This isn't near as much fun as it looked on TV.
Sometimes there comes a moment when even spinmeister politicians are forced to look in the mirror and report back to the people what they see in unrelenting terms. For certain Republicans who haven't entirely drowned themselves in tea party Kool-Aid, that time is now. Their inability to find a speaker who can lead their party—their inability to lead at all—has finally forced some grim realizations.
Here's some straight talk today from GOP Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma:
“Paul Ryan has played a major role in advancing the conservative cause and creating the Republican House majority. His critics are not true conservatives. They are radical populists who neither understand nor accept the institutions, procedures and traditions that are the basis of constitutional governance.”
Whoa ... nothing short of a stinging indictment of his fellow Republicans.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy served up a similar dose of reality on the day he pulled himself out of the speaker's race.
All this left NYT conserva-pundit David Brooks feeling pretty dreary as he penned a piece titled, "The Republicans' Incompetence Caucus."
Welcome to Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and the Freedom Caucus.
Really, have we ever seen bumbling on this scale, people at once so cynical and so naïve, so willfully ignorant in using levers of power to produce some tangible if incremental good? These insurgents can’t even acknowledge democracy’s legitimacy — if you can’t persuade a majority of your colleagues, maybe you should accept their position. You might be wrong!
Agreed, David, they just might be. Something we point out every day in a hundred ways at Daily Kos.