Republicans in disarray
The Republican Party is in complete disarray. The ostensible leader of the Party, The Orange Menace, who demands absolute loyalty, is locked in a feud with his partner for four years in trashing the United States, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Trump wants McConnell ousted as Senate Leader, but McConnell has a death grip on Senate Republicans, to the extent that they, in lockstep, refuse to vote to raise the debt ceiling to pay for the excesses of the Trump era.
McConnell believes he can make political hay if the Democrats have to raise the debt ceiling on their own, with no Republican help, despite the fact that in the past, raising the debt ceiling has typically been a bipartisan action. Peculiar behavior by the so-called Guardian of Senate Traditions. Moreover, failing to raise the debt ceiling will cause the United States to default on its debts for the first time and unleash an economic catastrophe of untold proportions. So much for Republicans being good for the economy.
On the Big Lie front, the long-awaited Arizona Republican Senate-sponsored Cyber Ninjas absurdist comedy “audit” of the Arizona election, specifically in Maricopa County, finally reached its conclusion. It fizzled out by revealing that Joe Biden had actually received more votes — and Donald Trump received fewer votes — than had been reported by election officials.
The Cyber Ninjas nonetheless claimed that new measures were needed to safeguard election integrity, which was especially rich coming from a group whose unsupervised access to Maricopa County voting machines during the “audit” meant that the County had to discard the machines because their integrity may have been compromised by the Ninjas.
Republicans have also decided that the best hope for them to hold onto Chuck Grassley’s Senate seat from Iowa was to trot out Grassley for one more “run” before he is put out to pasture. The idea that they have nobody better than an 88-year-old fossil shows just how bereft of leaders the party is.
Paul Gosar keeps plunging deeper and deeper into the abyss of mental incompetence, while fellow seditionists Josh Hawley and Matt Gaetz decided that they could score points by pounding the table and claiming that a true patriot, Joint Chiefs Chair Mark Milley, was unfit to lead the military because he tried to avert a third world war while Trump was in the throes of despair during his last, desperate days in the White House.
They also faulted Milley, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and of course, Joe Biden for the scramble to leave Afghanistan by September 1. Apparently, they expect us to believe that adhering to Donald Trump’s earlier negotiated departure date of May 1 would have ensured that all Americans would have been evacuated safely (even those who ignored government warnings since April and still hadn’t left by August), and no troops would have been targeted by terrorists during an earlier withdrawal.
Sanctimonious know-nothings Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene continued their high-profile antics to proudly show off their ignorance. Boebert attempted to liken the need to vaccinate large percentages of the public in order to stop the spread of a highly contagious disease, with the lack of effectiveness of a pain reliever if others didn’t take it too. What a headache. Greene, who recently said she is the most effective member of Congress, said she favors shutting the government down.
Trump (and alleged Corey Lewandowski) favorite, Gov. Kristi Noem, was embroiled in a scandal in which she strong-armed subordinate state officials into giving her daughter a real estate appraiser’s license. But she managed to push that imbroglio off the front pages briefly when it was reported – by a Conservative rag — that she was having an affair with the afore-mentioned Lewandowski. Lewandowski was also in the news for sexually harassing a Republican donor. How Trump-like.
And Trump, himself, fresh on the heels of revelations from Woodward & Costa and Stephanie Grisham that he was even more of a danger to the Republic and an all-around scumbag than previously depicted, held another rally to bemoan the fact that he is no longer in office, despite the fact that he really wanted to stay. He excoriated Biden for bringing Afghans to the U.S., despite the fact that Republicans in the immediate wake of our withdrawal expressed outrage that Biden had not evacuated enough Afghan allies.
And let’s not forget spineless Lindsey Graham, who was mercilessly bashed by Trump for not promoting the Big Lie, yet came back a few days later to express his fervent hope that Trump would run again in 2024. Apparently, Graham believes America could really use a leader who seeks to undermine our entire political process.
Republicans have no ideas to move America forward. They have no leaders. They have no integrity. They have no morals. They have nothing but obstruction, obfuscation, and obstinance. It’s time to kick them to the curb, once and for all, like the trash they are.
