Photo via Matt Gaetz - X
Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz
Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz
The last-minute scramble by Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s House Republicans over the weekend joining with Democrats to stop MAGA Republicans from shutting down the government and upending the lives of millions of Americans was only temporary.
At most, it may have bought McCarthy another 45 days to battle anti-democracy House extremists who seriously believe shutting down the government and sabotaging the U.S. economy will somehow benefit Republicans in next year’s presidential election.
Never mind that’s an absurd belief. It’s obvious why so many Republicans believe it’s true. Donald Trump told them so. Trump urged Republicans to wreck America under Biden claiming voters would blame Biden for all the chaos in government no matter who created it.
Trump spelled it out openly a week ago in one of his mad ravings on Truth Social: “The Republicans lost big on Debt Ceiling, got NOTHING, and now are worried that they will be blamed for the Budget Shutdown. Wrong!!! Whoever is President will be blamed, in this case, Crooked (as Hell!) Joe Biden!”
Trump’s House Republicans aren’t through wreaking havoc on democracy either. Matt Gaetz, one of the sleaziest, promises to introduce a motion this week to remove McCarthy as speaker.
Razor-Thin Majority
Because Trump’s widespread unpopularity led to so many Republican losses in the midterms, the party has a razor-thin four-vote House majority. Only five anti-McCarthy Republican votes are needed to throw McCarthy out of the job. Democrats have no reason to save him without substantial policy agreements or power-sharing with House Republicans.
Despite allowing MAGA extremists to run rampant, McCarthy did two things that infuriated them. He reached an agreement with President Biden raising the debt ceiling so the U.S. wouldn’t default on its bills creating a worldwide economic collapse and now he’s reached a bipartisan agreement to continue funding the U.S. government.
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The most disturbing concession McCarthy made to far-right Republicans was to strip billions of dollars for military and humanitarian aid to defend Ukraine from Vladimir Putin’s war on its democratic neighbor that is demolishing communities and murdering its citizens daily.
That reflects not only Trump’s continuing influence on Republican negotiations but even worse the support within the Republican party for Putin, the man who taught Trump everything he knows about Ukraine.
Speaking from the White House Sunday, Biden said “We cannot under any circumstances allow America’s support for Ukraine to be interrupted.” He expressed confidence the funding will be restored by the “overwhelming number of Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate who support Ukraine.”
The overwhelming majority of Americans do as well, but that hasn’t stopped Trump’s MAGA extremists from frustrating majority support for women’s reproductive rights, outlawing the sale of military assault weapons or protecting the planet from climate catastrophe.
Chaotic Debate
Defeating Trump by the largest number of votes in history won’t even prevent Republicans from nominating him again.
The chaotic Republican debate last week showed the party’s other candidates were just bombastic Trump imitators shouting over each other. The worst crime they called out Trump for committing was his failure to show up and build their declining audience. That’s not among the 91 felony counts in any of Trump’s criminal prosecutions in federal and state courts in the coming year.
Far more important speeches about the issues in 2024 last week came from President Biden and Gen. Mark Milley, retiring chairman of the joint chiefs of America’s military.
Biden, honoring Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain in Tempe, Ariz., once again made the violent threat to American democracy the central issue in the presidential election. “There’s something dangerous happening in America now,” Biden said. “There’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy … Democracies don’t have to die at the end of a rifle. They can die when people are silent, when they fail to stand up or condemn the threats to democracy.”
Milley spoke at the swearing in of his successor, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., whose appointment was delayed along with hundreds of other military promotions by Alabama’s MAGA Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville to protest abortions rights for members of the military and their families.
Trump appointed Milley, but the ex-president recently accused Milley of committing treason for assuring the militaries of China and other countries after January 6 that the U.S. military would not carry out any unprovoked attacks on other nations while Trump was acting erratically. Trump suggested in the past Milley would have been executed.
Milley had the last word as chairman on behalf of a non-partisan U.S military: “We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen, to a tyrant or a dictator. We don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution.”
Anytime Trump is nominated by any political party, democracy and the Constitution will be on the ballot.
