What Sane Person?

The Republican Party is a collection of vile and incompetent people. Leading their parade is Donald Trump. But close behind him is Marjorie Taylor Greene. Dana Milbank writes:

After eight fellow Republicans thwarted her attempt to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, one of them said Greene lacks “maturity.” Greene responded by telling her 2.8 million followers on X that the man who called her immature was a “p---y” who does not have testicles.

The week began with Greene’s failed attempt on the House floor to impeach Mayorkas. It continued with a failed initial attempt to bring a temporary spending patch to the floor to keep the federal government open for another 60 days. And it ended in a yet another failed vote on the floor, in which 19 Republicans blocked GOP leaders from beginning debate on the annual Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill. In the past, it was unheard of for lawmakers to defy their own party leaders on such routine procedural votes. This year, it is commonplace.

A Cabinet-level officer has not been impeached since 1876. House Republicans would very much like to change that, but they don’t yet have the votes. That might be because they haven’t produced evidence of high crimes or misdemeanors by Mayorkas — only evidence that he is implementing President Biden’s policies, which they do not like.

Greene used a “privileged resolution” (a maneuver seldom used in the past but also commonplace in this Congress) to force a snap vote on Monday night on impeaching the secretary without completing an impeachment inquiry. As lawmakers carried on conversations, the House clerk read Greene’s venomous resolution about “willful admittance of … terrorists”; “the invasion of approximately 10,000,000 illegals”; “border crosser[s] who have invaded”; “gotaways”; and even “illegal people.”

One has to ask: What sane person would put these people in office?

Image: Roll Call

Crazytown

We are about to discover just how crazy Republicans in the House of Representatives are. Eugene Robinson writes:

I’ll admit I was surprised when Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) got the House to approve a deal on the debt ceiling that takes the threat of default off the table until early 2025, eliminating the possibility of election-year brinkmanship on that issue. He and President Biden reached a reasonable compromise — far too reasonable, it turns out, for the anti-government zealots in McCarthy’s fractious ranks.

Members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, outraged at the notion of meeting anyone halfway about anything, are trying to renege on the spending targets set in the debt ceiling deal and instead force much deeper cuts. They don’t have the power to get what they want, since all the other actors (Biden, House Democrats, a bipartisan majority in the Senate) are determined to honor the terms of the agreement. But looney-bin GOP radicals can make McCarthy’s life miserable and perhaps even oust him as speaker. And there is a good chance they can force a government shutdown at the end of September.

Like the leader of their cult, many Republicans are insane:

Pulling such a stunt would be dumb and self-defeating. The historical record is clear: When Republicans force a shutdown, they end up hurting their own party politically and helping the Democrats. But logic and pragmatism no longer appear to be getting through to the outer-planet far right in the House.

How far into the wilds of extremism have these GOP radicals wandered? Members of the Freedom Caucus have reportedly voted to oust Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) from their club. Her perceived sins include having supported McCarthy’s debt ceiling deal and generally being too cozy with the leadership. But the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” Freedom Caucus member Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) told reporters, came late last month when Greene called another Freedom Caucus member, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), a “little bitch” while both were on the House floor.

Greene and Boebert once looked like potential BFFs; you will recall how they previously teamed up to heckle Biden during his State of the Union address. But each seems to want to be recognized as the GOP’s loudest and most telegenic provocateur. Greene was hopping mad because Boebert had filed an unserious, publicity-seeking resolution to impeach Biden — jumping the gun before Greene could file her own unserious, publicity-seeking resolution to impeach Biden.

Other prominent House Republicans are busy performing such vital legislative tasks as investigating Hunter Biden; investigating the Justice Department investigation of Hunter Biden; threatening to impeach Attorney General Merrick Garland; threatening to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas; threatening to fire FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, who was appointed by Donald Trump; complaining about “woke” capitalism, as if they think Wall Street has somehow repealed the profit motive; and now, in a weekend flurry of official statements and Fox News appearances, vowing to get to the bottom of who left a small bag of cocaine at the White House.

Amid all this nonsense, however, the House Appropriations Committee is working on spending bills for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 with funding levels about $119 billion less than those set in the Biden-McCarthy compromise. This attempt at changing the rules midgame was blessed by McCarthy after Freedom Caucus members staged a tantrum, blocking the House from getting any work done, to protest the debt ceiling deal.

There's only one word for all of this: Crazytown.

Image: The Sobor Curator

Republican Corruption

The latest numbers on vaccinations in the United States are gobsmacking. Jennifer Rubin writes:

The latest numbers on vaccination rates are telling: Mississippi has the lowest percentage of vaccinated residents, followed by Alabama, Arkansas, Wyoming, Louisiana, Georgia and Tennessee. All except Louisiana have both Republican governors and legislatures, as do the next seven on the list. Among the 14 U.S. senators representing the bottom seven, only two (both in Georgia) are Democrats. The Post reports, “Ten states, concentrated in the Deep South and rural West, report fewer than 35 percent of residents are fully immunized.”

And, when it comes to healthcare in general, it's the same story:

Health care in these deep-red states is generally dreadful. Among the 12 states that have neither expanded nor voted to expand Medicaid, all but three have GOP governors and in those three (North Carolina, Kansas and Wisconsin), a Democratic governor faces a GOP legislature.

By these or just about any other measures, Republican states are failing to meet the basic needs of their residents. Among unvaccinated Americans, infection rates are climbing. More will get sick in those places, and some will die. Republicans are unwilling or incapable of meeting the challenge.

The simple question is why?

As Reason Magazine’s Peter Suderman wrote recently for the New York Times, the GOP “no longer has a cognizable theory of government.” They claim to be economic populists but oppose raising any taxes on the rich and corporations, decry union organizing and attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. “Freedom” used to be a central theme, but they are on a crusade to criminalize abortion and compel unwilling women to endure nine months of pregnancy — even in cases of rape or incest. They are also in favor of ordering teachers not to teach unfavorable facts about America.

One might wonder from time to time why Republicans even bother running for election. Because they have so little interest in governing (other than in protecting tax cuts for the rich, shielding the gun lobby from reasonable regulation and dictating women’s reproductive choices), they might as well take on the role of social media trolls and right-wing media guests full-time.

There is one simple reason why they run:

In truth, a great many Republicans simply like to be “important people” with the perks of holding office. It seems the notion of finding other work causes them to break out in a cold sweat, so they adopt insane MAGA positions so as not to offend the mob they helped rile up. Certainly, there are true believers who believe Trumpian rubbish and take right-wing TV hosts’ conspiracies as gospel, but they are a distinct minority. Time and again, we hear from Republican dissenters that most of their colleagues do not really believe the MAGA party lies; what they believe in is the necessity of their own reelection.

They are the incarnation of Lord Acton's axiom: power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Image: twitter

Republican Delusions

Paul Krugman wrote in yesterday's New York Times that the Republican Party is fleeing from reality:

Last week House Republicans voted for the 40th time to repeal Obamacare. Like the previous 39 votes, this action will have no effect whatsoever. But it was a stand-in for what Republicans really want to do: repeal reality, and the laws of arithmetic in particular. The sad truth is that the modern G.O.P. is lost in fantasy, unable to participate in actual governing. 

Election defeats should act as splashes of cold water, arousing political parties from their slumber and forcing them to get their bearings. But modern Republicans have completely lost theirs:

How did the G.O.P. get to this point? On budget issues, the proximate source of the party’s troubles lies in the decision to turn the formulation of fiscal policy over to a con man. Representative Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has always been a magic-asterisk kind of guy — someone who makes big claims about having a plan to slash deficits but refuses to spell out any of the all-important details. Back in 2011 the Congressional Budget Office, in evaluating one of Mr. Ryan’s plans, came close to open sarcasm; it described the extreme spending cuts Mr. Ryan was assuming, then remarked, tersely, “No proposals were specified that would generate that path.”

What’s happening now is that the G.O.P. is trying to convert Mr. Ryan’s big talk into actual legislation — and is finding, unsurprisingly, that it can’t be done. Yet Republicans aren’t willing to face up to that reality. Instead, they’re just running away. 

If their 2012 election defeat did not act as a splash of cold water, the Meltdown of 2008 should have. Instead, Republicans keep insisting that what the nation needs is lower taxes and more concentration of wealth. That prescription is not just political suicide. It's insane. 

Unfortunately, because legislation has to get through the Republican controlled House, the United States could be in for a long stretch of insanity.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.