(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Before we have too much schadenfreude over McCarthy, a few considerations... [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-03 We’ve just had a convincing demonstration that the House of Representatives is unable to function under a Republican majority that never really was a majority. Instead there’s faction within the party that has adopted an extreme agenda and will not compromise on it. A party that is unable to reject a man under multiple criminal indictments, with rulings against him on business fraud and sexual assault as well, is a party that has descended into anarchy. The Republican Party is beyond saving — Kevin Drum saw it back in 2018. ...So this is where we are. The Republican Party can’t win using ordinary methods. On the process side, they can win only by inflating the white vote via gerrymandering, cracked-and-packed districts, and ruthless black voter suppression. On the policy side, they can win only with heavy dollops of strident and outright bigotry against Mexicans, Muslims, blacks, Hispanics, Chinese, and anyone else who comes along. Even Canadians will do in a pinch. Today, the Republican Party exists for one and only one purpose: to pass tax cuts for the rich and regulatory rollbacks for corporations. They accomplish this using one and only method: unapologetically racist and bigoted appeals to win the votes of the heartland riff-raff they otherwise treat as mere money machines for their endless mail-order cons. Nothing will go forward in the House of any substance. These people don’t care if the government shuts down — they have declared it the Deep State and want to destroy it. (Unless and until it becomes their deep state.) Charles P. Pierce warned of this 10 years ago, as a shutdown began back then. At that time the fight was over repealing Obamacare and freaking out over a black man in the White House. Now it’s Republican versus Republican, but the scenario is eerily prescient: ...We have elected a national legislature in which Louie Gohmert and Michele Bachmann have more power than does the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who has been made a piteous spectacle in the eyes of the country and doesn't seem to mind that at all. We have elected a national legislature in which the true power resides in a cabal of vandals, a nihilistic brigade that believes that its opposition to a bill directing millions of new customers to the nation's insurance companies is the equivalent of standing up to the Nazis in 1938, to the bravery of the passengers on Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, and to Mel Gibson's account of the Scottish Wars of Independence in the 13th Century. We have elected a national legislature that looks into the mirror and sees itself already cast in marble. We did this. We looked at our great legacy of self-government and we handed ourselves over to the reign of morons. This is what they came to Washington to do -- to break the government of the United States. It doesn't matter any more whether they're doing it out of pure crackpot ideology, or at the behest of the various sugar daddies that back their campaigns, or at the instigation of their party's mouthbreathing base. It may be any one of those reasons. It may be all of them. The government of the United States, in the first three words of its founding charter, belongs to all of us, and these people have broken it deliberately…. If Gaetz and company flex their muscles they way they’re going, what happens in the House will be even more of “a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” as the Bard didn’t quite say. Critical business remains before Congress, but it’s not going to get done. Instead we’ll have more sham hearings and an impeachment inquiry only because they can. This is going to have global consequences. Watch world financial markets get the jitters, seeing the dysfunction in the allegedly most powerful nation on earth. Watch authoritarians rejoice as democracy stumbles. (Republicans are openly embracing the Red Caesar scenario.) Champagne is pouring in the Kremlin, and Vladimir is already planning how to build on this. Russia’s strategy to win the war in Ukraine is to outlast the West. But how does Vladimir Putin plan to do that? American officials said they are convinced that Mr. Putin intends to try to end U.S. and European support for Ukraine by using his spy agencies to push propaganda supporting pro-Russian political parties and by stoking conspiracy theories with new technologies. The Russia disinformation aims to increase support for candidates opposing Ukraine aid with the ultimate goal of stopping international military assistance to Kyiv. President Biden, in his recent tribute to the late Senator John McCain, spoke of how the rest of the free world is anxious about what they see happening in America. January 6 shocked them; this can’t reassure them. I know virtually every major world leader. That’s what I did when I was a senator, as vice president, and now. Everywhere I go in the world — I’ve met now with over a hundred heads of state of the nations of the world — everywhere I go, they look and they ask the question, “Is it going to be okay?” Think about this: The first meeting I attended of the G7 — the seven wealthiest nations in the world — in Europe, the NATO meeting, I sat down — it was in Feb- — Feb- — January, after being elected — so, late Janu- — early February — and it was in England. And I sat down, and I said, “America is back.” And Macron looked at me, and he said, “Mr. President, for how long — for how long?” And then, the Chancellor of Germany said, “Mr. President, what would you think if you picked up the paper tomorrow — tomorrow, the London Times — and it said a thousand people broke down the doors of Parliament, marched, and killed two bobbies in order to overthrow an election of the new prime minister? What would you think then? What would America think?” What would we think, the leading nation in the world, having gone through what we went through? And many of you travel internationally. Many of you know people from around the world. I’d be surprised if you heard anything different than the concern about: Are we okay? Is the democracy going to be sustained? And from that institutional damage, we see distrust and division among our own people. I’m here to tell you: We lose these institutions of our government at our own peril. And I’ve always been clear: Democracy is not a partisan issue. It’s an American issue. We can take some small pleasure in the downfall of a small man of more ambition than character or intelligence, but we cannot forgive the damage he and his colleagues are doing to the country. Tom Sullivan at Digby’s place has a post calling for everyone on the Left to stop insisting on ideological purity and look to all the allies we can find to stop these people. They want a dictator. Their “think tank thinked it up.” Heard that somewhere before? It was funny when Ben Kingsley said it as a fictional “custom-made terror threat” controlled by a puppet master. Not so funny when there are real autocrats-in-waiting. What was it Damon Linker said? “Thirty years ago, if I told you that a bunch of billionaires and intellectuals on the right are waiting in the wings to impose a dictatorship on the United States, you would have said that I was insane.” Look, I fully expect many Never Trumpers from the Lincoln Project, The Bulwark, and others to return to their conservative fetishes once we defeat rising fascism together. But for now, we need each other. We cannot temporize about what we face, or hesitate. We have to dig deep and keep pushing back. If they will do this to one of their own, what can the rest of us expect from them? They’re already showing us with their war on trans people, women’s rights, book bans, their contempt for the military and veterans, and even setting up their own secret police. For them, January 6 was a practice run. For us, 2020 was just the first round. We had better be ready for Round 2 in 2024 and be prepared to fight it out as long as it takes. UPDATE: Something I’m seeing in The NY Times is that their minds are boggled by the idea that Democrats joined with Gaetz and the other extremists to oust McCarthy. It shows just how confused they are. There is a not subtle difference between not voting for McCarthy because he couldn’t meet extremist demands to keep his promises to them and not voting for him because he kept trying to meet those extremist demands and broke his promises to Democrats to do otherwise. You could almost believe the Gray Lady is trying to push a conspiracy theory that the ouster of the Speaker was a Democratic plot! Did they really expect Democrats to try to save someone who refused to work with them at every turn and continually pushed the agenda of the MAGA manics? The battle of the media is going to be a big part of this going forward. Republicans are in too much chaos at the moment to set the narrative as they usually do, but at this point they’ve succeeded in conditioning the press to the point that they almost don't have to. Democrats better start messaging the hell out of this. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/3/2197212/-Before-we-have-too-much-schadenfreude-over-McCarthy-a-few-considerations?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/