
As our ship of state sinks calamitously in the east, we at least have the comic relief of House Republicans attempting to govern. This is not something they do well, in fact they rarely do it at all. They much prefer spending their taxpayer-supported time defaming Democrats. There is also the factor of detesting the very institution they're in charge of — the federal government — hence ad hoc dysfunction is the solid psychological foundation upon which their clusterfucking is built.
Yet prior to every congressional election they promise voters a smooth-operating House fully attentive to their constituents' needs, unlike those out-of-touch Democrats, they say, who spend their time fomenting culture wars on behalf of society's freaks, fairies and f.u.b.a.r. feminists — wars which, of course, Republicans must put to an end. Other than hustling dysfunction, flipping scripts is a favorite GOP pastime.
Lately, their most assiduous script-flipping is that President Biden doesn't really run the White House, the executive branch or the country. In a way it's a compliment, since they also say the country is almost hopelessly messed up. Republicans insist that it's society's freaks on the "far left" who are running President Biden, simple-minded doddering fool that he is. Here is a classic case of flipping the script, since the second-most powerful man in government — the Republican speaker of House, Kevin McCarthy — is not only powerless, he is overtly being run by the far right.
Poor Kevin. His partisan comrades falsely contend that Biden is out of the loop, while McCarthy demonstrably lacks even a loop to be in. He's surrounded by a herd of 220 incorrigible felines, each belonging to an uninfluential "conservative" faction within a pseudoconservative framework. Their only cohesive ideology is that of nihilistic chaos — a specialty which naturally grants bomb-throwing imbeciles such Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene a slight stockholder edge in party ownership. The edge they wield is not influence; it's extortion.
Poor Kevin. Earlier this week he told reporters that "We’ve got a plan to move forward" via a cordial settlement of all the fiercely fought budget battles. That was one day before his caucus publicly lighted his plan on fire and threw its ashes in his face. I say his caucus crossed him, which actually means a party of five — the chaotic nihilism specialists. But, they're in control, which further means they're as good as a House majority. Semafor describes McCarthy's budget-vote "fiasco" as an act of "House Republicans plung[ing] their way into previously unexplored depths of dysfunction" — or a speakerless House.
Poor Kevin. The upshot of an ungoverned, or ungovernable, Republican caucus is that a shutdown of the institution they have long abused is now guaranteed (again). Keeping the government open for bad business had been McCarthy's principal desire since May, when the putative emasculated president single-handedly outwitted and overpowered him in the debt-ceiling deal. The speaker is fast earning the epithet of the most feckless pol in Washington.
And why not? I mean, he's being bullied by a two-bit Florida grifter and little-girl molester who is so spectacularly incompetent he left his cloak-and-dagger plan to unseat Speaker
McCarthy on a baby-changing table in a subterranean House bathroom. This idiot is the Guy Fawkes of America's lower chamber. Nevertheless, he has successfully weaponized stupidity.
He's been so successful, even his colleagues now openly characterize their party as "a total shitshow," one in which its leader "obviously can’t count" — votes, that is. We never would have seen Speaker Nancy Pelosi staging a doomed floor vote. Post-doom, McCarthy said "I don’t understand how anyone votes against bringing the idea up and having the debate." Everyone else can't understand why he invited the dumb idea to the floor to begin with.
He's also a bit behind Republican times. "This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down," said Kevin. Washington Irving's best-known character could not have better summarized Republican ideology of the past several decades. But McCarthy may not have to cope with his uncomprehending fecklessness much longer. Not if the Florida grifter has his way.
Gaetz might succeed in dethroning McCarthy. But as for the more pertinent, more important, concern, it's likely that Democrats, as always, will step in and save the government from total implosion. Semafor reports that Republican "moderates" — an ever-farther-right term — are "threatening their own sort of rebellion. Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., has said that if the House does not pass a short-term spending bill to prevent a shutdown, he'll join with Democrats and sign a discharge petition forcing one onto the floor."
If there were no Dems in the House, we'd have no government at all. For the House's "leader" is as limply impotent as any other 58-year-old speaker without some official Viagra. Amusingly, however, Republicans insist that it's President Biden who lacks self-possessed vigor and vitality in his domain.