Will the Republican Majority in the House Self-Destruct?
Or should I say when?
Donald… Trump… Told… the… Truth…Once. He did –really!-- back in 2020.
It slipped out during a discussion on Fox and Friends about Democratic-led voter reforms:
“The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
It’s so true. If everybody voted (based on what people say they want from government) then the GOP would be kaput. Finished. Out-to-pasture. Hanging out at Mar-a-Lago.
Once you take away all the things the GOP says they’re for, namely taking away stuff from people, starting with their political rights, there just isn’t much left to talk about. To be sure, there's one-third of the electorate buying into the fear-a-ganda of the right, the rest of the country just wants stuff done.
Not that the rest of the population agrees on lots of stuff, it’s just that obstruction and inaction haven’t been particularly productive. (See: Trump’s infrastructure week, better-than-Obamacare health plan)
Support for Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s candidacy for House Speaker is waning, according to CNN.
As bad as McCarthy is –and he’s awful– the alternatives may be worse. A faction of the nutcase caucus, Reps. Matt Gaetz (Florida), Andy Biggs (Arizona), Ralph Norman (South Carolina), Bob Good (Virginia) and Matt Rosendale (Montana) – have warned they may vote as a bloc on January 3, meaning they’ll all vote the same way.
“I just believe this is a win for the Democrats,” McCarthy said of GOP opposition to his bid. “They’re sitting back, and we can’t allow that to happen. We are the only individuals standing in the way of stopping more Democratic bad policy.”
McCarthy argued that their refusal to get on board is also hurting his ability to begin recruiting new House candidates for the 2024 election cycle, suggesting a speaker’s fight could hurt GOP chances at keeping their narrow majority and 222 seats.
Woo hoo! Food fight!
The problem for hardliners opposing McCarthy is their lack of a credible alternative. In order to win over the hardliners, the California congressman will have to make concessions giving them an outsized power. The only alternative for the wannabe speaker would be negotiating for some Democratic votes, and that will cause more Republicans to defect.
The GOP’s highest profile politician, namely Donald J. Trump jumped into the fray last week, urging support for McCarthy, warning of “a doomsday scenario.”
The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal –not exactly a bastion of liberalism– wrote that those looking to take down McCarthy “don’t seem to have any constructive reason to oppose Mr. McCarthy beyond a desire to grab the media spotlight or blow everything up.”
Delving into “GOP dysfunction since Election Day,” the editorial board said, “Republicans are the gang that couldn’t shoot straight – except at one another.”
So far, nobody’s budging in the House GOP.
Meanwhile there is other fun stuff going on; fun in the sense that it’s not good news for the Republican brand. Of course they no longer care about things like ethics or truth, so maybe the incoming Rep. George Santos (New York) might be the perfect candidate.
Those of us who’ve been around the block a couple of times remember Joe Isuzu, a fictional car salesman whose whoppers were the basis of an TV ad campaign. The car company in question no longer does business in the United States, so the grins and giggles from commercials wasn’t enough to sell the product.
George Santos is the consummate liar, and he still won against Democratic candidate Robert Zimmerman by 8 points. The win was notable only for being one of four New York congressional seats that flipped red — this one in a district that Democrats had held since 2013.
Democrats poured just under $3 million in independent expenditures to back their candidate and somehow missed Santos’ checkered past. The GOP presumably knew and didn’t care, because sleaze isn’t a job killer for their candidates these days.
From Marketwatch:
Senior House Republicans were so keenly aware of alleged inaccuracies and embellishments in U.S. Rep.–elect George Santos’s professional biography, that the topic became a “running joke,” multiple insiders close to House GOP leadership reportedly told the New York Post.
The local newspaper on Long Island tried to raise the alarm, but it wasn’t an issue until the New York Times “broke” the story.
Actually, checkered may not be a strong enough word to describe Santo’s past… Let’s count the lies, most of which he now admits are falsehoods, via an interview with the New York Post:
He didn’t graduate from Baruch and New York University and does not have degrees in finance and economics.
He never worked for Goldman Sachs or Citigroup
The Devolder Organization, his company where he reported earning millions of dollars, has no public-facing assets or other property.
HIs claim about losing four employees at the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando in June 2016 isn’t true.
Despite branding himself as an openly gay candidate, Santos was married to a woman for five years until 2017.
He is unable to explain where the $700,000 he lent to his campaign came from in spite of owing thousands of dollars to former landlords and creditors.
Until recently, Santos was registered to vote in and held a drivers license from Florida.
He was registered to vote at a house in the Whitestone neighborhood of Queens, but the house’s owner told the New York Times he moved out months before the election. (He is currently living in Huntington, N.Y, a town just outside his congressional district, which is apparently legal).
He is not a landlord who makes significant income from 13 properties owned by him and his family. Santos owns no properties.
He is Catholic, not Jewish. Kevin McCarthy at one point bragged about Santos’ election giving the GOP having the largest Jewish caucus ever in the House (3 people).
“I never claimed to be Jewish,” Santos said. “I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’”
His maternal grandparents were not born in Europe and did not emigrate to Brazil during the Holocaust.
Although he claimed to have visited Israel numerous times to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) while campaigning, there is no documentation attesting to that travel.
As a young man living in Brazil, he was charged with fraud after being caught writing checks with a stolen checkbook. The crime was not prosecuted because he skipped the country.
The non-profit charity – Friends of Pets– that he claimed to have run from 2013 to 2018 was never registered with the IRS.
I have the feeling there will be more lies to be unearthed. Who knows? Maybe he’ll even be indicted. That might make him a viable candidate for higher office in todays’ Republican party.
Santos will be seated in the House of Representatives. The Supreme Court held decades ago that no matter what, you can’t unilaterally un-elect somebody. (He could be expelled, but we all know that’s not going to happen.)
***
Mean girl Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga) is having a delicious falling out with others on the fringe because she is supporting Kevin McCarthy’s speaker bid. Why? Word is that he’s promised her a plum committee slot.
Meanwhile, Greene, who’s on vacation in Costa Rica, is on the receiving end of the kind of hate speech she’s been known to dish out in the past.
Former pal & Jan 6 organizer Ali Alexander: called her a “trailer park hoodrat”
Rep. Lauren Boebert (CO): “I don’t believe in this, just like I don’t believe in Russian space lasers, Jewish space lasers, and all of this.”
Right-wing radio host Stew Peters: “two bit whore”
Interestingly enough, nobody’s attacked Greene’s support of QAnon conspiracies, like the one holding that: Donald Trump was sent by God to oust Democrats who are involved in a nationwide ring that traffics, abuses, kills and eats children.
***
Business news:
Email me at: WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com