#821 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Wednesday December 20)
Greetings,
We suffer from a dearth of leadership in Washington.
First a focus on the Republicans, who have nearly proven that they can’t be trusted with the reins of government. Next month, the Democrats, who also suffer from a lack of leadership though, in this moment, not as great and certainly not as great a threat to our democracy.
The absolute base-line for Republicans’ leadership failure, and one need look no further than this, is their continuing subservience to Donald Trump. Whether he ultimately is convicted in one or more of the cases pending against him will not change the facts. We all know them by now, but they include multiple acts of sexual predation, rallying his supporters to violence (not just for the January 6th violence), his embrace of known racists and antisemites, his extortion of the Ukrainian president to do his bidding, his cozy relationship with Vladimir Putin, his relentless attacks on the 2020 election, election officials, and election systems, his serial lying, his trashing of NATO, etc., etc. I could go on…
More troubling is that Trump by now has demonstrated through his actions, his words, and, most recent and frightening, his acolytes’ plans for a potential second term, as someone who cannot be entrusted with the presidency. His plans for his comeback includes the politicization of much of the executive agencies, recasting the Justice Department as a personal law firm, further erosion of election rights, and dismantling of the foreign service. Again, the list is long and frightening. And, as Mitt Romney’s book and interviews make clear, his colleagues laugh at and mock him, with no respect for his intellect, his intentions, or his knowledge and support of the Constitution. And yet, crickets…
But the Republicans have several other matters to answer for:
The Republicans finally threw George Santos out of the house, but not before the case against his serial lying, misrepresentation, and theft became so overwhelming that even the Republican chairperson of the House Ethics Committee called for his ouster. Because of their slim majority in the House, the Republicans have been unwilling to remove him. His continued presence was a shameful travesty. That said, only a thin majority of the Republicans in the House (notably not including the Speaker of the House) voted to oust him.
To my knowledge, not one Republican has stood up to say that Clarence Thomas’s acceptance of gifts on a grand scale is wrong or that he should recuse himself from any cases that deal with the January 6th violence. And few (if any) support ethical constraints on the Supreme Court.
The Republicans in the House voted UNANIMOUSLY to elect to the Speakership one of the orchestrators of the attempt not to certify the results of the 2020 election. The man is an election denier and supporter of Trump’s repeated lies about the election. Apparently, that bears no consequence. He strangely cites the bible as his political north star, without explanation.
The House Republicans slowed down aid to Israel by linking it to a reduction in funding to the IRS. By the way, I have yet to hear a cogent argument about denying funding to the IRS, especially in light of the CBO estimates of billions of dollars in lost revenue by denying that funding.
Increasing numbers of the Republican party leadership are turning against further funding for Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression. The party historically equated with support of democracies under attack has been overtaken by the prevailing Republican platform of “if you’re for it, I must be against it.”
While he freed up some of his holds, Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville continues to block critical many military promotions for an unrelated issue (servicewomen crossing state lines for abortions). Despite the threat to national security, the party won’t push any harder, apparently to show solidarity and a reluctance to waive—even if for a short time—a privilege that future Senators can use to gum up the works.
Republicans continue to resist statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The ostensible argument is that this would give unfair advantage to the Democrats. The argument is purely political. The voters are predominantly people of color, whom the Republican party views as “permanent” Democrats. Never mind that perhaps the party should moderate its views to bring in more voters from the middle. But the audacity of the argument against is that these would be small states exercising disproportionate power. Never mind that Republican strongholds like Wyoming and Montana have small populations and wield excess leverage. In those cases, they rely upon the notion that blatant over-representation and unfairness is appropriate if contained in the Constitution but similar treatment is unfair because it’s not in the Constitution. Let’s just call it what it is—a combination of political maneuvering and racism.
Republicans are lying about the deficit. They maintain the relatively small share of the discretionary national budget drive the increase to the deficit when, in fact, it largely is the result of Trump’s tax cuts for corporations, hedge fund managers, and those whose income primarily is comprised of capital gains. And, of course, we spend more than we take in.
And then there are the members of the Senate and the House yelling at witnesses and, in the case of Senator Markwayne Mullin, challenging a witness to a fist fight. Or telling fellow committee members that they look like Smurfs. Or Marjorie Taylor Greene, accusing one of the republicans who refused to support her attempt to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas of being a “pussy.”
The House is moving to defund the State Department Center charged with thwarting foreign disinformation in U.S. political campaigns, leaving an “open field” for Putin, Xi, Iran and other mischief-makers set on making sure we are riled up sufficiently to reelect Donald Trump.
A lack of leadership, a lack of ethics, a lack of truth, and an embrace of authoritarianism. Now there is a platform of which one can be proud.
Have a great day,
Glenn