By Douglas V. Gibbs; Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host
Matt Gaetz, a Congressman from Florida who supports Donald J. Trump, pulled off something that Republicans don’t often do. He made sure something got done. The GOP has become famous for talking the talk, but rarely walking the walk. I’ve been known to call the Republicans in office a bunch of jellyfish … you know … spineless. Gaetz, however, with seven other Republicans, pulled off a big move, imposing his will on a party that would rather put more feed in the “big government trough” than stand firm on constitutional principles.
The House of Representatives has been in the hands of the Republican Party since January after the last election, and despite a lot of boos from the not-so-establishment wing of the GOP, Keven McCarthy was voted in as Speaker of the House — after 15 rounds of voting. The Freedom Caucus had a list of demands, and McCarthy promised to abide by it. Now, ten months later, he has proven to be just another cockroach in Washington who has no spine, no will, and no fight for what’s right in him. So, Matt Gaetz led a movement to remove McCarthy from his leadership role, characterizing the latter as a “liar.” On the floor last Tuesday, Gaetz proclaimed after being accused to causing chaos, “Chaos is Speaker McCarthy. Chaos is somebody we cannot trust with their words.”
McCarthy lied, and capitulated to the hard left Democrats. Like many of the squirmy spineless creatures in Washington he constantly falls for the ridiculous rhetoric put out there by the Democrat Political War Machine. The Democrats have been calling Trump a “fascist,” even though the definition of fascism better fits the hard left donkey-people. In an interview with the PBS News Hour Hillary Clinton was asked by Geoff Bennett if Biden was correct calling Republicans who support Donald J. Trump “extremists,” and “semi-fascists” who are a part of a “growing authoritarian strain in the Republican Party.” Hillary responded, “How could we be growing a kind of authoritarian political force inside our country?…promoting lies and being incredibly divisive and, frankly being loyal to a wannabe dictator.”
People like McCarthy, and pretty much all of the squishy Republicans from States like California, quiver under such rhetoric. Rather than seeing it as the projection that it is by the true authoritarians of this country, they fear that enough people might think that what the Democrats say is true, so they quiver in their boots and slip under a rock somewhere. In the process, they become weak, and easily toppled by the dictator-wannabes of the Democratic Party. Like McCarthy, the squeamish GOP jellyfish refuse to stand firm on the principles of the Republican Party, they give in to the overspending by the federal government worried that the Democrats will blame them for a government shutdown, and frightened that the GOP’s own spending priorities might get hacked in the process. They concede to idiotic moves by Democrats like the draconian Inflation Reduction Act. As Speaker of the House McCarthy either did not understand that his position was to stand against such lunacy, or he’s a part of the problem and is feeding from the same big-government trough that the Democrats feed from.
Matt Gaetz said “no” to the madness, and openly ridiculed his fellow Republicans that the GOP had been giving concessions to the Democrats that they had claimed they would not give; in the name of averting shutdowns. Then, the Republican leadership would claim they received something out of it when in reality they gave in to the Democrats on every level, giving them exactly what they wanted without even a acting like they were putting up a fight. Last time I checked, the Republicans should have nothing to fear from the Democrats in the House of Representatives. Remember, the GOP holds a majority. Or, so we thought.
The problem is, McCarthy fears the Democrats more than he fears conservatives; and as I insinuated earlier in this article, in a way he’s in league with the Democrats, sitting at the table with them, giving them what they want, out of spineless fear.
As a result, inflation is up, prices are way up, and we have a $33 trillion mountain of debt that our great grandchildren will never be able to grapple with, much less any other future generations.
So, Gaetz got seven Republicans and a Democrat Party caucus who couldn’t recognize a “be careful what you wish for” situation if it was an exploding minefield, to vote McCarthy out of the Speaker’s chair. The lefty Democrats rejoiced. “See how disjointed the GOP is” they screamed. It’s not chaos. It’s not a problem of loyalty or proper management not being properly applied. It’s the beginning of house cleaning. I am rejoicing that finally a cleaning crew has shown up, and they are working on taking out the establishment trash.
Whoever replaces McCarthy, whether that person is a constitutional conservative, or not, one message this sends is crystal clear — you better think twice before making one-sided deals that give the Democrats everything they want when it comes to spending.
RINOs, I am hoping, will soon become an endangered species in the Republican Party. My hopes are that the establishment-wing republicans either straighten up, or flip over to the Democratic Party where their leftist ideological leanings will be more welcomed.
But, I am not holding my breath on that.
The good-ol’-boy Republican GOP party of Bush/Romney/Boehner/McCarthy will not go down without a fight, and fade away so that the MAGA Republican wing can finally make some sense out of the chaos. Yes, they’ve been hurt by this latest shift in the tale of everchanging political winds, but they will lick their wounds and do like the Democrats do … come back harder than ever before. They will lash out at Gaetz’s “anti-McCarthy eight,” seeking to make an example of them. How dare they stand against the machine. How dare they hope for brighter days. The swamp will not be drained, swears these creatures from the dark waters of the cesspool. The swamp-handlers will live to terrorize the villagers again in the future. Swamp-monster havens like the deep state, mainstream media, and all of the other swamp-creature minions, will make sure of it.
Just as a side note, the final vote for McCarthy’s removal as Speaker of the House was 216 to 210; the Democrats are calling it, in the words of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a “House Republican Civil War.” In a side shot at Trump’s supporters, however, he also claimed the Democrats “encourage our Republican colleagues who claim to be more traditional to break from the extremists, end the chaos, end the dysfunction, end the extremism.”
McCarthy lashed out about his removal from the Speaker’s Chair, “It concerns me as a Republican.” McCarthy also suggested that he was partly responsible for the election of the eight Republicans that stood against him, and that it had been a mistake to help them. “They held up every appropriation bill in the summer because they wouldn’t let it come through. After the debt ceiling, they stopped us from doing anything on the floor.” McCarthy claims the Republicans who ousted him “are not conservatives…They don’t get to say their conservative because they’re angry and they’re chaotic. That’s not the party I belong to.”
Gaetz responded, “Kevin McCarthy couldn’t keep his word. He made an agreement in January regarding the way Washington would work, and he violated that agreement. We are $33 trillion in debt. We are facing $2.2 trillion annual deficits.”
In the end, the truth is clear. When nobody else was willing to stand up to the Republican Establishment, Matt Gaetz was not only willing to take a stand against RINOs like McCarthy, but he took a stand against the entire swamp. The question now is, will we get just another Republican that will compromise on everything, or actually stand firm like Matt Gaetz and his team of anti-McCarthy peeps were willing to do? The vote to remove McCarthy may have marked a change in the corps of Republicans in the House of Representatives, but we won’t know for sure until we see who the new Speaker is, and if the GOP begins to stand firm on constitutional principals, or if they remain the same squishy, spineless jellyfish they’ve been under the leadership of folks like deposed Kevin McCarthy.
Gaetz made the right decision. We must hold these people accountable. We must send a message to the D.C. swamp. No more games. No more anti-constitutional shenanigans. Be who we expect you to be, stand firm on American principles, or be removed from power.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
I believe that McCarthy has great influence on the California GOP, an entity that needs to scorched earth burned to the ground and rebuilt from the grassroots up.
But the whole thing is bizarre.
McCarthy managed to previously wangle a good deal out of Biden then gave it all back when he was on top. Why?
Now McCarthy went to the democrats to craft a deal which had little republican support, then Gaetz and seven other republicans used the very willing democrats to oust McCarthy over the deal, which was a giant back stab to McCarthy by the democrats.
The democrats, so eager to torpedo McCarthy, are now pretending that it was a wholly republican assasination like they had nothing to do with it.
Then Pelosi, who whipped the democrats into assisting Gaetz to throw McCarty over the cliff, was evicted from her plum office space – which was reassigned to McCarthy.
The whole thing is nuts.
A couple things that stick out like a sore thumb:
Republicans just can’t work together.
Nothing gets done in congress
without the democrats meddling in it.
Allan
I believe that McCarthy has great influence on the California GOP, an entity that needs to scorched earth burned to the ground and rebuilt from the grassroots up.
But the whole thing is bizarre.
McCarthy managed to previously wangle a good deal out of Biden then gave it all back when he was on top. Why?
Now McCarthy went to the democrats to craft a deal which had little republican support, then Gaetz and seven other republicans used the very willing democrats to oust McCarthy over the deal, which was a giant back stab to McCarthy by the democrats.
The democrats, so eager to torpedo McCarthy, are now pretending that it was a wholly republican assasination like they had nothing to do with it.
Then Pelosi, who whipped the democrats into assisting Gaetz to throw McCarty over the cliff, was evicted from her plum office space – which was reassigned to McCarthy.
The whole thing is nuts.
A couple things that stick out like a sore thumb:
Republicans just can’t work together.
Nothing gets done without the
democrats meddling in it.
Allan
Congressman Matt Gaetz is tearing our country apart. He and Green, Gosar, Cawthorn, Boebert need to sail away to create their own crazy isle. They have entirely too much power and it’s gone to their heads. Whatever happened to putting the country first and working together? When has compromise become a bad word? Politics is not a black and white issue and those who think this should join this squad. Heck, I’d be happy to purchase you a one-way ticket. Let’s return to the time of the Gipper- President Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neil who were responsible and respectful of one another’s politics. Even when they disagreed, they were adult enough to learn to compromised. They focused on the American people rather than merely chasing power for themselves.
Reposted
https://www.thebulwark.com/what-makes-a-republican-a-rino/
What Makes a Republican a “RINO”?
When the ideology is not the orthodoxy.
by WILLIAM SALETAN JUNE
2022
Donald Trump went to Wyoming to campaign against Republican Rep. Liz Cheney. He repeatedly called her a “RINO” and urged the state’s voters to elect her challenger, Harriet Hageman. But Trump’s speech exposed how the meaning of “RINO” has changed. It used to refer to people who weren’t Reagan conservatives. Now it refers to people who are.
The substantive positions for which Trump praised Hageman—on oil drilling, guns, crime, and border enforcement—were no different from Cheney’s. In fact, according to the American Conservative Union, Cheney’s voting record is far more conservative than the record of Rep. Elise Stefanik, who, at Trump’s behest, replaced her last year as chair of the House Republican Conference.
…So Trump’s beef with Cheney isn’t about conservatism. Unless, that is, he finds her too conservative. And in many respects, he does: On several major issues, Cheney respects longstanding Republican principles, while Trump flouts them.
…You can disagree with Cheney or her father about their positions on these conflicts. But you can’t argue that Trump’s position, compared to theirs, is more “Republican.”
…On economics, the 2012 GOP platform declared that “Republicans will pursue free market policies.” It called for “a worldwide multilateral agreement among nations committed to the principles of open markets.” In Wyoming, Trump derided Toomey for defending “free trade.” Trump bragged that he had extracted billions of dollars from China through “taxes and tariffs,” and “I gave it to the farmers.” He also boasted that he had issued
instructions: “I told the farmers, ‘You have to do two things: Go out and buy more land, and go out and buy bigger tractors.’”
Taxes, largesse, and business directives from the president sound like the sort of thing Liz Cheney has often called “socialism.”
…the term “RINO” had been turned inside out. By Reaganite standards, Trump and his acolytes are the RINOs. They’ve abandoned Republican principles, but they’ve captured the party.
Trump may well succeed in purging Cheney and other Reagan Republicans from his party…Through purges, capitulations, and retirements, he might complete the transformation of the GOP into a party that worships dictators, ignores Russian aggression, tramples the Constitution, scorns the rule of law, and substitutes presidential favoritism for free markets.
That party might manage to gain and hold power for many years. It might even do so by winning elections. But it wouldn’t resemble the “Republican” party any of us have known.
Funny how everthing becomes a referendum on Trump.
Things change, In 1980 I thought Reagan was the antichrist and Carter was the answer to all our problems. I was wrong and that was 43 years ago – it’s a different world with a different political reality.
And, I didn’t like or trust Trump in 2016.
The problem with most republican politicians in washington: they get loud and hurl anthamas at the presumed opposition while preening and parading before the voters, then cravenly cave to the communists on the other side of the isle at every turn while quietly sucking up to big money interests and getting rich by plying insider knowlege and much other corrupt else.
Most have no interest in reclaming legislative power uconstitutiomally delegated to to the executive branch, thus screwing the public with endless authortarian, force of law decrees of autocratic bureaucrats.
Most, being career polititicians whose existential reality has been wrapped around government privilege and lobbyist leeches, probably have not a clue to the realities of regular people and their common man problems and could probably care less.
In short, most are political whores selling themselves to the highest bidder, the voter be damned.
Yes, Trump is loud, pugnatious, outrageous, brags on himself and can be obnoxious. But Trump was the public’s middle finger to those types of politicians and the bureaucracy and generally served the nation well with a good economy, good foriegn policy and a pause to the endless wars the establishment is so fond of.
Trump showed the way.
But none of that is in the elitist interest, hence the unprecedented, underhanded obstruction thrown his way over last seven years.
As for Liz Cheney, dress her in any clothes you want – I just say good riddence.
Allan
Funny how everthing becomes a referendum on Trump.
Things change. In 1980 I thought Reagan was the antichrist and Carter was the answer to all our problems. I was wrong and that was 43 years ago – it’s a different world with a different political reality.
And, I didn’t like or trust Trump in 2016.
The problem with most republican politicians in washington: they get loud and hurl anthamas at the presumed opposition while preening and parading before the voters, then cravenly cave to the communists on the other side of the isle at every turn while quietly sucking up to big money interests and getting rich by plying insider knowlege and much other corrupt else.
Most have no interest in reclaming legislative power uconstitutiomally delegated to to the executive branch, thus screwing the public with endless authortarian, force of law decrees of autocratic bureaucrats.
Most, being career polititicians whose existential reality has been wrapped around government privilege and lobbyist leeches, probably have not a clue to the realities of regular people and their common man problems and could probably care less.
In short, most are political whores selling themselves to the highest bidder, the voter be damned.
Yes, Trump is loud, pugnatious, outrageous, brags on himself and can be obnoxious. But Trump was the public’s middle finger to those types of politicians and the bureaucracy and generally served the nation well with a good economy, good foriegn policy and a pause to the endless wars the establishment is so fond of.
Trump showed the way.
But none of that is in the elitist interest, hence the unprecedented, underhanded obstruction thrown his way over last seven years.
As for Liz Cheney, dress her in any clothes you want – I just say good riddence.
Allan
Why does everything turn into a referendum on trump?
As for Liz Cheney: good riddence to a bad piece of work