try to govern they just make a total mess of their own creating. It's the dysfunction of dummies. It's the real time, in-your-face, tyranny of the House majority and the hijacking by a Trumpist, ultra-right minority faction in the GOP - the end result of an opportunistic, transactional and over-ambitious House speaker who literally made a pact with the MAGA Devils in his own party.
They did not disappoint, and unceremoniously booted him from the Speaker's chair for daring to do the unthinkable - working with Democrats to avert a government shutdown that would have hurt millions of poor working-class Americans. That was his unforgivable and unpardonable sin. In their jaundiced eyes he consorted with the enemy and that whispered in secret hushed quarters was "treasonable."
But the total hilarity of the situation is that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was undone by a deal he cut with a guy with the political acumen of Billy Goat, and the bleating loudmouth of an animal that his last name rhymes with. Matt Gaetz (pronounced goatz) is a political blabbermouth whose modus operandi is performance politics, grandstanding and shouting to avoid his serious critical thinking deficit. That's who the former speaker gave the power to remove him from office for anything that he [Gaetz] did not like. You see, Democrats are the enemy. National polarization and the undermining of trust between both parties is the sordid outcome of an entrenched two-party system that blots out other choices and voices. Dysfunction for dummies.
And if ever there was any doubt as to who Matt Gaetz and his MAGA clique in the House are taking their marching orders from, here he is - in his own words - putting on record his fealty and defense of a failed former POTUS. Gaetz used the "continuing resolution" that is a legal financial tool to keep the United States federal government opened and functioning as the excuse, the reason, to jettison the speaker and plunge the country into uncertainty and chaos. Here is reasoning:
"A vote for a continuing resolution is a vote to continue the Green New Deal, a vote to continue inflationary spending, and the most troubling of fashions, a vote for a continuing resolution is a vote to continue the election interference of Jack Smith," Gaetz said in remarks on the House floor on September 12. "We told you how to use the power of the purse: individual, single-subject spending bills that would allow us to have specific review, programmatic analysis and that would allow us to zero out the salaries of the bureaucrats who have broken bad, targeted President Trump or cut sweetheart deals for Hunter Biden."
There you have it. This garbled political salad underscored the fact that for those Republicans who voted to collapse the party in on itself, the issue was never the interests of the American people but rather to show fealty to Donald Trump's "Big Lie" that he won the 2020 presidential elections. Interestingly Gaetz refers to the former failed and indicted president - in a New York city courthouse when McCarty was removed - as "President Trump." So, where do we go from here. I got to tell you it's going to be a very, very bumpy ride.
First, whoever the next speaker is, he or she will have to work with Democrats to get things done and that will enrage and cause another level of Republican anger from the MAGA extremists. They have the numbers to oust any speaker who does not do their bidding. The same technique that cost Kevin McCarty the speaker's gavel exists to do the same to anyone who "steps out of line."
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
