As a kid, I loved watching “This Week in Baseball” and enjoyed rain delays at games because both meant you got to see bloopers. The blooper reel was awesome for a kid, combining the baseball we loved with the physical comedy we couldn’t get enough of. I eventually grew out of my love for physical comedy, for the most part (if done well, it can still get me), and only pay passive attention to baseball. But the concept of bloopers and unforced errors are still around and have graduated to the political world. It’s not funny, but watching Republicans in the House of Representatives step on an ever-growing series of metaphorical rakes is the perfect analogy for how things are going.
As in most elections, the American public rejects the reactionary panic of progressive policies. While Democrats push hard to get people to embrace a jealous mindset – turning people against each other over what some people have while others don’t – the public largely views wealth as something to aspire to, not to hate. It certainly is changing – and capitalist/freedom sentiments boil over regularly on college campuses, though not really on assembly lines.
It’s one of life’s ironies that people with the more readily available opportunity to be upwardly mobile resent the method of mobility more than those the wealthy get offended on behalf of. College students will, on average, make more than people who didn’t go to college. That income difference disappears if the student majors in something unmarketable, like gender or ethnic studies, but you can’t protect people from their own stupidity. That’s what parents are supposed to be for.
While it’s funny to watch a “Queer Dance Studies” major whine about their student loan debt on MSNBC, unsure of why that six-figure job has eluded them, the comic edge wears dull when you see Republicans engaging in a different, though more consequential brand of stupidity.
If you hated Kevin McCarthy, fine. Honestly, I couldn’t have cared less about him or anyone else Republicans could have picked to be Speaker of the House. When the party controls only the House, and just by a tiny margin, the only thing that matters about the Speaker is which party they’re in. That determines committee assignments and, to the extent that anything can change (and that much), it will be minimal.
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If Republicans securely had the Senate and the White House, progress could have been made. Even without the White House, pressure could have been brought to bear on it by Congress to create change. With only the House, and just barely, nothing is going to happen legislatively.
This truth, naturally, doesn’t stop morons from talking big, and talking big is the key to cable TV bookings and fundraising, but no amount of chest-thumping is going to change reality. All it does is create false expectations in the audience, people who don’t understand why what the person on TV is saying should happen is not happening. Nuance has no place, honesty has no place. Loud idiots rule the day.
Well, now that Republicans have ousted the Speaker and shown themselves to be incapable of selecting a new one – having blown through all the Members anyone has heard of – what comes next?
Eventually, if only by accident, the House GOP will wander out of the field of rakes they’ve laid out for themselves, take off the blindfold and elect a Speaker you’ve probably never heard of. Representative WhoeverTheHellItIs from some state will do…exactly what Kevin McCarthy would have done. Why? Because what else can be done?
When Republicans controlled the House and Senate, they spent like drunken sailors. When Republicans controlled the House, Senate and the White House, they spent like drunken sailors. The only thing that spent more than Republicans when they were in charge was Democrats when they were. That’s not saying much.
No one cares about spending. I hate to say it, because it matters, but it’s true. And no one cares about the internal squabbling of the House; the personality conflicts between egomaniacs played out on Fox nightly. It does not matter.
People will forget about this particular fight by election day, should the GOP ever pull its head out of where last night’s dinner is waiting to be expelled. But what they will remember is the disarray – the fact that the GOP being in charge brought a lot of chaos. That chaos may have calmed down, but Democrats will be right there to remind voters of it. And, knowing how these morons in Congress are, they’ll probably give a few more examples of that chaos for Democrats to use between now and next November.
It's not just that Republicans created the field of rakes, it’s that they continually blindfold themselves and skip out into the middle of it when all they really have to do is not that. Democrats are unpopular and viewed as incompetent when it comes to the issues voters care about. Republicans can go a long way toward winning by simply not being incompetent themselves. That doesn’t seem like a bridge too far, does it? Unfortunately, with these clowns, that bridge in on the far side of their field of rakes.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
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