The following is an excerpt from “The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics” by Steve Benen. It is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
Pretty sure that what tiny amount of gop concern with actual governance ended in 1994 with Gnewt Gingrich’s Contract on America. From that point on, gops were nothing more than ratfuckers and obstructionists. Why this comes as a shock to people, I can’t say. Maybe they are all too young to remember what a divisive, hate-filled hypocrite the failed Speaker of the House was.
I’m finally beginning to understand the wisdom of Aneurin Bevan when he said that the only reason to acquire power was to give it away.
“We’re not great at the whole governing thing.” JFC, ya think?! Your whole sorry-ass cabal of grifting, fox-addled doofuses is about to get binned, and boy do you deserve what’s coming.
Disgraced former Speaker, Leroy Newt Gingrich: the most malevolent public official between Nixon and Trump.
Politics used to be about voters asking “What can you do for me?” But unfortunately now it has become more about voters yelling, “What will you do to them?” The GOP too often is simply listening to their constituents.
If your entire political philosophy consists of “government IS the problem,” you basically have two options: not doing it at all, and doing it badly. The GOP rolled out their slogan, “No one could have predicted!” under Bush II, and that has been their motto ever since, from 9/11 through Katrina all the way to COVID19. The worst thing is that the media seem to regard it as a perfectly adequate excuse no matter how well and authoritatively the precise disaster in question had been warned of ahead of time. It’s your f***ing JOB to “predict” bad stuff and prepare for it, that’s what being in power actually MEANS. Especially when it’s as obvious as a giant hurricane on the goddamned radar screen bearing down on your coastal cities, or the kind of pandemic for which your predecessor actually created an agency for monitoring and coordinating the response, which you then disbanded.
Whenever I hear Trump or the GOP rail against “anarchists” I think to myself, “you’re the anarchists!” The goal is to neutralize the functions of government in order to allow those with money and power to accumulate more of both through an unfettered capitalist free-for-all. As Benen writes, governing was no longer essential because GOP politicians were not representing their constituents, but rather directly serving the interests of de-regulators like the Kochs and Mercers.
Yes, when Gingrich took the House after decades of Democratic control, he began the process that continued with Cheney and then McConnell. To the extent that Trump is being used, he is part of that same process.
Boehner: "“Here we are, seven months into this year, and yet they’ve not passed this bill. Now, they’re never — they’re not going to repeal and replace Obamacare,” Boehner told the private crowd on July 21. “It’s been around too long. And the American people have gotten accustomed to it. Governors have gotten accustomed to this Medicaid expansion, and so trying to pull it back is really not going to work.”
“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."
And yet, they screwed up even that!
Why anybody still takes McConnell and his clown-carload as skilled electoral geniuses is beyond me.
Voter suppression is the pretty much the only tool left in their box.
That has not been my experience with my Republican Congresswoman or Senators. They simply do not talk to voters, yes they’ll go talk/listen to other government entities, businesses, but holding a damn townhall nope, nada, no way in hell.
In all my years of watching Rachel and reading Benen’s pieces in the Maddow Blog this analysis for GOP politicians to get rid of their policy staff for PR staff has been proven true. And I might add that my Congresswoman has shitty PR people. They can’t, or she won’t tell her constituents the reasons why she backs this or that.
And I this is also why AOC scares the shit of them. She knows what she wants and she knows how to get it. We complement Nancy on how she out foxes Republicans and dismisses Trump but what we are not seeing is the hard work behind the scenes to craft policy and explain the policy.
Getting into psychology here (which is not my forté) but it’d be interesting to see how much a weak leader is really the draw for republican politicians? Looking back to Regan’s senility and all the Iran-Contra hi-jinks that enthused. Also, for as much as he likes to talk the talk, GW was kind of a patsy too, seems like Cheney was pretty much doing whatever he wanted.
And now we have Trump, who is quite simply… I… well, you know what I mean. Probably has dementia, suspected drug use. Tendency to switch “principles” according to whoever he last spoke to.
It could be argued that Trump isn’t directing the massive corruption, but he doesn’t provide leadership or principles to prevent it. All the grifters licking their chops.
But he seems to be the master at getting his ducks in a row. And what confuses me is that there are long serving Senators that in my estimation don’t need McConnell, but they fall in line never the less. And why is that? Does McConnell have such a stranglehold on donors that he can tell them who to support or not?
The bill comes due.
In their pursuit of politics over policy, Republicans left themselves open for a takeover by the person least interested in policy and governing: Donald J Trump.
Left unstated is whether the GOP can return to a governing party. If not, it may be best to let them go the way of Whigs.
Good job, Mr. Benen.
Well, of course this is true. And within this chaos, focused special interests have a much easier time passing the legislation that benefits their own needs. For a perfect example, look at how the first thing Congress passed in response to the COVID crisis was a 100 Billion Dollar tax cut tailored to the benefit of the wealthiest 1% of Americans.
Chaos is not a bug, it is a feature of Republican rule. You have to look past the surface politics and realize that those who are paying for Republican rule are in fact benefiting quite well from Republican rule. To them, the rest of us are sheep, to be shorn or slaughtered at will. America as a nation is just a means to their ends, and if hundreds of thousands of us die to protect their wealth and power it is a matter of indifference (or perhaps, like Trump’s recent comments about limiting testing, just somethign to joke about).
I think Republicans welcomed this strange orange overlord. They’re using him as much as Trump is grifting for his own personal benefit. They’re fine with the race baiting, they’re fine with no policy policies, some though are tad bit worried about Trump wanting to pull troops out of places, trashing NATO, and had a bit of trouble with praising dictators.
Yes, I think it’s fair to say that Republican politicians (1) listen to their large donors and (2) pander to a segment of their constituents.
One could ask how different Democratic politicians are. I don’t mind when they pander to me, for example, but they certainly don’t do it often enough.
As you know, I like her quite a bit – but are you suggesting that her Republican counterparts don’t know what they want or how to get it?
Because their interests fall in line making the whole idea of competent leadership, policy or otherwise, unnecessary. McConnell is a conduit, not necessarily a leader. He’s far from a prolific legislator. His resumé is quite limited where output of substantial legislation is reckoned. He knows all the parliamentary tricks and is quite cunning in employing them to his party’s benefit and theirs alone. He’s good at that.