The GOP has its Freedom and Mainstreet Caucuses in Congress, among others. Now, we must add the Imbecile Caucus to the list of GOP factions. The charter members are Matt Gaetz, Ralph Norman, Andy Biggs, Bob Good, and Matt Rosendale, with room for the meanderings of Lauren Boebert. For some reason, they don’t like Kevin McCarthy as Speaker and are holding up the Republican majority from organizing the House. One of the Democrats’ greatest allies is this confab of the witless in Republican ranks. Thank them for the subsequent misrule and return of the neo-socialists to power in a couple of years.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell must be in a state of amazement when he glances over to the other wing of the Capitol Building. Maybe that’s the reason for the Republican support in the Senate for a big-spending omnibus bill instead of something smaller and of shorter duration. Any budget bill awaits the House chaos and the maw of the Imbecile Caucus after January 3. Better get something through before Republicans get blamed for another government shutdown.
Like McConnell, I shake my head in befuddlement. In a twist on an old banality, these knives couldn’t cut butter. What is this claque up to? What do they want? Right off the bat, let’s recognize that the only demographic group that they represent is the constituents of the kamikaze brigades. They represent no one but people who get giddy about flying planes into ships or rushing headlong through interlocking fields of machine gun fire.
They don’t seem to want anything but ways to systematize pandemonium. No Speaker for them who could discipline the wackos and present calm, mature leadership. Here’s their camera-hogging guru, Matt Gaetz: “House Republicans need a leader with credibility across every spectrum of the GOP conference in order to be a capable fighting force for the American people.” He adds, “That person is not Kevin McCarthy.” Who’s this clown to say that McCarthy doesn’t represent “every spectrum of the GOP conference”? First, no one can represent “every spectrum” because inevitably within that crowd of 222 there are a few cranks and fetishists – like the Imbecile Caucus. The best that can be hoped for is a realization that the outliers understand themselves to be outliers and agree to suppress their nuttery.
Well, I’m not holding my breath. Even the additional congressman granted my home state of Montana was apparently wasted on Matt Rosendale. He has signed onto the Imbecile Caucus manifesto. He said, “Each member of Congress has earned and deserves equal participation in the legislative process.” Sure they do, but that shouldn’t be an invitation to replicate the worst of the anarchic Italian electoral system. He and the rest of the Imbecile Caucus shouldn’t be allowed to subject the Speaker to the whims and piques of a constantly disgruntled five, which is what they want.
At root, the problem for McCarthy is rooted in math. Five dimwits run the show in a Republican House. It wasn’t true for the Democrats. Pelosi managed to govern with 222 seats in spite of the four Squad kooks. Republicans are different. They are the party of principle, the principle of being shoved around by a few headstrong dullards.
RogerG
Read more here:
- “5 Republicans publicly oppose McCarthy’s speakership bid, putting ascension to leadership role in jeopardy”, Haris Alic, Fox News, Nov. 28, 2022, at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/republicans-publicly-oppose-mccarthys-speakership-bid-putting-ascension-leadership-role-jeopardy
- “McCarthy offers key compromise in exchange for support on House speaker bid: Report”, Cami Mondeaux, Washington Examiner, Dec. 30, 2022, at https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/mccarthy-offers-compromise-in-exchange-for-house-speaker