You can’t even put lipstick on this pig.
That’s the Republican Party today in the House of Representatives, trying to elect a Speaker. It’s a pig without makeup. It looks awful.
You’ve got a presumptive leader putting the whole Congress on the coals when he can’t even lead the 222 members of his own caucus. And who, although he picked up votes on today’s 12th bitter ballot, never once stood on the floor of the House and made a case for his own election.
You’ve got one member, Florida’s Matt Gaetz, who has been under investigation by the federal government for sex trafficking, nominating for Speaker a former president, who’s also under federal investigation for a whole laundry list of alleged crimes. And for good measure, Gaetz made his nomination after the idea was floated in a podcast by Steve Bannon, who already has been convicted of federal crimes and is set to serve four months behind bars. Birds of a feather.
Out of 220 Republican votes cast for Speaker on that ballot by the way, that fading former president got exactly one.
You’ve got the same former president— posting on his website in all caps, “VOTE FOR KEVIN, CLOSE THE DEAL, TAKE THE VICTORY”— failing to close the deal.
You’ve got the leader of the Democrats in the House, now the minority party, winning more votes on the first 11 ballots than the leader of the Republicans, who hold the majority.
You’ve got a Democratic party whose advantage in the last Congress— 222 to 213— was not a single vote greater than the Republicans’ advantage in this new one, but which nevertheless passed a plethora of major legislation with that slim edge. The Republicans, with the same edge after the November elections, can’t even agree on who should lead them.
You’ve got roughly 20 right-wing Republican renegades having shown their true colors, causing conflict and chaos, but that’s no surprise because their role model is the ex-president, and chaos was all he did.
You’ve got Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, the doyen of drama who has been persuaded with promises of power to support Kevin McCarthy, saying about the “Never-Kevin” clique, “I think the American people no matter how you vote are sick and tired of drama and this is nothing but drama,” and saying it with a straight face. And then, sticking a knife in her fellow drama junkie, Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, who still supports anyone but Kevin, “I don’t think that’s leadership and I really see it as more obstruction than progress.”
You’ve got a new definition of “mainstream” in the Republican Party, most members defining McCarthy as mainstream while McCarthy himself negotiates for votes by giving away the farm to extremists, which will move the House farther from mainstream, not closer. For that matter, by those lights, you’ve also got a new definition of “leadership.”
You’ve got recalcitrant Republican rebels holding the would-be Speaker hostage to tighten the strings on U.S. funding for Ukraine’s courageous battle against a cruel Russian bombardment, and to let the United States government default on its debt obligations, which would throw not just the American economy but the world’s economy into turmoil.
You’ve got all this happening two years to the day after the violent insurrection against the United States government, which is the last time our foreign friends had reason to worry about our stability, and our foreign adversaries had reason to delight in what they see as the drawbacks of democracy. Now, both friends and foes must be thinking that way again.
You’ve got some House Republicans vowing to let the stalemate last as long as necessary to have their way, even though this is the longest an election for Speaker has dragged on since before the Civil War, when citizens weren’t watching the whole embarrassing episode on television and the internet.
And at the end of the day, what have you got? A Speaker who will make Hunter Biden’s laptop one of the top priorities of this new Congress.
What you’ve got is a pig without lipstick. Even when they sort it out as eventually they must, it won’t look any prettier.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 36-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Good observations Greg. I think the context for all of this is an even more important deal. That is, most of the opposition to McCarthy have failed the truth and justice test. They have continued to promote the Big Lie and shielded Trump from impeachment and investigation. They downplay the January 6th insurrection and deny the conspiracy that made it happen. This lying and failure to seek justice goes beyond the McCarthy opposition. See the recent NYT article on this.
In the old Superman show of the 1960’s, the preamble to each show stated Superman’s never-ending search for “truth, justice and the American way”. Where is our country headed if truth and justice are no longer foundational?
Let’s hope voters remember this in 2024! I hope voters in Colorado remember Boebert for what she is — an idiot trying to get media attention for all the wrong reasons. The media is stupid to go along with this and give her any attention at all!