Photo via Marjorie Taylor Greene - greene.house.gov
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Marjorie Taylor Greene
If you thought the looniest House Republicans in captivity were chaotic and dysfunctional before, you haven’t seen anything yet.
House Republicans can no longer pretend only a handful of extreme insurrectionists among them are out to sabotage democracy. A majority of House Republicans voted against the bipartisan budget agreement between House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Biden that prevented a shutdown of three-fourths of the federal government over the weekend.
Dysfunctional House Republicans can’t pass any necessary legislation without Democratic votes, but whenever they do it rabid Republican insurrectionists threaten to fire the speaker again. As a result, the incredibly shrinking House Republican majority is now disappearing before their eyes.
Chaos Caucus
Georgia’s congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, self-appointed leader of the Republican chaos-and-cannibalism caucus, is making it clear that traditional conservatives willing to work with Democrats to pass bipartisan legislation are no longer welcome in the House.
Within moments of failing to defund the federal government under Biden, Greene filed a motion to remove Johnson as speaker. “It’s time for us to go through the process, take our time and find a new speaker of the House that will stand with Republicans and our Republican majority instead of standing with the Democrats,” Greene declared.
Departing Green Bay Congressman Mike Gallagher, once a rising star in the Republican party, would rather not. Before Gallagher cast his last vote funding the budget under Biden, he announced he would resign from Congress on April 19 leaving his seat vacant until November. That will reduce the Republican majority to a single vote.
A week and a half later on April 30, the House will be evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans after a special election in a Democratic congressional district in Buffalo, N.Y. Republicans won’t regain a majority again until May 21 with a runoff between two California Republicans to fill former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s seat.
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Boosting Jeffries
If obnoxious House Republicans like Greene drive any more sane Republicans into early political retirement before November, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries could become House Speaker before the next presidential election.
It would certainly boost the election prospects of Democrats for Speaker Jeffries to preside over a functional House of Representatives passing popular legislation supported by a majority of Americans.
No one, including House Republicans, have any idea what will happen when the House returns in two weeks. Republicans don’t know whether they will vote to throw out Johnson because Trump hasn’t told them yet. Greene called her motion “more of a warning” to Johnson. She hasn’t said whether she’ll insist on a vote within two days as required by House rules.
When Trump gave Republicans permission to dump McCarthy for committing the same crime as Johnson – negotiating budget spending with Biden—it took them three more weeks to find an acceptable candidate dim-witted enough to take a career-ending temp job.
Protect Johnson?
That hasn’t stopped much of the media from speculating nonsensically about whether Democrats should do anything to protect Johnson from getting the boot simply because he did what he agreed to in budget negotiations.
Why should Democrats help MAGA Mike unless it’s the only way they can get him to allow a House vote on Biden’s military aid for Ukraine to defend democracy from Vladimir Putin’s Russian invasion that has majority support in the House and Senate and from a majority of Americans despite the opposition from Trump and MAGA extremists?
The Trump forces of hatred, division and chaos in America backed by a rightwing media ecosystem of lies, many of them created by Putin’s Russian agents trolling the internet pretending to be Americans, hasn’t won a national election since 2016 when voters took a chance of reality TV star playing successful businessman without knowing who he really was.
They certainly know now. No one can pretend they don’t know everyone in America Trump intends to destroy if he’s ever elected again. His success in business and politics has all been achieved through lies, corruption and criminal behavior. The criminal justice system is finally catching up with his entire lawless life.
Many Americans say they don’t like the choice between two candidates who are so old. Every candidate from now on will be younger, but surely there will never be a greater contrast between two candidates. One thing is clear. No one who cares about American democracy can fail to vote. Biden continues to believe democracy should protect the equal rights of every American in our culturally diverse nation.
Trump wants to protect America from diversity, equity and inclusion. That sounds exactly like white supremacy and rolling back 50 years of constitutional rights for American women to make decisions about their own lives.
Biden promised to be a bridge to the next generation after restoring Trump’s destruction of democracy. Trump hasn’t stopped the destruction yet, but his majorities in the House and Senate are shrinking. Keep it going.
