The Stupid Party Lives!

The Stupid Party Lives!

Once again the republicans have shown that it is easier to heard cats than to lead their House caucus. The first “continuing resolution” was 1,547 pages long and thankfully failed. Its only chance of passage was for some republican support and all the democrats in favor. This, mind you was from the republican leadership in the House. The MAGA House members said they would vote no. Then Elon Musk tweeted his displeasure soon followed by a message from Trump and Vance to kill the bill, Speaker Johnson withdrew it. Then Johnson submitted a slimmed down bill of 100 pages with Trump’s blessing. Since it stripped out some of the democrats’ goodies, the new CR would get no democrat support and not pass the House because of a technicality that it would need a two-thirds vote. Given the slim republican House majority the bill was destined to fail. But if the government shut down, the blame would fall on the democrats. But no! Instead of a unanimous vote for the CR from the republicans, 38 of them voted no, ensuring the defeat of the bill and showing the public that the republicans were incapable of governing. 

A major bone of contention was that Trump wanted an increase in the debt ceiling and the 38 dissidents wanted no increase in the debt ceiling and spending offsets instead. As Tom Massie said that instead of a CR that contained new provisions, he wanted four things: a vote on a clean CR, a vote on the debt limit, a vote on disaster relief and a separate vote on farm bailouts.

Again, regardless of the language the bill had no chance of getting two thirds of a vote. The insurgents were led by Chip Roy (no surprise) along with our Tim Burchett (again no surprise), Nancy Mace and Bob Good. Of course Good would probably never vote for anything that Trump endorsed since Trump led Good’s defeat because Good backed Ron DeSantis for president. It didn’t matter that Good was head of the Freedom Caucus. In a like manner, Trump has declared war on Chip Roy who agrees with Trump on every issue instead of raising the debt ceiling. Here is some of what Trump said:

“The very unpopular ‘Congressman’ from Texas, Chip Roy, is getting in the way, as usual, of having yet another Great Republican Victory – All for the sake of some cheap publicity for himself. Republican obstructionists have to be done away with.”

Weak and ineffective people like Chip have to be dismissed as being utterly unknowledgeable as to the ways of politics, and as to Making America Great Again. Put ‘America First,’ and go for the Victory, even if it means shutting the Government down for a period of time.”

“Chip Roy is just another ambitious guy, with no talent. By the way, how’s Bob Good doing? I hope some talented challengers are getting ready in the Great State of Texas to go after Chip in the Primary. He won’t have a chance!”

So much for diplomacy. Trump demands that everyone agree with him on every issue and attacks those that do not. Roy, like Good, should be a valuable ally but instead Trump has made him an enemy. Chip Roy is not one to tuck tail and run.

Trump went after all the republicans who voted to impeach him and only one will return to the new Congress. The question is whether he will go after the 38 who voted against his CR? Can you imagine a candidate attacking Roy – or Burchett for that matter – for not raising the debt ceiling?

Finally, in their statements on the failure of the latest CR both Trump and Vance blamed only the democrats, failing to mention the 38 rouge republicans. Vance said “The Democrats just voted to shut down the government, even though we had a clean CR because they didn’t want to give the president negotiating leverage during his first term or during the first year of his new term.”

Earth to JD: What about those 38 republicans who are now more MAGA than you and more MAGA than Trump?