4 min readSpeaker Moses is just not very good at the Speaker of the House thing. In fact, his real gift as a legislative leader is as a follower. And it appears at the moment that he is managing to follow his master down the block right over a cliff into the Potomac. And it also appears that a substantial faction of his own caucus is prepared to stand on the beach and wave goodbye as he hits the water. From The New York Times:
The retreat was a striking setback that exposed fractures within the G.O.P. over the conflict at a moment when the party has begun pushing back forcefully on Mr. Trump and his agenda.
It also marked the latest embarrassing blow to Speaker Mike Johnson, who has toiled to defeat efforts to challenge or limit the war in line with the president’s wishes, but is contending with growing wariness within his party as the midterm elections approach and the realities of his minuscule majority.
The decision to shelve the war powers resolution came after Republicans had lost control of the floor during an earlier unrelated vote, with several of their members defecting and several more absent. As the House chamber descended into chaos, leaders wary of risking another public defeat on a far more politically consequential vote abruptly scrapped the Iran war measure.
Said chaos was a ruckus kicked upby Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), proving once again that you mess with Worcester boyz at your peril. McGovern knew that the war powers resolution was due to be voted on Thursday evening and that it stood a decent chance of passing, which would have been a stunning nut-punch to the White House. Suddenly, it vanished from the schedule at the request of Speaker Moses, and McGovern, ah, inquired as to why.
“Are we not voting on it because the American people are sick and tired of this illegal war… You guys don’t have the guts or the balls to vote on this”
After which, Speaker Moses, who was not in the House chamber while some other members of his caucus did the dirty work, sent the House home for the long holiday weekend without calling a vote he knew he’d lose. Which would send the spaghetti flying at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
At this point, the Republicans must be looking at internal polling that scares them whiter than they already are because a) they’re out there cutting up black majority districts—even Rep. Jim Clyburn’s down in South Carolina—and b) because they’re showing the shadow of a backbone on both sides of the Capitol. The Senate Republicans are in open revolt over the Cash-For-Trashers arrangement that the administration cooked up with a compliant IRS and an even more compliant Department of Justice, so much so that they left town without voting on the bill to fund ICE. Apparently, at a meeting with members of the GOP Senate caucus, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was handed his head. From USA Today:
“So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops?” Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said in a statement after the gathering. “Utterly stupid, morally wrong – take your pick.”
Whoa. The Mummy strikes!
Senate Republicans emerged stone-faced from the huddle with Blanche, Trump’s former personal attorney. Before long, they decided to go home, punting on a months-in-the-making budget vote to infuse federal immigration enforcement agencies with more than $70 billion. Trump initially ordered congressional Republicans to pass that funding by June 1. The new delay means they’ve all but abandoned his deadline.
In addition, both Senator Bill Cassidy and Senator John Cornyn seem to have become free radicals within the caucus. They certainly have no reason any more to support this president or, for that matter, the Republican party, which turned Cassidy out of office and may well do the same thing to Cornyn.
The abrupt decision was a glaring sign of intensifying acrimony between Senate Republicans and the White House. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, have become freer agents in the GOP conference after Cassidy lost his reelection campaign and Trump refused to endorse Cornyn, angering many of his longtime colleagues. The president also backed Cassidy’s primary opponent, preventing him from advancing to a runoff and turning him into a lame-duck senator until January.
The Justice Department responded by sending over a memo outlining what the administration proposed to control and legitimize the slush fund. This proposal would be more convincing if it didn’t so closely resemble Rep. Jim Jordan’s letter to Santa Claus.
In an effort to quell the Republican unrest, the Justice Department sent a memo to lawmakers outlining restrictions on the so-called “anti-weaponization” fund.
In the memo, obtained by USA TODAY, the agency said that even members of Congress themselves could be able to receive taxpayer money through the fund. Eligible Americans also could potentially include “Americans whose online speech has been censored at the behest of the government, parents silenced at school boards, senators whose records were secretly subpoenaed, churchgoers targeted by the FBI, and so on.”
I swear these guys could screw up a two-car funeral if you spotted them the hearse.
