Republicans keep complaining that our government is broken. That is not true. Republicans are broken. Our government is fine.
We need reform, no doubt. We need to admit our mistakes and learn from them. We must remove the inherent conflicts of interest that have fueled corruption within Congress for as long as we’ve had Congress. We need to make spending PAC money on family vacations harder, not easier. We need to repeal Citizen’s United permanently.
There’s a boatload we need to do. But none of that will happen if we elect broken people to do the work.
This is not about “us and them.” It’s not about good and evil. It’s not about Libs and MAGA. It’s about leadership.
Time to let go of false equivalencies
The two parties are not equal. The Democratic Party has a record of creating legislation that helps Americans: Social Security, The Affordable Care Act, Medicare, etc. These programs could be better, and government money is often wasted. But you don’t fix anything by taking a blow torch to it. I’m struggling to understand how grown men and women in the Republican Party do not know this.
The Democrats have a platform and have dedicated themselves to improving the lives of the working class. Unfortunately, the 20 or so Republicans unwilling to compromise to elect a speaker appear to have no agenda other than to destroy the institutions that currently provide the structure and systems needed to maintain democracy.
On Ari Melber’s The Beat, David Frum made the point that it’s hard to negotiate with a hostage taker if the hostage taker has no demands.
Suppose you ask what he wants, and he says, “I don’t want anything. I just like taking hostages.” This is where the extreme elements of the Republican Party are. They offer nothing but obstruction — there is no alternate plan.
Republicans are reaping what they sowed
Republicans are proving by their actions in the House that they don’t know how to govern and don’t want to govern. They want power; they are in it for themselves. And for them, everything is a zero-sum game. If you win, they lose; if they win, you lose.
Donald Trump personifies this mentality. When Republicans ignored Trump’s nature in the hopes of using him to achieve their white Christian agenda, they backed a demon. They found the one man in America whose celebrity would overwhelm his lack of qualifications and whose afflictions would damage the institutions that make democracy possible. Republicans backed a tyrant with enormous monetary resources (thanks to Daddy) and a network of mafia-like goons willing to do his bidding. They should have known better.
The crazies in Congress who have since been backed by Trump (and are now going rogue) could not have become members if Trump’s brand of politics (bullying, lying, intimidation) had not been established and accepted by the Republican leadership.
Republicans like Kevin McCarthy are now easy targets for the MAGA and Freedom Caucus extremists, who will destroy everything if they don’t get their way.
Unfortunately, McCarthy doesn’t fully understand whom he’s dealing with. He thinks he’s in charge; he’s not.
McCarthy can’t win and he can’t give up
So far, there have been 13 rounds of voting, and McCarthy still doesn’t have enough votes to become speaker. He gave his naysayers every possible concession and is still six votes short of his goal. McCarthy keeps saying he’ll get the votes, but it sounds like wishful thinking. (This is also a Trump strategy — though I use that word loosely).
Trump has been a fan of the power of positive thinking all his adult life. According to his niece, Mary Trump, he has an almost magical reverence for the doctrine. In Trump’s reality, Trump is a winner. McCarthy seems to be relying on the same kind of magical thinking to get votes. It’s not working. He may have 10 or 15 more than he had yesterday, but the magic number is 218, and he’s not there yet.
No matter who wins the speakership now, they will be held to whatever deal McCarthy has made — concessions that could handicap whoever takes the gavel. We’ve seen this before. (John Boehner and Paul Ryan come to mind.)
The problem isn’t the House rules — it’s the people who rule the House
Changing the rules of the House isn’t what electing a speaker is supposed to be about. The boneheads refusing to do the business of Congress do not understand how Congress works.
Here’s a tip: Learn the job first, then find ways to reform what needs to be reformed. No member of Congress should be allowed to force changes to rules simply because they don’t like them. Where could they have gotten the idea that this behavior is acceptable?
From Trump, of course. The Republican Party has become a magnet for people who refuse to learn before they attempt to control. Now those people make up much of the Republican base — some of them showed up to town halls and school board meetings to bully and harass local lawmakers — and some have been elected to Congress.
Congratulations! If you are a proud member of the Republican Party, you own this.
This is the kind of chaos that ensues when leaders are too cowardly to reign in bad actors — the bad actors proliferate. We would not be here now if Trump had never been allowed to run for president. Republicans chose to deny Trump’s nature so they could use him for their purposes. Instead, he used them.
As Nicole Wallace so eloquently put it on “Deadline White House” the other day, we are witnessing “the catastrophic consequences of appeasement.”
And how does Kevin McCarthy handle this? By appeasing more of the wackos.
The solution
There is a simple solution to this problem: find six Republicans to vote for Jeffries. There is no point in trying to appease those who will never vote for McCarthy — so take power away from them. Instead of appeasing them, ignore them. They crave attention — don’t give it to them.
Six Republicans with a conscience and the willingness to sacrifice for their country could protect our constitutional processes and allow our government to resume functioning. Just add those six Republicans to the 212 votes Democrat Hakeem Jeffries has received every time they’ve voted, and the next vote could be the last.
Moreover, if Jeffries takes the gavel, he will not be held to any of the concessions McCarthy has foolishly made. Jeffries would have a clean slate and the respect of the members he would lead. McCarthy will have neither.
Yeah, I know. We don’t have six Republicans with a conscience and the willingness to sacrifice for their country.
How sad is that?