The Trump-inspired emasculation of Kevin McCarthy

Posted on September 13, 2023 by Laura Clawson

House Republicans are launching a baseless impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden for a few reasons: to distract Biden and make him less effective, and to create the public impression of corruption as a 2024 election strategy. And never discount the Republican urge to suck up to former President Donald Trump.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had dinner with Trump on Sunday, The New York Times reports. Greene said that at that dinner, “I did brief him on the strategy that I want to see laid out with impeachment.” Specifically, she told Trump she wanted the impeachment inquiry to be “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.” Gosh, what a commitment to going where the evidence leads and finding the truth.

She would not say what Mr. Trump said in response, but she said her ultimate goal was to have a “long list of names” — people whom she claimed were co-conspirators involved in Biden family crimes. She said she was confident Mr. Trump would win back the White House in 2024 and that she wanted “to go after every single one of them and use the Department of Justice to prosecute them.”

So Republicans are launching an impeachment inquiry without a House vote on doing so, something Speaker Kevin McCarthy had in the past repeatedly insisted was a requirement for such an inquiry. And one of McCarthy’s close allies is openly saying the point of the proceeding is to make the process “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden” and to lead to a “long list of names” to tee up for future prosecution by a Trump Justice Department.

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Sounds above board. Very legal and very cool.

Greene isn’t the only House Republican talking to Trump about impeaching Biden. Trump has had regular conversations on the subject with members of the Freedom Caucus and other impeachment enthusiasts, the Times reports, although “[a] person familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking said that despite his eagerness to see an inquiry move forward, the former president has not been twisting Mr. McCarthy’s arm.” Instead, Trump has been pushing hardest to get his own impeachments expunged.

Greene, though, is a close ally of McCarthy’s. It’s not a stretch to suspect that he’s been hearing about impeachment from her. And Rep. Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking House Republican, has reportedly had weekly calls with Trump, including one on Tuesday shortly after McCarthy announced the impeachment inquiry. Even if McCarthy isn’t personally on the phone with Trump or across the dinner table from him at Bedminster, trying to appease him, people close to McCarthy are.

House Republicans have worked throughout 2023 to turn up any kind of impeachment-worthy evidence against Biden, and they’ve failed to do so. Finding that evidence was Plan A. Now they’re turning to Plan B, which is to pretend they did find the evidence and go ahead with an impeachment inquiry, seeking to persuade the public that their lies about finding proof of Biden corruption are true, to cause “excruciating” pain to the president for their own political gain, and to get revenge for Trump’s two impeachments and dozens of criminal charges. They’re yelling lies about Biden’s alleged corruption, while they’re engaged in a completely corrupt abuse of power themselves. And the thing is when that comes from the Republican Party, no one is surprised.

Kerry talks with Drew Linzer, director of the online polling company Civiqs. Drew tells us what the polls say about voters’ feelings toward President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and what the results would be if the two men were to, say … run against each other for president in 2024. Oh yeah, Drew polled to find out who thinks Donald Trump is guilty of the crimes he’s been indicted for, and whether or not he should see the inside of a jail cell.

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What did McCarthy gain by caving on impeachment? Nothing

Posted on September 13, 2023 by Joan McCarter

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy just set himself up for a game of government shutdown Whac-A-Mole. He gave in to the loudest voices—well, two voices mostly: Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s and Matt Gaetz’s—and agreed to open an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, all based on nonsense and lies. Just about the only thing McCarthy achieved by agreeing to this was demonstrating yet again that he’ll fold to the extremists every time.

He also opened the floodgates for every other faction in the Republican conference to make demands.

Gaetz did not back down once McCarthy agreed to impeachment. On the contrary: He attacked McCarthy, promising that he’d move to oust the speaker if McCarthy didn’t start fulfilling a bunch of secret promises he allegedly made back in January, during his ego-bruising fight to win the speaker’s gavel.

Then there is the Freedom Caucus. On the heels of McCarthy’s announcement, they held a press conference to reiterate that no way, no how are they going to allow the government to be funded.

McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry hasn’t swayed the Freedom Caucus towards funding the government pic.twitter.com/sLink7n70S
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 12, 2023

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“Enough!” shouted a very worked up Rep. Chip Roy. “I will not continue to fund a government at war with the American people. We are here to change it. It is time to end it and I’m proud to stand with these patriots to do that.” What is the government supposedly warring with the people about? Who knows what Roy is ranting about this time. Maybe immigration, or the COVID vaccine, or maybe aid to Ukraine. He’s just mad.

How is McCarthy going to deal with that? With a margin of just five Republican votes to spare, he clearly isn’t going to be able to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government running. He’s going to need Democratic votes. Now that he’s decided to ratchet up the partisanship with a bogus impeachment inquiry, House Democrats sure aren’t going to want to help him out. He isolated himself further from Biden and Senate Democrats, the very people who can bail him out with an agreement.

There are just 11 legislative days before funding runs out, and as of now, McCarthy is on his own. On the Senate side, Republicans are aligning with the Democrats to avert a shutdown. The majority of House Republicans probably don’t want a shutdown, but right now they’re cowering and staying out of it.

While McCarthy is bumbling his way toward this disaster, federal government officials are being forced to spend a lot of time—and time is money!—going through the process of figuring out how to shut agencies down, who to furlough, and how to keep necessary stuff running. That means hundreds of thousands of federal workers are once again on tenterhooks, not knowing if they’ll be getting a paycheck next month.

The weakest speaker in recent memory is on a path to prove he’s also the most destructive one, just by virtue of his own incompetence.

Greene throws tantrum over Gaetz stealing her impeachment thunder

McCarthy thinks impeachment inquiry rules should apply to everyone but him

Why does it seem like Republicans have such a hard time recruiting Senate candidates who actually live in the states they want to run in? We're discussing this strange but persistent phenomenon on this week's edition of "The Downballot." The latest example is former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, who's been spending his time in Florida since leaving the House in 2015, but he's not the only one. Republican Senate hopefuls in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Montana, and Wisconsin all have questionable ties to their home states—a problem that Democrats have gleefully exploited in recent years. (Remember Dr. Oz? Of course you do.)

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Greene throws tantrum over Gaetz stealing her impeachment thunder

Posted on September 12, 2023 by Laura Clawson

House Republicans are moving toward impeaching President Joe Biden for absolutely no wrongdoing—which is exactly what Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has wanted all along. And once again she’s furious, because someone else is taking the credit.

Today, the target of her ire is Rep. Matt Gaetz, who did a victory lap on the claim that his recent threats against Kevin McCarthy’s speakership had made the difference.

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In June, Greene had a public fight with Rep. Lauren Boebert over Boebert’s impeachment push. “I had already introduced articles of impeachment on Joe Biden for the border, asked her to co-sponsor mine—she didn’t,” Greene said at the time. “She basically copied my articles and then introduced them and then changed them to a privileged resolution.”

In short: “Me, me, me! I did it first! How dare they take credit for my idea?”

This is all incredibly petty, showing conclusively that all of these people are in it for the attention—in the form of Fox News hits and lucrative fundraising emails. But it also shows what a terrible organizer Greene is. This has been her big issue for months, and she couldn’t get Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz to sign on? Where exactly did she think she was getting the rest of the votes she needed? Sure, both Boebert and Gaetz may have been waiting for the moment they could individually make a splash with a big show on impeachment, but wouldn’t a good organizer committed to a specific outcome have spent months cultivating them and offering them the opportunities their egos demanded, even if it meant stepping out of the spotlight a little bit?

But no, Greene’s commitment to sole credit is so intense that she doesn't see other people pushing the same issue as opportunities. She doesn't try to court them and work together to build pressure. If what you really want is a specific outcome, you welcome people to the effort. If what you really want is attention, you view other people’s support for the same idea as a threat.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is in this for the attention. And the fact that so many of her fellow House Republicans take the same approach is one of the major reasons they are so ineffective at everything they claim to want to do.

Freedom Caucus stalwart opposes impeachment, becomes GOP target

Posted on September 12, 2023 by Joan McCarter

Rep. Ken Buck is a prototypical Freedom Caucus member. The Colorado Republican relishes being a maverick, voting his conscience, and fighting with leadership—or with his extremist colleagues—when he feels like it. Now Buck finds himself enmeshed in that “perfect storm” he warned Speaker Kevin McCarthy was coming, and the House Republican majority is turned inside out. Buck is now on the outside of a ridiculous scheme, which has been put into motion by McCarthy, to move forward on impeaching President Joe Biden.

The problem is that Buck remains reality-based. He used to be a federal prosecutor, so he knows some stuff—like the fact that in order to impeach a president, you have to have evidence that they’ve done something impeachable. “The time for impeachment is the time when there’s evidence linking President Biden — if there’s evidence linking President Biden to a high crime or misdemeanor. That doesn’t exist right now,” Buck said in an interview on MSNBC last weekend.

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He called Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s threat to shut the government down if McCarthy didn’t agree to start an impeachment inquiry “absurd.” Now Greene is on the warpath. “This is the same guy that wrote a book called ‘Drain the Swamp’, who is now arguing against an impeachment inquiry,” Greene said. “I really don’t see how we can have a member on Judiciary that is flat out refusing to impeach. … It seems like, can he even be trusted to do his job at this point?”

It’s possible that Buck was involved in ousting Greene from the Freedom Caucus (he had a lot to say about it) a few months ago, or that Greene thinks he was, so she might be going after him for that. One of the reasons Greene was booted was because she was too cozy with leadership—specifically with McCarthy. Whatever the case, there is now a contingent in the House GOP that is aligning themselves with Greene—and apparently leadership—against Buck.

A number of sources told CNN that “there is growing frustration” in the conference, “including among the leadership ranks,” over a number of Buck’s positions, probably stemming back to his vote to certify the 2020 election and his defense of former Rep. Liz Cheney when Republican leadership was kicking her out. He’s also voted against some bills McCarthy considers key to demonstrating his leadership, like the debt ceiling deal and the defense authorization act. These are very Freedom Caucus things to do; Buck has never voted for a debt ceiling authorization because he hates the debt. About half of his fellow caucus members also voted against it.

It’s a hell of a thing. One of the most Freedom Caucus-ish members of the Freedom Caucus is now sounding like a reasonable, sensible, establishment kind of Republican, and leadership is running with the hare-brained impeachment idea. There’s clearly no room for being reality-based in the House with Kevin McCarthy (at least nominally) in charge.

That’s a Republican Party in disarray.

‘MAGA circus’ steamrolls over McCarthy, again

Greene owns McCarthy, and he doesn’t even realize it

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Democrats introduce resolution to censure Marjorie Taylor Greene

Posted on July 26, 2023 (Updated July 26, 2023) by Joan McCarter

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s revenge porn stunt in last week’s House Oversight Committee hearing was the last straw for Democrats. They’ve introduced a resolution to censure her for her record of “racism, antisemitism, LGBTQ, hate speech, Islamophobia, anti-Asian hate, xenophobia, and other forms of hatred.” Freshman Rep. Becca Balint of Vermont has the honor of sponsoring the resolution.

“For me, censuring Rep. Taylor Greene is about the health of our democracy and faith in government. Her antisemitic, racist, transphobic rhetoric has no place in the House of Representatives,” Balint said in a statement announcing the bill. Because she introduced it as privileged, she can bring it up on the floor at any time and it will have to be considered. It won’t remove Greene from Congress, but it would require a formal rebuke of her by Speaker Kevin McCarthy while she stands in the well of the House chamber. It’s a shaming ritual.

There’s plenty of shameful behavior as evidence in the resolution: four pages detailing around 40 instances of Greene’s violent, abusive, hateful words and acts. Oh, and the conspiracy theories she spouts, everything from 9/11—the government did it—to the 2020 election Big Lie. She has “repeatedly called for violence against elected representatives and their families,” the resolution states, providing the instances, such as when she said former Speaker Nancy Pelosi was ‘‘a traitor to our country, she’s guilty of treason’’ and should ‘‘suffer death or she’ll be in prison.” Or when she “posted an image of herself holding a gun next to images of three Members of Congress with a caption encouraging ‘going on offense’ against them.”

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There’s a litany of instances where Greene “repeatedly espoused antisemitic rhetoric and conspiracy theories, including through inflammatory evocations of the Holocaust.” This includes her association with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and her public slurs against Black people, Asian Americans, and LBGTQ+ people as well as her Islamophobic statements, including against sitting members of Congress who she calls the “Jihad Squad.”

Given Greene’s alliance with McCarthy, he’s not going to be willing to rebuke her. McCarthy has practically made her a member of his leadership team. He’s given her plum committee assignments on Homeland Security and Oversight, where she shared big pornographic posters. McCarthy ignored established procedures and put Greene on the conference committee charged with working with senators to reconcile the National Defense Authorization Act, a seat that would normally be reserved for an Armed Service committee member.

She’s McCarthy’s pet, or maybe his puppet master. It’s hard to tell. At any rate, leadership isn’t going to allow her to be censured. One way or another, they’ll get the resolution off the floor without condemning her, but it will still put Republicans in a bind. The resolution and all of the evidence collected in it will be read on the floor, and every Republican will be forced to say whether they stand with Greene or condemn her actions.

You wouldn’t think that would be a tough call for any member considering the Freedom Caucus decided she was too toxic to be in their club. Instead, they’ll probably reject the censure, condone her behavior, and embrace her as one of them.

Democrat Adam Frisch raises $2.6 million in 2nd quarter for 2024 rematch against Lauren Boebert

Posted on July 8, 2023 by Charles Jay

Democratic challenger Adam Frisch has raised more than $2.6 million in the second quarter for his rematch against MAGA Republican extremist Rep. Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District. Frisch almost pulled off one of the biggest upsets in the 2022 midterms when he lost to Boebert by a mere 546 votes in what surprisingly turned out to be the closest House race in the country.

Frisch’s campaign, in a statement released Thursday, described the second-quarter fund-raising haul of more than $2.6 million as “shattering the record for the largest quarterly fundraising for a U.S. House challenger in the year before an election, excluding special elections and self-funded campaigns.”

The campaign said the average donation was just over $32 coming from over 81,000 individual donations from all 27 counties in the district and all 50 states. He is not accepting donations from corporate PACs.

In the statement, Frisch, a businessman and former Aspen city council member, thanked everyone who had donated to his campaign “to give the people of Southern and Western Colorado a representative who will take the job seriously and work across the aisle to find solutions to the problems facing the district.”

“Boebert continues to vote against the interests of her constituents while devoting her time to ‘angertainment’ antics that do nothing to help CO-3," Frisch said. "We can do better than Boebert, and thanks to our generous supporters, we will defeat her in 2024.”

Honored and humbled. Thank you to everyone of you who has donated, RT'ed, messaged, and joined this growing coalition. We are just getting started! pic.twitter.com/HxdsZVQ6c6
— Adam Frisch for CD-3 (@AdamForColorado) July 6, 2023

So far this year, Frisch has raised $4.4 million which is nearly two-thirds of the $6.7 million he raised for the 2022 campaign, much of which came in during the final weeks of the campaign after polls showed the race to be competitive.

In the first quarter of 2023, Frisch’s campaign brought in nearly $1.75 million compared to just over $763,000 for Boebert. Boebert has not yet reported her second-quarter fund-raising totals. She raised $7.85 million for the 2022 campaign.

Frisch filed his paperwork for a 2024 rematch with Boebert on Feb. 14.

“People want the circus to stop. They want someone to focus on the district, not on themselves,” Frisch said. He added that the issues in CD3, such as water, mental health, agriculture, and the importance of domestic energy, are not “red and blue."https://t.co/5ghBlqTIwu
— Adam Frisch for CD-3 (@AdamForColorado) February 16, 2023

Boebert is considered the most vulnerable of the big-name MAGA Republican extremists in the House, most of whom represent deep-red congressional districts. Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District is rated as +9 GOP.

By contrast, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene won reelection by a 66% to 34% margin over Democrat Marcus Flowers in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District even though part of Democratic-leaning Cobb County was added to her district as a result of gerrymandering to give Republicans a bigger advantage in neighboring districts. Flowers raised more than $15.6 million in a totally noncompetitive race.

In 2022, both national parties mostly ignored Colorado's Republican-leaning 3rd Congressional District, which was considered solidly Republican by nearly all election forecasters.

In April, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee listed Boebert as among the Republican incumbents it considers most vulnerable. House Republicans have also put Boebert on their list of most vulnerable incumbents.

At the time, DCCC spokesperson Tommy Garcia told the website Colorado Politics in an email:

“Lauren Boebert is more obsessed with catching headlines and being the token MAGA extremist than actually working for everyday Coloradans. Between her dangerous conspiracies and outright racist bigotry, CO-03 voters can see that Lauren Boebert is an unserious member of Congress, unwilling to go to bat for them on issues facing Colorado. Her time in Congress is ticking down.”

A poll released in April by a Democratic firm showed that Boebert and Frisch were in a dead heat in the 3rd Congressional District, Colorado Politics reported.

The Global Strategy Group's Mountaineer poll, conducted March 29-April 2 in partnership with liberal advocacy group ProgressNow Colorado, found Boebert and Frisch tied at 45% each among likely voters, with the remaining 10% split between voters who are undecided and those who say they plan to vote for someone else. Cook Political has shifted the district to Leans Republican from Safe Republican.

Despite her razor-thin victory margin, Boebert has done little to tone down her extremism in the new Congress. Boebert was among about 20 extreme right-wing House Republicans who opposed Kevin McCarthy’s speakership bid until the very end. She also pushed for the House to vote on a resolution to impeach President Joe Biden—a move that McCarthy dismissed as “premature.”

Frisch still has his work cut out for him. This time he doesn’t have the advantage of surprise, and turnout will be greater in a presidential election year. As a national figure, Boebert can raise lots of funds from MAGA Republicans across the country.

The last Democrat to represent Colorado’s largely rural 3rd Congressional District was three-term Rep. John Salazar, who lost his bid for reelection in 2010.

Freedom Caucus members are turning on each other

Republican disarray is somehow, miraculously, getting worse

By embracing ‘impeachment expungement’ nonsense, McCarthy risks his thin majority

Posted on June 24, 2023 by Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Kevin McCarthy’s brief speakership has been such a shambolic clusterf--k. It’s a wonder he’s retained enough of his wits to keep pretending Donald Trump is a real boy—one with real human feelings beyond hunger, rage, and that concupiscent soup of queasy envy that heats up whenever his weird milksop of a son-in-law comes within Taser-range of his daughter.

But he’ll keep pretending. Oh, will he ever! Now that his immutable soul is a wholly owned subsidiary of MAGA, Speaker McCarthy’s abandoned his dogged fight against inflation and returned to his true life’s work: continually inflating Donald Trump’s greasy ego. And he’s doing it with the help of his BFF Marjorie Taylor Greene and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, who recently introduced a symbolic measure to “expunge” Donald Trump’s two impeachments. Naturally that’ll make us all forget that he extorted a foreign ally and incited an insurrection against the U.S. government.

Fresh off censuring Rep. Adam Schiff for telling the truth about Trump, McCarthy, et al., are fixing to absolve the ex-pr*sident before he even thinks about asking for forgiveness. And, needless to say, that’s left Republican House members from light-blue districts a little spooked.

Insider:

In backing the effort, led by Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Elise Stefanik of New York, McCarthy is putting his weight behind their goal of removing the charges against Trump from the impeachments of 2019 and 2021.

"I think it is appropriate, just as I thought before, that you should expunge it, because it never should have gone through," the California Republican told reporters on Capitol Hill.

McCarthy said that the 2019 impeachment was "was not based on true facts" while adding that the 2021 vote was taken "on the basis of no due process."

Right? That 2019 impeachment was bullshit! Just read the transcript.

Wait, you’re not actually reading the transcript, are you?

Who told you to do that?

Stop it!

No more reading now, I mean it!

Anybody want a peanut?

Okay, it’s all right to skim it. Just make sure you stop as soon as you get to the part where Trump says, “I would like you to do us a favor, though,” because everything after that is pretty transparently treason-y.

Speaking of treason, the 2021 impeachment was an even easier layup—one that Mitch McConnell, et al., intentionally missed.

But being a Republican in 2023 means you’re expected to defend everything Trump says and does, up to and including installing beige bathroom fixtures that badly clash with one’s ecru classified document boxes and white crystal chandelier.

That said, some non-MAGA House Republicans are nervous about being forced to vote on anything related to Trump’s guilt or innocence, because he’s fucking guilty and everyone with a functioning brain stem—which includes a not-insignificant number of swing voters and non-MAGA Republicans—knows it.

This week, the Republicans wanted President Joe Biden impeached. The GOP censured Adam Schiff for probing Donald Trump's corruption. The Republican Party declared their intention to expunge Donald J. Trump's impeachments. Trump was impeached twice. We, the people, won't forget. pic.twitter.com/7jA3csad4u
— Tony - Resistance (@TonyHussein4) June 23, 2023

On Friday, CNN reporter Manu Raju reported on the expungement effort and the bind in which it appears to put some moderate Republicans.

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(Partial) transcript!

RAJU: “[I]n a key announcement just moments ago in that same press gaggle, Kevin McCarthy told a group of us he does support this effort to expunge those Trump impeachments. Even though it is symbolic and won’t change the actual record of the impeachments happening, if it were to move forward it would put moderates in a more difficult spot. Some of them simply don’t want to vote on this or take a position backing Trump, particularly when it comes to Jan. 6. One of them, Don Bacon, a member from Nebraska from a district that Joe Biden carried, told me it sounds, quote, ‘kind of weird to go down that route.’ And McCarthy would not promise to bring this to the floor … but he said it would go to the House Judiciary Committee and then they would make a decision. He also told me that, no, he has not spoken to Trump about this.”

Why would he talk to Trump about it? What would Trump say? He didn’t even call off his dogs when they were biting at McCarthy’s heels on Jan. 6. Why would he help McCarthy now?

Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress are treating this expungement effort with all the seriousness it deserves.

If I finish rearranging my sock drawer, I will proudly introduce two resolutions to expunge the two expungement resolutions by GOP Reps @EliseStefanik and @mtgreenee. Because this is all pretend stuff anyways. https://t.co/1KzTTJ8skG
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) June 24, 2023

Rep. Dan Goldman, the Democrats’ lead counsel during the first Trump impeachment, pointed out that this was clearly just theater. “It is just a further continuation of the House Republicans acting as Donald Trump's taxpayer-funded lawyers,” Goldman told CBS News. "It’s telling who is introducing them and it’s essentially whoever is trying to curry the most favor with Donald Trump,"

Even Jonathan Turley, a Georgetown University law professor who served as a witness for House Republicans during Trump’s first impeachment, thinks the expungement effort is nonsense. “It is not like a constitutional DUI. Once you are impeached, you are impeached,” Turley told Reuters.

Of course, this is all part and parcel of Republicans’ wider campaign to whitewash our country’s recent history.

For the record, Trump-Russia collusion was proven, no matter how many times Republicans say the Mueller investigation was a hoax and a witch hunt. Trump really did extort Ukraine in a bid to manufacture dirt on President Joe Biden, no matter how many times they tell you to look the other way.

And Trump’s reckless and illegal action (and inaction) on Jan. 6, 2021, really did cause the deaths of Americans and bring our country to the brink of a constitutional crisis. McCarthy should at the very least remember that last incident. It’s pretty hard to forget the day you begged for your life and heard nothing but nonsense back.

Then again, McCarthy helped revive Trump’s political career in the wake of Jan. 6, so as his paper-thin majority continues to tear over trifles like this, he can be confident that he has only himself to blame.

Though something tells me he’d rather point fingers at Hunter Biden.

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.

Republican disarray is somehow, miraculously, getting worse

Posted on June 23, 2023 by Laura Clawson

House Republicans aren’t getting anything done to benefit the nation or the voters, but they are achieving at a high level in at least one area: sheer disarray. Actually, make that two areas: sheer disarray and intense spitefulness.

The big talk among Republicans these days is impeaching President Joe Biden, with a split between people who want to impeach now without even pretending to have investigated and assembled impeachment-worthy evidence against him, and people who want to do it after a series of show trials designed to insert uncorroborated allegations into the public consciousness. Then there are the so-called “moderates,” who will whine to the press about the awful position they’re being put in—then fall in line when it’s time to vote on whatever the extremists have gotten Speaker Kevin McCarthy to back.

All of these groups are sharing their feelings with the press. The biggest splash this week was made by reports that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called her former ally Rep. Lauren Boebert a “bitch” as the two joust over whose impeachment resolution will get the most attention and fundraising leverage. But it’s just one moment of hostility in a party with a lot of them.

Greene says Boebert “copied my impeachment articles and probably did it, it seems to me, because there’s a fundraising deadline coming up at the end of the month,” and that she will be forcing a vote on her own impeachment resolution soon. When she does, have no doubt that she will fundraise off of it—in fact, Boebert sucking up Greene’s planned fundraising juice is no small part of the fury here.

Greene, though, is at risk of being purged from the far-right House Freedom Caucus over her closeness to McCarthy, which is seen as compromising her far-right purity. For her part, Greene says she’s just being “more realistic” in her tactics.

Greene’s “more realistic” tactics will still put Biden-district Republicans on the spot, though, and they’re unhappy about how often that’s happened recently.

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“I am concerned,” about having to vote on impeaching Biden, Rep. Tony Gonzales told CNN. “One witch hunt for another witch hunt makes this place all about witch hunts. Meanwhile, the American public are focused putting food on the table, keeping their kids safe in schools, keeping inflation down. Real issues.” That’s nice talk, but since Gonzales participated in party-line votes on referring Boebert’s impeachment resolution to two committees and on censuring Rep. Adam Schiff, it has to be filed as just talk until he actually votes against a Republican witch hunt.

And Gonzales is going to face that again and again. Whether it’s Greene and Boebert with their separate efforts to force an impeachment vote, or committee chairs like Jim Jordan and James Comer taking a little longer to put a fig leaf of fraudulent “investigation” and “evidence” on their eventual impeachment efforts, House Republicans are not letting this go. Given their failure to show how they would productively govern the United States by passing meaningful legislation—even if it died in the Senate—attacks on the president, the president’s son, and top administration officials are all they have to convince their base they’ve done something with two years in control of the House.

Extremism is a powerful drug. And these people are so awful that infighting was probably inevitable the moment Republicans had power. It's a virtuous (from Democrats’ point of view) circle: Republican disarray begets failure begets more disarray.

So-called moderates like Gonzales are reportedly trying to get McCarthy to stop giving in to the Freedom Caucus, but giving in to extremists is what McCarthy does—especially since the deal he struck to become speaker on the 15th vote gave any single member the ability to call for a vote to replace him. McCarthy is spending as much time trying to save his own hide as he is trying to lead his party. Not that McCarthy’s party is leadable, even under someone far more adept than he is.

Take Rep. Matt Gaetz, sounding like the id of the Republican Party. Using privileged resolutions to force votes on things like impeachment, as Boebert did, is “actually going to be a new doctrine for us,” he told CNN.

“I sort of have had enough struggle sessions,” he said. “I’m ready for action, action, action.”

If that action involves Greene and Boebert trading insults, Greene at risk of being kicked out of the Freedom Caucus, McCarthy being eternally under pressure, and every Republican who represents a district that voted for Biden having to take unpopular vote after unpopular vote, I’m here for it.

This week on “The Brief,” we are joined by Christina Reynolds of Emily’s List. Reynolds is the Senior Vice President of Communications and Content at the progressive organization, which works to get women elected to office. On the anniversary of the outrageous Supreme Court decision to take away the reproductive protections of Roe v. Wade, Reynolds talks about what she is seeing up and down the ballot this election cycle.

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House Republicans desperately seeking reason to impeach Biden

Posted on June 22, 2023 (Updated June 23, 2023) by Laura Clawson

House Republican leadership isn’t happy with Rep. Lauren Boebert’s current impeachment shenanigans, but that’s not because they don’t plan to impeach Biden. They just don’t like the timing and the specifics. Speaker Kevin McCarthy knows that his members and the Republican base will demand a baseless impeachment while the party has a House majority, but he wants to at least pretend it’s not a foregone conclusion, and that Republicans only went where the evidence lead after sober consideration. (Ha ha ha.)

McCarthy’s line, offered to reporters on Wednesday, is: “What I am saying is these investigations will follow the information we get wherever it will take us.” He also repeated uncorroborated accusations against the president, though, in case you were tempted to believe that the fix wasn’t in.

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, who is leading a series of “investigations” into the president and his son Hunter, is similarly pretending that impeachment is a giant question mark.

“We’ve never said impeachment, yes or no,” Comer told Punchbowl. “If it leads to impeachment, it leads to impeachment. Our investigation, we’ve still got several more months of work to do before I can issue a report … I don’t think what happens tomorrow [on the Boebert resolution] will have any impact. Nor will the plea-bargain deal with the president’s son.”

House Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry insists, “The goal is not impeachment.” The real goal, he said, was information. “But if the information leads you to facts that require and demand accountability, that’s the only accountability.” And “yes,” Perry believes Republicans will uncover said “information” against Biden and support for impeachment will build.

Other Republicans are being even less circumspect.

“Ultimately, you’re going to see Biden impeached,” Rep. Andy Ogles told Punchbowl. “The question is when and is it soon enough for the American people?” Ogles, like Boebert and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, has introduced an impeachment resolution. Rep. Eli Crane said impeachment will “absolutely” be an outcome of the investigations.

The likelihood that McCarthy will be able to stifle the demands for Biden’s impeachment is only slightly higher than the likelihood that McCarthy will be remembered as an effective speaker. Under his leadership, House Republicans have few legislative accomplishments to tout, and the promised bombshell hearings on Hunter Biden and anything else they could dig up to undermine the president have flopped. Impeachment is what Republicans have left to pander to their base, mollify the people whose support McCarthy lobbied and traded for through 15 speaker votes, and pretend they have gotten something done.

But an impeachment could very well backfire on Republicans. They’ll be going into it, after all, with scant evidence and screamingly obvious partisan motivations. And unless they conduct impeachment hearings with a much higher level of professionalism than they’ve shown to this point, it’s going to be a clown show that reveals again and again that this is about revenge against Democrats for impeaching Donald Trump and about undermining the Biden presidency after Republicans failed to overturn the 2020 elections. Comer says his report won’t come out for “several more months,” which would likely put any impeachment proceedings into 2024. It might motivate their base, but it’s unlikely to be what independent voters want to see from the House of Representatives.

”How can you impeach someone with no evidence?” asked Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. Raskin is pretty smart, so I’m going to assume that was a rhetorical question. He knows Republicans don’t care about evidence, and if they move forward on impeachment, even voters who aren’t paying very much attention will realize that.

Joining us on "The Downballot" this week is North Carolina Rep. Wiley Nickel, the first member of Congress to appear on the show! Nickel gives us the blow-by-blow of his unlikely victory that saw him flip an extremely competitive seat from red to blue last year, including how he adjusted when a new map gave him a very different district and why highlighting the extremism of his MAGA-flavored opponent was key to his success. A true election nerd, Nickel tells us which precincts he was tracking on election night that let him know he was going to win—and which fellow House freshman is the one you want to rock out with at a concert.

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Tense—or typical?—moment in House as MTG calls Boebert a ‘bitch’

Posted on June 22, 2023 by Walter Einenkel

It seems like only yesterday that Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert were sharing the single incoherent view that they should be the only two lawmakers to vote against the Bone Marrow Bill. Since then, like the rest of the circular firing squad that is the Republican Party, Boebert and Greene’s relationship has deteriorated.

It’s being reported that the two right-wing extremists got into a fight on the House floor Wednesday, with sources telling The Daily Beast Greene was angry at Boebert for stealing her impeach Biden thunder. One source said they got into it, with Greene calling the Colorado gun-toting Republican a “bitch.” Another source said the phrase used by Greene was “a little bitch.” Potato, potahto …

The fight between the two is triangulated under Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who is reportedly none too happy with Boebert’s use of a privileged resolution for this bogus impeachment vote. Unlike Greene’s flotilla of impeachment articles against everybody, Boebert’s use of this procedural maneuver bypasses McCarthy’s authority. Instead it forces a vote within two days. Now the clock is ticking and the Yakety Sax music is playing.

Earlier this year, reports came out that the two congresswomen got into some kind of bathroom brawl connected to Boebert’s unwillingness to support McCarthy as speaker of the House. This kerfuffle came less than a month after Boebert told Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk she wasn’t aligned with everything Greene thought, such as “Russian space lasers, Jewish space lasers, and all of this.” Here was some of the discussion, captured by C SPAN cameras, on Wednesday.

Saw this conversation… not sure if it was a friendly one pic.twitter.com/tpz3z2Phtv
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 21, 2023

When asked to comment on the story, Greene told reporters, “I will not confirm or deny.” Boebert took a few seconds to try and be diplomatic before relenting and saying, “Yeah, I’m not in middle school.” In Boebert’s defense, her entire political party seems to act like it is.

The two congresswomen, who have made a career of sticking their feet in their mouths while attempting to attack others, fighting amongst themselves makes some kind of cosmic sense. It is just one small and tragically hilarious example of what the Republican Party now represents.

Obnoxious congresswoman from Georgia in public catfight with gun-toting rep from Colorado

Lauren Boebert tries to own the libs and ends up embarrassing herself

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's committee debut was exactly as disgraceful as expected