This whole thing just keeps getting more rickety
Donald Trump apparently isn’t daunted by the failure of his insane nominee for Attorney General, and now he’s picked an even more insane nominee for FBI Director. Even as Trump continues to do brazenly stupid things that are wearing out the free pass he was just handed, the entire Republican Party takeover is starting to look more rickety.
If the final handful of uncalled House races end up going as expected, the Republicans may end up with as small as a one seat majority. Yes, it looks like the Democrats actually picked up House seats in the 2024 election. So much for the media narrative that the Republicans ran the table. But while the Democrats will get no credit as usual, the big story here is that the Republicans are very unlikely to be able to govern with such a small House majority.
This past term we already got to see how the Republican House couldn’t function with a five seat majority. Now it’s going to be a one seat majority? This sets the stage for every single House Republican to be able to take the entire chamber hostage all on their own. And as we’ve seen, there are plenty of House Republicans who care more about their own personal agendas than they do about whether their party succeeds or fails.
So let’s say Trump and the Republican Senate try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or pass a tax giveaway for the wealthy. All it would take is any one House Republican in a moderate swing district, who fears losing their seat in 2026 over it, to kill the whole thing. Similarly, an extremist like Marjorie Taylor Greene will be able to single handedly derail any of her own party’s legislation if she thinks it’s not extremist enough.
The single best thing we have going for us is that these people are wildly inept. Donald Trump is a dementia patient. Elon Musk is an untreated mental patient. And House Republicans are a bunch of mouth foaming maniacs who are more interested in one-upping each other than in their party’s overall agenda. So bring it on. Our job will be to exploit the Republican Party’s ricketiness and help make sure they can’t pass any of their evil agenda.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report