The GOP Is a Circus, Not a Caucus
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Kevin McCarthy has begun his job as speaker by servicing the demands of the most extreme—and weirdest—members who supported him, thus handing the People’s House to the Clown Caucus.
The Ringmaster
Now controlled by its most unhinged members, the Republican Party has returned to power in the People’s House. Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the ringmaster of this circus, is happily paying off his debts by engaging in petty payback, conjuring up inane committees, threatening to crash the U.S. economy, and protecting a walking monument to fraud named George Santos , who may or may not actually be named “George Santos.”
In the enduring words of Emerson, Lake & Palmer : Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends.
Politics, in Washington or anywhere else, is about deals. No one should have expected McCarthy to make his way to the gavel without signing a few ugly promissory notes along the way. Sometimes, friends are betrayed and enemies are elevated; an important project can end up taking a back seat to a boondoggle. Just ask Representative Vern Buchanan of Florida, who got pushed out of the chairmanship of Ways and Means in favor of Jason Smith of Missouri, a choice preferred by the MAGA caucus. “You fucked me,” he reportedly said to McCarthy on the floor of the House. “I know it was you, you whipped against me.” Buchanan, a source on the House floor told Tara Palmeri at Puck , was so angry that the speaker’s security people were about to step in. (McCarthy’s office denies that this happened.)
It’s one thing to pay political debts, even the kind that McCarthy accepted despite their steep and humiliating vig. It’s another to hand off control of crucial issues to a claque of clowns who have no idea what they’re doing and are willing to harm the national security of the United States as long as it suits their political purposes.
Let us leave aside the removal of Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the Intelligence Committee. The republic will not rise or fall based on such things, and if McCarthy wants to engage in snippy stoogery to ingratiate himself with the MAGA caucus and soothe Donald Trump’s hurt feelings, it is within his power to do so. In his letter to Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the speaker claimed his decision was all about “integrity.” This is not just the death of irony; it is a North Korean–style, firing-squad-by-anti-aircraft-gun execution of irony. Worse, McCarthy even has the right to channel, as he did, Joseph McCarthy, and smear Swalwell by alluding to derogatory information that the FBI supposedly has about him. It might not be honorable or professional, but he can do it.
McCarthy’s shuffle of the Intelligence Committee pales in comparison to the creation of two new committees, both of which were part of the Filene’s Basement clearance of the new speaker’s political soul. One of them, on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, is a continuation of the Republican assault on science that predated Trump but reached new heights with the former president’s disjointed gibbering about bleach injections. The committee will include the conspiracy theorist and McCarthy’s new best friend Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Ronny Jackson of Texas, the former White House physician who assured us in 2018 that Trump only weighed 239 pounds and was in astoundingly good health.
The COVID committee is unlikely to move the needle (if you’ll pardon the expression) on public health. No one’s mind will be changed if Jackson and Tucker Carlson bloviate to each other about things neither of them really believes. Most of the damage from such a committee will likely be concentrated among the vaccine refusers, who already seem determined to get sick and die to make a political point.
The “weaponization” committee is worse, and likely to do far more damage to the United States, because it is starting from the premise that the machinery of the United States government—law enforcement, the intelligence community, and federal agencies—has been turned against the average American citizen. Jim Jordan, who stands out even in this GOP for his partisan recklessness, will serve as chair. The committee will include members whom I think of as the “You-Know-Better-Than-This Caucus”: people with top-flight educations and enough experience to know that Jordan is a crank, but who nevertheless will support attacks on American institutions if that’s what it takes to avoid being sent back home to live among their constituents. Two standouts here are Thomas Massie (an MIT graduate who apparently majored in alchemy and astrology), and the ever-reliable Elise Stefanik (Harvard), whose political hemoglobin is now composed of equal parts cynicism and antifreeze.
The committee will include other monuments to probity, such as Chip Roy; Dan Bishop, who has claimed that the 2020 election was rigged; Harriet Hageman, the woman who defeated Liz Cheney in Wyoming; and Kat Cammack of Florida, who alleged that Democrats were drinking on the House floor during the speakership fight. All of them will have access to highly sensitive information from across the U.S. government.
Jordan and his posse are styling themselves as a new Church Committee, the 1975 investigation into the Cold War misdeeds of American intelligence organizations headed by Idaho Senator Frank Church. This dishonors Church, whose committee uncovered genuinely shocking abuses by agencies that had for too long escaped oversight during the early days of the struggle with the Soviet Union. Church himself was a patriot, unlike some of the charlatans on this new committee, but even Church’s investigation did at least some damage with its revelations, and some of the reforms (especially the move away from relying on human intelligence) undertaken later based in part on its findings were unwise. In any case, his fame was short-lived: He was defeated for reelection in 1980 and died in 1984. (Full disclosure: I spoke at a conference held in Church’s honor many years ago and met with his widow.)
The Church Committee was, in its day, a necessary walk across the hot coals for Americans who had invested too much power and trust in the executive branch. I suspect that the Jordan committee will not look to uncover abuses, but rather to portray any government actions that it does not like as abuses, especially the investigations into Trump. It will be the Church Committee turned on its head, as members of Congress seek to protect a lawless president by destroying the agencies that stand between our democracy and his ambitions.
Kevin McCarthy will be fine with all of it, as long as he gets to wear the top hat and red tails while indulging in the fantasy that he is in control of the clowns and wild animals, and not the other way around.
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And the ringmaster is back ... interesting times and all the shyte that comes with it. God is truly one of Jung's tricksters.
Which makes this no different from the Pelosi lead Democrats. Substitute Schiff and Swalwell for Santos; and you have a perfect match.
Thanks for the first snicker of the day.
McCarthy did a good job of educating that snippy reporter as why Schiff and Swalwell weren't fit to serve on the Intelligence Committee.
The article is just another example of leftist whinery.
The writer is not a leftist. Not that you care about such details.
There is no room for the lemmings of the right who refuse to go over the cliff.
His Job is to criticize republicans.
Thanks for the second snicker of the day. Greene/Santos 2024 or bust.
I think there is a great silver lining to all this - the 2022 election showed pretty definitively that the majority of Americans are appalled at all this far right buffoonery. People will not accept a fanatic like Jim Jordan as the determiner of who is or isnt a loyal American within the Justice Department or the FBI. People are tired of right wing lies and absurd defenses of Trumpism. 2024 cant get here fast enough if this is the GOP plan.
2022 proved to be a rough ride so the GoP is mixing used sawdust into the transmission oil à la Harry Wormwood.
But Biden keeps pouring sand into the gas tank. Progress will come to a grinding halt.
The future loves making a mockery of those who try to predict it.
The only thing saving him up to this point is aggressive rate increases by the Fed but that only goes so far.
Prediction: as the economy continues to cool or stay flat and inflation remains stubbornly high, the worker drones will start blaming McCarthy and the Rep House.
Left wing buffoonery is so predictable.
McCarthy could step on his dick as Speaker and still do demonstratively better than Nana.
If McCarthy stepped on his dick Marjorie would scream in pain.
And our little brother to the north will continue to weep like a schoolgirl scorned
What about MTG's balls? Hers are bigger than any of the gop/gqp. Also, she tucks.
Never voted for Justin, and the CPC has only offered up buffoons who try to outdo each other on how far right they want to go ... their latest leader Poilievre would do well in Hungary.
Yeah, you do seem more like a Blanchet guy .....
Add another 't' and I could be. But when it comes to actual voting, these guys and gals are my choice:
The GOP is a coven.
EVIL
EVIL
Now, now. Don't get us witches mixed in with the GOP. We don't deserve that.
Apologies!!!