Former Speaker Newt Gingrich on “Never Kevin” Republicans, such at Matt Gaetz, who are unwilling to support Kevin McCarthy:
— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) January 2, 2023
“I think it’s a psychological problem. These guys can’t count straight. They can’t play tic-tac-toe. They can’t accept victory.” pic.twitter.com/OOnVZq6qYS
What's the matter, Newt? Don't you know your own sprogs? They are angry, they want the politics of personal destruction, they are petty and spiteful. They want performative and vindictive destructiveness over functional government. They want to shut down effective government. They want to not be ignored. They aren't interested in getting a win. They want hostages. They want to be seen as dangerous. They want to be depicted as rebels and revolutionaries as a brand.
There are people in the House of Representatives who are literally delaying the choosing of a speaker and their swearing in and all of that because it's about the brand. Of MAGA Freedom caucus people--I think. To show the power they have as disruptors: to move fast and break things or whatever the disruptor thing is these days.
And actually, Margorie Taylor Greene knows their movement is stupid and is over it. Which is the most respect I have ever had for her:
The GOP can't do anything yet. Now, to me this suggests that the dysfunction the Republicans have right now is great--total disarray means they can't do things they want to do. But for our being a republic that is functional, this is actually really sad and MTG is actually right that elected people should be able to go do their elected business.
And her operational point that voting with McCarthy, however imperfect he is, gets Republicans a path to delivering their vision and goals is more institutionalist than I thought she would be and probably no matter what, what the GOP will get. He's the front guy. The available stiff. Her ability to view his speakership as malleable and a deliverable to the Powers that Be (whoever gets leverage) is a sign she isn't to be misunderestimated.
Anyway, Kevin McCarthy still isn't speaker. Maybe he never will be. We will see.
3 comments:
I think it a perhaps unwitting extension of Mitch the real Manchurian Candidate, married to a Communist Chinese Princess, politics of obstruction: nothing gets done. Trouble is these guys just aren't very smart, a bunch of snot-nosed middle-school-yard punks and bitches, as their politics of obstruction devolves into mutual masturbation.
Never-the-less, nothing will get done ...
I think you're giving MTG too much credit. I doubt her goal is institutional coherence except as a necessary pretext to her shallow interest in investigating Hunter Biden and other assorted witch hunts. As far as I can tell there are no policy objectives much less an interest in governance behind MTG and the nut job wind of the party, only performances for the devotees of their lunacy.
The thing with GOP goals is, even if we don't recognize them as governance, that they do exist. They are just terrible. MTG wants to impeach Biden, maybe the true destructionists want to block raising the debt ceiling, they want to block aid to Ukraine; they aren't what we would think of as good policy goals, but they are goals. She wants to go right to the part where her hammy mitt makes Puppet McCarthy start exacting pain, and frets that a bipartisan candidate could be round the corner to spoil her vicious idea of fun. I don't think her shrewdness is admirable--I only think she's twigged that the performance of rubbing McCarthy's bland Wonderbread face in the mud only takes the slim GOP majority so far.
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