Welcome to the House Republican zoo
When lip sync outlet Milli Vanilli won the Grammy award for best new artist, one of the group’s two members looked like he’d just seen his life flash before him. Years later he explained that in that moment, he realized that winning the award would bring the kind of increased spotlight that would eventually expose the group’s fraudulent nature.
This brings us to Kevin McCarthy and the House Republican caucus. For awhile now they’ve been nothing but full-time protesters, stomping their feet and making up phony scandals and lies about the other side, while never even attempting to do the job for which they were elected. But as long as they were in the minority, that didn’t matter so much, because they didn’t have to do any leading- all they had to do was loudly and dishonestly bash the Democrats in charge.
When House Republicans did historically poorly in the 2022 midterms but still ended up winning a small majority, you had to wonder how many of them were left secretly wishing they hadn’t won the majority at all. This was, after all, their Milli Vanilli moment. After years of faking it just under the radar, they had now “won” themselves a far brighter spotlight. And now everyone can see that they’ve been faking it all along.
All that these House Republicans had to do yesterday was fall in line and elect their most realistic candidate for Speaker of the House. Kevin McCarthy is particularly weak and odious, but he was their best shot at promptly getting the Speaker position filled. Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries are infinitely better leaders than McCarthy. But Pelosi and Jeffries were not every single House Democrat’s first choice for Speaker. It’s just that once it became clear that they were the most realistic candidate, the Democratic House caucus fell in line behind them at the start of the new term and put on a united front going forward. It’s simply what you do. But McCarthy is such a weakling, and so many House Republicans are such loons, they couldn’t get it done.
We’ll see what, if anything, happens today. But at this point House Republicans have already saddled themselves with a day’s worth of headlines about how they can’t get their act together. They tried three times to elect a Speaker, and failed three times – not because there were multiple viable candidates, but because there were no viable candidates. Because of this, they didn’t even get around to swearing in the newly elected House members. This includes George Santos, the new poster child for House Republican lunacy, who is now under U.S. criminal investigation and also facing potential extradition to Brazil.
The House of Representatives has now gone from the steady and respected leadership of Nancy Pelosi, to a Republican zoo. In fact these House Republicans are such an embarrassment, it may not be fair to compare them to a zoo. When monkeys fling poo, it usually has a purpose behind it. These House Republicans appear to be flinging poo at each other simply because they’re that deranged.
Meanwhile House Democrats are now so publicly united behind Hakeem Jeffries, they even chanted his name while nominating him for Speaker yesterday. A number of House Democrats also ate popcorn yesterday while watching House Republicans implode. House Democrats understand that their job for now is to remain united, call out House Republicans for their inability to function, and make sure House Republicans’ worsening scandals dominate the headlines each day – all while waiting to pounce on the majority in the 2024 election, if an opportunity doesn’t present itself sooner.
What we’re seeing play out in the House of Representatives is obviously not good for the country. But House Republicans, with their small majority, were going to make a mess of things one way or the other. Better for them to make a mess in this manner, than to make a mess with sham “investigations” into imaginary Democratic scandals. All we can do for now is to help pile on as House Republicans keep digging themselves a deeper hole. Regardless of what happens today, it’ll take House Republicans quite awhile to dig out of the hole they dug for themselves yesterday – and they may not get out of it all.
