Why Matt Gaetz upended uniparty Kevin McCarthy

Why Matt Gaetz upended uniparty Kevin McCarthy. By Sundance.

♦ In 2009 72% of the country, and an even larger percentage of the Republican voters, did not want Obamacare. The govt takeover of healthcare was along purely ideological grounds. For the 2010 midterm election, the professional Republican apparatus campaigned on this single issue — repeal Obamacare. The voters destroyed the Democrats and flipped 67 seats to Republican control. The professional Republicans wanted the House, frustrated American voters gave it to them.

The Republicans did nothing.

♦ In 2012, the professional Republicans campaigned on retaining the House and asked to begin a process of taking down the Democrat control of the Senate. Remember, it was a 60/40 Senate when the Obamacare boondoggle was begun. Keep the House, help us take Senate seats, and we will repeal Obamacare and balance the budget. That was the call of the 2012 professional Republicans. The voters delivered. The GOPe kept the house, took 6 seats in the Senate and introduced a wave of fresh Republican blood.

The Republicans did nothing.

♦ In the 2014 midterm election, the professional Republicans campaigned on retaining the House and now flipping the Senate with more GOP seats. Keep the House, give us the Senate majority, and we will repeal Obamacare and deliver a balanced budget. The voters again delivered. Beginning in January 2015, the Republicans controlled the House and the Senate majorities for Obama’s last two years.

The Republicans did nothing.

Worse still, even with professional Republican control of both chambers of congress, President Obama never had to use his veto pen.

♦ In the 2016 election, after the professional Republicans could no longer stop/block candidate Donald Trump, they said if we get the White House, retain the House and retain the Senate, we will repeal Obamacare, return to regular budgetary order, and balance the budget. Stunningly, against all the odds, the voters yet again delivered. President Trump won the election; Republicans now held the White House, the House and the Senate – as requested.

The Republicans did nothing.

Worse still, the professional Republicans acted as if they were the dog that just caught the car. Now they had no excuses, and as a result there was an exodus of retirements announced from the caucus of the professionally Republican to begin in 2018.

Simultaneously, the professional Republicans passively allowed the targeting of Donald Trump by a fully weaponized intelligence apparatus and justice system to commence. To say the professionally Republican were willfully blind would be polite and generously honest.

In the background the RNC did nothing. The California ballot harvesting operation of 2018 reflected a complete lack of action by the RNC or CA GOP. We all well remember how that operation expanded nationwide in 2020, again with the RNC doing nothing.

This is the reality of what took place between the elections of 2010 and 2020.

Every ask of the professionally Republican apparatus was delivered by voters. Every ask of the voters in return was ignored.

Effective January 2021, Obamacare still exists, no budget was ever produced, the borders were unsecured, the economy tanked due to Biden policy, energy and printing presses. Crises, along with insufferable government mandates, amplified and expanded from coast to coast.

The Green New Deal was passed by Republicans and Democrats, and the collapse of the economy came with it.

Clear enough?

Suddenly, as if there was no background of repeated broken promises and a complete failure to deliver on any key request, Kevin McCarthy and his legion of professionally Republican supporters pretend they cannot fathom why the base voters are more than happy to support Matt Gaetz.

Unprecedented politics ahead. The public can no longer pretend it’s politics as usual and that their interests are being represented. Some politicians are sensing the tide change, with the US in the lead.

Everything to play for, up to control of the world for the foreseeable future. The next year will be interesting. The lies, distortions, and temper tantrums will be impressive.

Notice how the media are telling us little if anything of the specifics of Gaetz’s complaints against McCarthy — which tells you something.

 

Bonus (by Roger Kimball):

What hath Matt Gaetz wrought by tipping over the apple cart of House “leadership” and “stability?” His chief complaints were that McCarthy was making “secret side deals” with the Biden administration to fund the Ukrainian war and, more generally, that McCarthy perpetuated an irresponsible funding regime whereby the House conducted its business by “omnibus” continuing resolutions rather than formulating a budget in which legislators could say yea or nay to specific line items. (Fun fact, Congress hasn’t passed a budget in twenty-seven years.)

I think there is a lot to what Gaetz had to say. …

Gaetz, for all his melodrama, called attention to some big problems with the way the Congress has been conducting itself. The House is the place where spending is decided upon. The US is currently staggering under a $33 trillion debt. Spending is out of control. Oversight is as illusory as our southern border. …

Matt Gaetz’s assault will probably not be good for House Republicans. By challenging their complacency, Gaetz may also undermine their authority. …

The question is, though, whether the Republican status quo is beneficent or just a repackaged, lower-temperature version of what the Democrats have on offer: incontinent spending, foreign adventurism and capitulation to transnational globalist corporatism.

Matt Gaetz may have sown the wind. I do not think we’ll know for sure about the whirlwind until November 2024.

As long as 2024 doesn’t end up in all encompassing nuclear war with Russia or China, we’ll be ok.