Former President Trump failed to persuade Acting Attorney General Rosen to, “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest up to me and the Republican Congressmen”. (Rosen had replaced Bill Barr whose forced resignation followed Barr's categorical assessment that Trump’s claims of voter fraud were “bullshit”).
Trump then tried to replace Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, a civil attorney with no judicial experience, who had been recommended to him by Republican Congressman Scott Perry. Clark was quite amenable to write to the Georgian State officials stating that the election was corrupt and a lot more. A heated and protracted meeting then followed in the Oval Office where Trump was informed should he go through with his plan to appoint Clark hundreds of Department of Justice officials would resign. The Chief White House Counsel, Pat Cipollone, called Clark’s letter a “murder - suicide” pact and Trump eventually backed off.
This episode left everyone wondering who the Republican Congressmen Trump was referring to. Last week America found out. In addition to Perry there were nineteen others. The Guardian labelled them the Taliban Twenty. Trump’s gut as usual was right. Those twenty could bully the other two hundred Republican Congresspeople and Trump’s Kevin McCarthy into anything. In effect the whole lot were "Trump's Republicans".
The underlying narrative to the whole shameful episode of the Speaker election was to whitewash Trump and investigate the investigators into the coup, which Trump's Republicans implicitly were denying ever happened. This squalid deception was being perpetrated in the very same chamber where police responders were killed and maimed defending their miserable lying lives. The fact that this was the Second Anniversary of the January 6 insurrection was totally lost on the Republican caucus as they squabbled and fought among themselves.
WAITING FOR A SPEAKER
This past week America witnessed a Kafaesque drama in the House. President Biden on the other hand was blissfully was playing out his bipartisan role, with Senator McConnell in attendance. Biden was dishing out infrastructure money to build bridges physically and metaphorically. Simultaneously on the steps of the Capitol, the outgoing Speaker of the House Democrat Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic caucus were commemorating the bravery and loss of life in the Trump inspired assault on democracy. Only one Republican Congressman was present. Soon after Biden dished out medals to the police who had physically defended Republican and Democratic legislators and their staff on January 6, 2021.
The House Republicans were blind to all these happenings and instead participated in a real life farce in what should have been a formality - the coronation of the caucus’s decision on who should be their leader. Instead Kevin McCarthy was kept waiting for his speakership which, at least, unlike Godot, finally arrived albeit it took fifteen attempts. Trump, not to be denied a role on this production on Capitol Hill played a key part, according to McCarthy, in him realizing his speakership ambition.
The question arising out of this public internecine battle of the dying “GOP” is what does it all mean and where do we go from here? One answer for sure is that the House GOP have abandoned liberal democracy in favor of anarchy, Their immediate objective is to run cover for Trump and deny the coup and their role in the conspiracy. The five day production on the House floor was dominated by the twenty “GOP” right wing anarchists who the British daily, The Guardian, labelled “The Taliban 20”. Newt Gingrich the former Republican Speaker, who accelerated his Party’s disintegration in 1994, smugly mused that the GOP had never been such disarray since 1964.
THE GOP LUNATICS ARE IN CHARGE OF ASYLUM
The battle between McCarthy supporters and between the Taliban holdouts for the Speakership of the House of Representatives wasn’t a contest between the administration running the asylum versus the inmates. Rather it was a battle between the inmates as to who would run the institution. Just in case there is any doubt as to the irrationality of this whole episode, without the vote of a Republican sociopathic fraud, George Santos, who claimed his grandparents were holocaust survivors, McCarthy would still be waiting for his Speakership.
Just in case anyone might believe that this was a battle between good and evil the majority of the Republican Conference in the House of Representatives, who participated in this reality show spectacle, challenged the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential Election in one way or another. This in spite of the facts that Trump lost over sixty of his legal challenges in court, that many of the Trump inspired insurgents have been found guilty of seditious conspiracy, that the January 6 Committee changed public perception about Trump with the over sixty percent of Americans believing that he was responsible for an insurrection and finally. the fact that Trump is being investigated by the Department of Justice for the latter. Added to that litany there are open and shut cases that Trump obstructed the government from obtaining classified documents that he had stolen and that he tried to illegally overturn the Georgia election.
It should not be surprising that the key dramatis personae in this farce had reflected their consciousness of guilt by requesting pardons from then President Trump in relation to their complicity in his coup. They included, according to Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows's executive assistant, Cassidy Hutchinson, “GOP” Congressmen Mo Brooks, Matt Gates, Andy Biggs, Scott Perry and Majorie Taylor Greene. The latter bragged at a constituency meeting and then posted her braggadocio on a video that had she been organizing January 6, "We would have won and it would have been armed”). Jim Jordan, whose ambition it is to be head of the House Judiciary Committee, asked for a pardon for “members of Congress”. (Presumably for all those who had Trump had in mind when he assured the Acting Attorney General that he could “leave it to him and the Republican Members of Congress”).
For the record seventeen of the twenty original holdouts to the pathetic McCarthy’s quest voted not to ratify the 2020 Presidential election even though though they scuttled for cover when the windows were breaking and the Capitol floors were full of blood.There are approximately 156 current GOP House members who have raised doubts about the validity of the 2020 election. This is an increase from the 147 GOP House members who, in January 2021, voted to object to the certification of the Electoral College, after their lives had been spared by the heroism of the Capitol Police.
It has to be irony that couldn’t have been scripted that the self same crew of “co conspirators” were maneuvering for influence and power. The aspirant Speaker, Kevin McCarthy had on the day condemned Trump, announcing that he would have no further truck with the Forty - Fifth President. As he screamed at the President, “They are fucking trying to kill me”, to which Trump reportedly replied that, “Well Kevin, I guess, these people, they care more about the election than you do”.
Well fast forward to two years later when “Well Kevin” became “My Kevin”
"MY KEVIN"
“My Kevin”, was how Trump referred to his new protege during the protracted Speaker election saga as he publicly and privately backed him. Lynne Cheney’s assessment of the would be Speaker was that whenever Kevin was faced with doing the right thing or fulfilling his political ambition, he did the latter. McCarthy made no bones about the fact that he would promise or do anything to attain his life long ambition. He could have had printed on his forehead, “These are my principles. If you don’t like them I have others.”. So off he went to Mar - A - Lago and kissed the ring of Trump as he reckoned that he was still the power behind the”GOP”. Ironically it was "My Kevin", according to GOP Congressman Kitzinger, by his action, that rehabilitated Trump pulling him out of the political gutter.
The disintegration of the “GOP” played out for all to see as the dissolute lot all jostled for power in their post Trump world. The repetitious farce ran non stop the whole week as Kevin McCarthy ostensibly negotiated with a group of anarchists whose only interest was to break the system of government one way or another. You have to know you are on the Animal Farm when team normal includes Trump’s Republicans Majorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan and fraudster George Santos.
One of the key holdouts Scott Perry has to be a target of the Justice Department for his role in attempting to illegally keep Trump in power. McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry and Andy Biggs were referred to the House Ethics Committee for failing to respond to subpoenas issued by the January 6 Investigation Committee. Incidentally McCarthy willingly agreed that the Ethics Committee should be hobbled! Jim Jordan was central at least to discussions with the WhiteHouse on January 6. As Cassidy Hutchinson testified - Jordan was the only person whose calls could interrupt Chief of Staff Meadows while he was conversing with Trump on January 6.
McCarthy in his victory speech claimed that they would use investigative and subpoena powers to reveal all. Why should anyone take any notice of a Congressional subpoena when he and his colleagues laughed theirs off?
WHAT WAS IN THE DEAL TO GET THE HOLDOUTS TO FINALLY ALLOW MCCARTHY TO FALL OVER THE LINE AND WHAT FOLLOWS?
Well there are two agendas, the undisclosed and those that the twenty made a public display of. The Taliban Twenty showed no loyalty to their party let alone to their supposed leader who they humiliated hour after hour and day after day, thereby serving notice that the bauble he sort could be easily taken away from him. The final six rebels refused point blank to actually vote for him, merely abstaining from the proceedings thereby lowering the number of votes he needed to become speaker, Their spokesperson Congressman Gaetz gave as his rationale that he couldn’t think of anything more to ask McCarthy for.
The bottom line is that Kevin McCarthy is Speaker in name only. He can be challenged if one Congressperson so moves. As the gang of six “GOP” rebels move as a pack and as the “GOP” majority only allows him to lose four votes he is in a policy straight jacket - not that he cares. Thus the American electorate will be governed by a minority of a minority of a minority in the House of Representatives.
The Freedom Caucus, whom the Taliban crowd represents, wants disproportionate representation on the powerful Rules Committee. That is the body that decides what legislation comes to the floor. Then they have a collection of procedural matters which on their face seem reasonable but are designed to see to it they have control of any and every piece of a Bill and amendments. They could also with their demands gum up the works by introducing amendment after amendment on the floor.
On a more down to earth matter McCarthy pledged not to back anyone who stood against these loonies in a primary contest, He controls a rich and powerful Political Action Committee that dished out three hundred million dollars in the midterms.
Then there are the enquiries they want to initiate which feed into the conspiracy theories of Trump’s “dark state”. The Justice Department which is currently investigating Trump and his co conspirators are about to be investigated themselves. Jim Jordan is demanding the documentation that led to the Mar - A - Lago search, which had been sanctioned by the courts. The Bidens are going to be a focus of taxpayer money. Even more so now that classified documents were found in his old office. Also there is a provision to scrutinize the “Weaponization” of the Federal Government. Smearing operations are central to McCarthy’s playbook. He maintained that his Benghazi investigation, alleging Hillary Clnton’s negligence, won Trump the election in 2016. Impeachment proceedings against the Secretary for Homeland Security, Attorney General Garland and Biden have been mooted
The bizarre belief that science is subjective and is used to control the American public will feature as well in the probe into Dr. Fauci’s Covid recommendations.
There is little doubt that this Congress will be preoccupied with investigations as priority number one is to support their backing of the Trump narrative of a stolen election and that he is being politically targeted.
The twenty Taliban rebels fiscal demands will result in an exacerbation of the neo liberalism that has brought about the colossal disparities in income with deregulation and low taxes for the rich to give trickle down economics one last try. Going back to 2022 spending levels will mean Welfare Programs such as Medicare and Social Security will be at risk. They even want to abolish taxes and introduce a consumer tax so the poor can subsidize the rich!
Whoever is in power the debt ceiling is nearly always raised in national interest. But national interest is not the interest of the Freedom Caucus. You might have thought McCarthy would have learned from the two Republican Speakers, Boehner and Ryan, with far greater majorities and oodles more political nous, who left because the Freedom Caucus was uncontrollable. The crazies are quite prepared to bring down the American economy.
The good news is none of their legislation will get past the Senate. The bad news is they can still create financial havoc if they refuse to pay America’s debts, where they have de facto veto power.
HOW DOES THIS IMPACT TRUMP?
The conventional wisdom is that the whole episode weakens Trump. The rationale for this assessment is that the twenty rebels failed to respond to Trump’s pleas to vote for McCarthy. Jay H. Ell disagrees. Trump will argue that “My Kevin” became Speaker. Far more significantly is that, Trumps “Republicans in the Congress” are co conspirators who want to cover their own backs as well.
Trump will be forced to reenergize his moribund 2024 Presidential election campaign. There is no doubt that “My Kevin” will back him as they had to be a quid pro quo for his support of the most ineffective Speaker of the House in living history.
The judicial processes against Trump labor on regardless of the machinations of McCarthy et al. Georgia is first up on the agenda and so it should be. One of the embarrassing findings the searchers for “weaponization” will confront is that the majority of those who thwarted Trump were Republicans.
THE “GOP” MODERATES IN THE HOUSE
The pathetic two hundred who stood by impotent as the twenty road roughshod over their selection for Speaker are not expected to unite and tell them to go to hell. Specifically the eighteen who now represent constituencies that Biden won In 2020 have all, but one, agreed to the Rules package which seals the direction that this Congress is going to go. Unless they wake up they will be history in a Presidential election especially as they all ran on bipartisanship. They have a simple redemption. They simply have to join the Democrats on a debt ceiling issue or whatever to show that they have some spine.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
The new “GOP” ray of hope is that Joe Biden, who has been under investigation by a Trump prosecutor for two months for the finding classified documents in an old office, will counterbalance the Trump coup and his obstruction of justice of his classified documents.
The next two years are to say the least going to be very telling. Particularly significant is how the traditional Republican and independent voters are going to react to the antics of their representatives who have a roadmap to crash the economy. This in the light of the benefits that Biden has bestowed upon them.
For those who believe that the Democrats can only be united in opposition they need to reflect on the fact that Pelosi pushed through Biden’s monumental agenda with a four vote majority
The New Democratic Party House Leader Hakkim Jeffries is inspirational as witnessed by his performance and demeanor while the “GOP” three ring circus performed.
No comments:
Post a Comment