Sen. Fetterman zings GOP: ‘America is not sending their best and brightest to Washington’

While Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania may not boast the sartorial resplendence of, say, Jacketless Jim Jordan or disgraced former whatever-that-was Donald Trump—whose chichi Queen-meetin’ duds appeared to shrink in real time before our infinitely astonished eyes, threatening to pop his skull off his torso like a wonky Kirkland champagne cork—it’s fair to say he’s a more serious legislator than every current Republican member of Congress.

Granted, it’s not a high bar, but Fetterman’s style, such as it is, certainly must give Republicans fits. They’re continually getting owned by a guy who looks like he just spent the day bowling with Willie Nelson’s roadies. He may not be a sharp dresser, but he sure as shit has a sharp tongue. And that ample sass was on full display Wednesday night on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

RELATED STORY: Sen. John Fetterman gives moving speech at disability hearing

After praising Fetterman for his excellent meme game, Colbert asked if it can be awkward running into the resultant smoldering heaps in the halls of Congress. After all, he never had that problem with Dr. Mehmet Oz, whose proud New Jersey guts he left on the abattoir floor after unceremoniously dispatching him last fall.

Watch:

Senator @JohnFetterman is known for his devastating memes and after tonight, maybe his one liners!#Colbert pic.twitter.com/dRagmB1HXd

— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) October 12, 2023

COLBERT: “Is it awkward to be in the Capitol and then run into people that you have put up a devastating meme about, because you’ve got excellent meme game. But then you have to see these people in the cafeteria.”

FETTERMAN: “Ah, no, it’s … you all need to know that America is not sending their best and brightest to Washington, D.C. Like, sometimes you literally just can’t believe these people are making the decisions that are determining the government here. It’s actually scary, too. And, you know, before the government almost shut down—I mean, it came down to a couple hours. I was in my office, and they finally came over from the House, and they’re like, okay, well, this has to be unanimous in the Senate, and out of 99 of us, if one single one of us would have said no, the whole government would have shut down. That’s how dangerous that is to put that kind of power in one tent, because you have some very ... less gifted kinds of people there that are willing to shut down the government just to score points on Fox.”

Of course, it’s somewhat ironic that the man who’s perhaps most responsible for Congress’ current dysfunction has gone out of his way to criticize Fetterman’s clothing. Last month, as Rep. Matt Gaetz was preparing to shove ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy out to sea on an ice floe, he joined convicted criminal and well-known fashion plate Steve Bannon to discuss Fetterman’s clothing choices.

Here’s how that went:

The evidence against Joe Biden is overwhelming. A first-year law student could win this case for impeachment before a fair jury. Unfortunately, the United States Senate isn’t a fair jury. It’s full of fashion icons like John Fetterman. While the Senate will be the platform,… pic.twitter.com/LsWyNrhsjW

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) September 13, 2023

BANNON: “Congressman Gaetz, I can tell you from my sources around Washington, D.C., they’re blaming you [for the impeachment inquiry]. They’re saying McCarthy was rattled by you. He knew you were going to make the speech today, he knew it was going to be powerful, he knew you would put him on notice, and put him on the clock, and this is why he ran out and made the hostage video. Your response and observations, sir.”

GAETZ: “First of all, that is the best dressed we have ever seen John Fetterman. His shirt had both buttons and the entire pant was not elastic. There were elastic features, but it was not exclusively elastic. And so, I don’t know what tent store he bought that muumuu at, but it appears to be new and I am grateful that he is really upping his game in that regard ...”

BANNON: [Giggles with glee while curb-stomping irony to death with his dandruff-mottled joggin’ Crocs.]

RELATED STORY: 'Do your job, bud': There's a lot to learn from Fetterman's takedown of Gaetz

And then there’s the X (formerly known as Twitter) account of RNC Research, which represents the party of former Rep. Louie Gohmert—who once asked if the National Forest Service could change the moon’s orbit to fight climate change. (It can, of course, but it’ll run into miles of red tape and face fierce resistance from the powerful and entrenched original-moon-orbit lobby.) Those super-geniuses responded with this: 

John Fetterman, completely unironically: "America is not sending their best and brightest, you know, to Washington, D.C." pic.twitter.com/9ExRRSBs3X

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 12, 2023

For the nontweeters:

John Fetterman, completely unironically: "America is not sending their best and brightest, you know, to Washington, D.C."

“Completely unironically?” Well, yeah. He can say such things entirely unironically. Did Fetterman force Fitch to downgrade the U.S. government’s credit rating? Did he bring us within a hair’s breadth of shutting the government down (yet again) for no good reason? Does he fight against urgently needed climate change legislation? Or support giving the already obscenely wealthy every tax break they ever wanted, and then some?

No? Then what the fuck is RNC Research even talking about? His hoodie?

Republicans have no ideas and nothing substantial to run on. They’ve replaced coherent policy with pointless chaos—and it shows. Fetterman is just stating the obvious, and doing so with an impish glint in his eye.

Maybe in 100 years or so, baggy shorts and hoodies will be de rigueur on the floor of the Senate, and then our government will be able to focus on the really important issues—like staying open. That said, it’s becoming ever-more obvious that good-faith Republicans will never come back into style.

RELATED STORY: Republicans ignore national security to go DressCon 1 over Fetterman's casual attire

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Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.  

House passes debt ceiling deal

UPDATE: Thursday, Jun 1, 2023 · 1:34:30 AM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Yep. They hate it. 

Biggs is not happy that debt deal passed with more Democrats than Republicans "We were told they'd never put a bill on the floor that would take more Democrats than Rs to pass. We were told that."

— Sarah Ferris (@sarahnferris) June 1, 2023

UPDATE: Thursday, Jun 1, 2023 · 1:26:52 AM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

The deal passed easily, 314 to 177, with more Democratic than Republican votes. The best thing about a vote that big is that it will make Mike Lee and Rand Paul look more ridiculous when they try to hold it up in the Senate. Also that McCarthy owes so much to the Democrats. The Freedom Caucus guys are going to HATE that,

UPDATE: Thursday, Jun 1, 2023 · 12:39:59 AM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Ugh. Yeah, they’re still yammering. 

Mike Lee is on the House floor, huddling with Andy Biggs and Chip Roy

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) June 1, 2023

UPDATE: Wednesday, May 31, 2023 · 10:12:12 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

The closed rule—no amendments allowed, passed pretty easily 241-187. There were 52 Democratic yes votes, and 29 Republican noes. There might not be as many Dems in support when it comes to final passage, and they’ll probably hold out, letting Republicans go first and then determining how many of them will be needed to help pass it. The House is scheduled to pick up again at 7:15 PM, ET to proceed to final passage.

The debt ceiling/budget bill worked out between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will hit the House floor Wednesday afternoon, in a massive blow to the Freedom Caucus maniacs who have been rooting for the nation to default on its debt and for economic catastrophe. Their short rebellion fizzled, and McCarthy may get at least 150 Republican votes on the plan.

The major part of the drama was over once Rep. Tom Massie, a Kentucky Republican, said he would vote the bill out of the Rules Committee. Freedom Caucus Reps. Chip Roy of Texas, and Ralph Norman of South Carolina couldn’t convince him to play spoiler, despite histrionics from Roy throughout the day and his dire warning that “The Republican conference has been torn asunder.”

SIGN: End the Debt Limit game of blackmail. Pass real reform.

What has been torn asunder is the control the Freedom Caucus thought they had over McCarthy. That was clear once members of the group started downplaying their one big card: the motion to vacate the chair. It takes only one member to start the ball rolling on ousting McCarthy from the speakership, and it became clear quickly that there was little appetite among the rebels to even try. Even “firebrand” Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene will likely vote for the bill in the end.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene likens raising the debt ceiling to a “shit sandwich” but is a lean yes. “I'm a dessert girl. Everyone loves dessert and that's impeachment, someone needs to be impeached,” she adds.

— Juliegrace Brufke (@juliegraceb) May 30, 2023

The deal pretty effectively neuters the Freedom Caucus and limits the damage House Republicans can do between now and Jan. 1, 2025. They can’t take the debt ceiling hostage again in the next year and a half, and they can’t shut down the government by refusing to complete spending bills without doing serious political damage to themselves.

From a progressive perspective, the bill isn’t great, and most in the Progressive Caucus probably won’t support it. They don’t have to. There will be enough Republican votes and votes from other Democrats to pass the bill. From a political and economic stability perspective, the bill is fantastic. It averts economic catastrophe and neutralizes the Freedom Caucus in one go. In other words, Biden wins in a big way.

RELATED STORIES:

Republican unity on debt ceiling crumbling fast

House Freedom Caucus neutered by debt ceiling deal

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We have Rural Organizing’s Aftyn Behn. Markos and Aftyn talk about what has been happening in rural communities across the country and progressives’ efforts to engage those voters. Behn also gives the podcast a breakdown of which issues will make the difference in the coming elections.

It took House GOP just one day to show why Democrats need to bomb-proof everything while they can

It’s going exactly how Republicans promised it would if they took the House: vengeance. Nothing but vengeance. Policy agenda? As if.

The first press conference of their majority Thursday, was from the Oversight and Judiciary Committee chairs laying out the number one target for their vendetta. It was all Hunter Biden’s laptop, all the time. A thing that is entirely not real.

On the second day of their majority, Rep. Jim Jordan’s Judiciary committee sent a letter to White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain demanding the testimony of White House staff about the administration’s “misuse of federal criminal and counterterrorism resources to target concerned parents at school board meetings.” Another thing that never happened. All four of the people they are demanding testimony from are women, and some are women of color.

That was just the start. Jordan also sent letters to Justice, the FBI, Departments of Education, and Homeland Security telling them to “anticipate requiring testimony, either in hearings or transcribed interviews” from dozens more officials, many again of whom are people of color and women.

What about inflation? What about gas prices? What about fentanyl? What about violent crime? What about immigration? What about making sure everyone can afford to go to Disneyland?

As if.

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They are not interested in making government work. They won’t try to make government work. Which is why it is imperative that Democrats do all the stuff while they have the majority. That includes figuring out how to put the debt ceiling out of their reach, just for a start. That one’s a necessity.

So is doing the least they can on protecting the next presidential election by pushing the electoral count reforms through. We have some breathing room on that with the great results in some swing state elections, but fixing this is important, particularly now that larger election reforms can’t get done.

It would also be super smart to revive the child tax credit monthly payments from the 2021 COVID-19 relief bill Democrats passed, and generally do do everything they possibly can to help regular people and to make a very big deal out of it—the Democrats’ Christmas Gift to America—to start making the case for 2024.

Which will have to happen the week after next, because they’re already gone until after Thanksgiving. Oh, well. In the meantime, enjoy the Washington Post showing us what a fool Kevin McCarthy is, and relish how his red wave became a pink dribble.

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We have to save the world from Kevin McCarthy. No, really

Since Jan. 20, 2021, House Republicans have been plotting what they would do after the 2022 midterms, with historical precedent favoring them to retake the House. Their fever dreams are full of impeaching President Joe Biden and anyone and everyone in the cabinet for anything or everything, bogus investigations, and even defunding the FBI.

That’s all ridiculous and time-consuming and really detrimental to the nation, because while they’re doing all that, stuff that needs to be done is being ignored. But a few things they could do—and are already plotting—are downright dangerous. Like potentially refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless Biden unilaterally surrenders to them.

That’s the thing that’s got “GOP leaders, congressional aides and business groups” in a lather, according to Axios, fearing the “nightmare scenario” of a Speaker Kevin McCarthy who has absolutely no control over his caucus of conspiracy theorists. One former GOP House member told Axios that former Republican Speaker John Boehner “was convinced of the necessity [of raising the debt limit] and was willing to twist arms. I just don’t know about a Speaker McCarthy.”

Everything is too important to let Kevin McCarthy get anywhere near making decisions about. Help us keep the House out of his hands, to save the world.

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Part of the problem is that McCarthy is weak; he’s just not up to standing against the dangerous extremists in the GOP caucus. The other problem is that he’s pretty damned dim. It is entirely possible that McCarthy has absolutely no grasp of how things like global financial systems work, and what happens when the biggest player steps out and refuses to pay its debts. Maybe he thinks the catastrophic outcomes have been overstated.

Maybe he thinks it’s just Democratic propaganda, even when it’s explained in very simple, short words. Here’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spelling it out when Republicans were making threats in November 2021:

“In a matter of days, millions of Americans could be strapped for cash. We could see indefinite delays in critical payments. Nearly 50 million seniors could stop receiving Social Security checks for a time. Troops could go unpaid. Millions of families who rely on the monthly child tax credit could see delays. America, in short, would default on its obligations.”

As of now, the next time we bump up against that ceiling looks to be about a year from now, in the fall of 2023. The man who decided back in 2011 that taking the debt ceiling hostage was a good idea is playing coy now, having unleashed that monster on the world. Asked about it by Axios, whether it “will indeed be among the first orders of business he’d raise with a Speaker McCarthy, McConnell smirked.”

The thing about McConnell, though, even then, was that it’s a hostage you can take, one “that’s worth ransoming,” but not one to actually shoot. That’s a distinction that the new order of Republicans, in the thrall of Trump, won’t necessarily make. Or understand. Or care about. But McConnell unleashed this on the nation, and here we are. Even though team McConnell is frantically trying to revise the history.

Rohit Kumar, McConnell’s former deputy chief of staff during the 2011 debt limit fight and now PwC’s national tax services co-leader, countered: “Thinking that you can credibly threaten the full faith and credit of the federal government in exchange for some collateral demand is just wish casting.”

Collateral damage was precisely what McConnell was going for, up to a point. Now that he’s unleashed this thing, he doesn’t have the power to rein it back in. He can talk to McCarthy all he wants about not actually shooting the hostage, but that doesn’t mean it’ll take. Particularly when McConnell’s on the losing side of the GOP civil war, with you-know-who poised to be running for the White House again and agitating against him.

All of which means Democrats have to hold the House. For all sorts of very good reasons, Democrats need to keep the House and Senate both.

It sucks that we have to be the ones to save Kevin McCarthy and the world from Kevin McCarthy, but that’s the way it is.

We have an even shot at keeping our House majority, but only if enough Democrats turn out to vote. Click to start writing Postcards to Democratic-leaning voters in targeted House districts today.

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