Regardless of the Senate vote the GOP will
remain splintered just as all the yes men and MAGAts can't put Trumpy
Dumpty together again.
If the GOP returns to the philosophy of Reagan then in reality it will have to have policies similar to Clinton and Obama.
The
GOP is in a shambles, morally and philosphically. It has no core and
most of the base is depraved, deceitful, deranged, traitorous and
unAmerican. You can't fix that.
The Bible Belt will remain the sewer that it will always be for atleast two more decade unless COVID-19 turns much more deadly.
If the FCC enforces truth in advertising for poltical ads the GOP will be doomed. I did the math.
So
Liz, I think it would be good if you gave you base a great big giant
fact enema and let the shit fall where it may. Keep putting America
first.
If Hillary is correct about the GOP base being 50% filled with depraved
people, your chances of remaining in politics is 50-50. I think the
depravity rate is 80%. Throa a Hail Mary.
Here's the back story.
The
fact that Cheney has faced more criticism from her colleagues than
Greene in recent days reflects how the GOP's traditional values are
under siege and the vast power that extremists and conspiracy theories
welcomed into the party by Trump are accumulating.
For
weeks, and especially following the insurrection incited by Trump on
January 6, the Republican Party has been locked in a prolonged duel
between those swearing loyalty to their leader in exile, and others who
want to move on from his anti-democratic tenure.
But
Wednesday's leadership punt on Greene, a first term member from
Georgia, made this clear: Scared of repudiating Trump's base, the House
GOP is racing at top speed towards its extremist fringe to validate
millions of Americans living in an alternative reality even if Cheney's
survival suggests that privately many GOP members don't believe the
election was stolen.
A 9/11 truther, who touted anti-Semitic conspiracies and expressed support for assassinations of Democratic leaders, Greene is no longer the outlier in her party across America's vast heartland -- Cheney is. Secret ballot
Cheney,
who, until the Trump insurrection, was a reliable vote for the
President save on some foreign policy issues, made a powerful statement
by winning in a 145 to 61 vote to keep her leadership post. Her victory
was a sign that in private at least, there are some in the House
Republican Party who are willing to stand up to extremism -- even if
many lack the courage to do so in public. Her triumph will encourage
orthodox Washington conservatives -- including many in the Senate who
supported her, to think the fight for the future direction of the party
is not hopeless.
But Cheney still faces the very real prospect of a primary challenge in her fervently pro-Trump state of Wyoming.
And
while the lawmakers did not have to declare to their colleagues how
they voted on Cheney's retention of the House Conference Chair job, it
would not be surprising to see some of the most enthusiastic Trump
supporters in the caucus publicly reveal their votes against her.
"This
is clearly a moment to define where the party is going and the party is
choosing a Hell of a path here," Mary Katharine Ham, a prominent
conservative writer and CNN political commentator, told CNN's Anderson
Cooper before Cheney's vote total was announced.
Greene
said in the meeting that her past social media posts did not represent
who she was. But her sense of being impervious to the customs of her
fast-shifting party shone through a defiant interview with the Washington Examiner that published as Wednesday's meeting went on.
"Kevin
McCarthy and all these leaders, the leadership, and everyone is proving
that they are all talk and not about action, and they're just all about
doing business as usual in Washington," Greene said.
Profound consequences
In
many ways, Wednesday's meeting accelerated the direction the party has
been heading at least since many parts of its traditional base became
disillusioned with the establishment following years of war and the 2008
financial crisis. Trump's weaponizing of the issue of race and swift
social change after Barack Obama's presidency continued the
conspiratorial trend while his seditious post-election behavior removed
the last restraints to an all-out embrace of extremism.
This
will all have profound consequences for the country. There have always
been wide, and proper, ideological differences between Democrats and
Republicans. They are, if anything, widening.
But
this is not a new front in the perennial duel over health care or
taxes. One of America's great parties, by elevating unhinged radicals
such as Greene, and by threatening those like Cheney who accept the
truth of Biden's win last year, is implicitly rejecting the sacred
values of the American political system itself and its essential
underpinning of objective truth and fact.
Those who declared a final victory for democracy when Trump left town after his attempt to steal President Joe Biden's victory may have spoken too soon. Weak leadership
Wednesday's
turmoil also underscored how McCarthy has capitulated to the extreme
forces within his caucus and in the country. A week after his pilgrimage
to make up with Trump after his tepid criticism of his role inciting
the Capitol insurrection, the leader refused to strip Greene of her
committee posts.
The
spectacle of the leader being led around by a congresswoman who has
been in Washington for four weeks either showed great political weakness
or cynical calculation. He will leave it to House Democrats to rebuke
Greene. While that makes McCarthy look feckless, it also suggests he
concluded that it is better for him politically for Democrats to punish a
Make America Great Again hero than for his caucus to alienate their
base.
Yet
his failure to deal with the Greene issue himself means that many of
his members -- especially those from more vulnerable districts -- now
face a choice between voting in the full House to punish a Trump
supporter or to open themselves to accusations they are endorsing her
crazed rhetoric.
McCarthy
condemned Greene's social media activity in a statement and accused
Democrats of not meeting him half way on finding a solution that would
have reallocated Greene's committee posts. (Critics had complained she
was placed on an education committee, following her claims that several
school massacres were "false flag operations.")
But
he also stated that he took Greene at her word that she now recognized
that her conduct as a member of Congress needed to be of a higher
standard than when she was a private citizen.
"The
voters decided that she can come and serve," McCarthy said after the
meeting, adding that Greene had denounced her own social media activity.
In
her comments to the Examiner, in which she again alluded to lies that
Trump won the election and insulted Senate Minority leader Mitch
McConnell, Greene showed she has no incentive to reform her behavior.
"Now,
we have Joe Biden in the White House and Nancy Pelosi at 80 million
years old as speaker, and we've got a Senate that we don't control
anymore, with, you know, Mr. Big Turtle in charge up there just, just
losing gracefully, losing gracefully," Greene said in the interview.
GOP senators set to avoid moral choice
Local
activists and other outliers in Washington such as Illinois Rep. Adam
Kinzinger might argue that all is not lost for the GOP and that the
reckoning will take many months, as memories fade of the Trump
presidency.
But
many of those state Republican officials who stood firm in the face of
the ex-President's attempt to overturn election results are facing the
similar kind of assaults and likely primary challenges as Cheney and the
other nine House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump.
And
Republican senators, such as McConnell, who called Greene a "cancer,"
and others who condemned her remarks would insist that they are standing
up for the institutional values of the party that saved the world for
democracy by winning the Cold War against communism.
Yet
in the next few weeks, the vast majority of GOP senators are expected
to vote to acquit Trump in his Senate impeachment trial. Most will take
refuge in a questionable constitutional conceit that the trial is moot
since Trump is an ex-President.
This
will spare them having to wrestle with the moral choice of what to do
with a commander in chief who sent his supporters on a deadly march on
another branch of government. Their motivation is the same as those who
are appeasing Greene -- a desire to avoid antagonizing the party base
and to avoid primary challenges in order to retain their hold on power.
