Media Matters and Florida Politics have some news on Congressman Byron Donalds and his bid to be speaker of the House. For starters, Fox propaganda has set the scene: the clouds will part, rays of sunshine fall on Republican House members, a MAGA choir is singing, and a voice booms out, “BEHOLD SPEAKER BYRON DONALDS!” Next, some in the Florida congressional delegation are pushing Donalds as the next big thing from Florida, after Ron DeSantis that is. If you are finding it tough to believe that news and big plans by Donalds, you are a rational human being who does not believe MAGA has anything to do with the divine and is really akin to entropy.
And I apologize to entropy in advance. Entropy has an important role in thermodynamics. Donalds just blows more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and adds to global climate change.
Why the hell should anyone take Byron Donalds seriously for anything? There is an easy answer for this. Donalds is a MAGA performance artist. A performance artist is all you need to be for the MAGA crowd. And one way to demonstrate performance is appearing on Fox over and over again.
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) is emerging as the right-wing media favorite among the clown car of House Republicans currently vying to become House speaker. Donalds, a second-term member who voted against certifying the electoral votes following the January 6, 2021, insurrection, has little legislative experience but maintains a constant presence on right-wing outlets such as Fox News…
Donalds has appeared on weekday Fox News programs 193 times since August 2017. He’s been interviewed nearly four times as frequently as Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), the speaker candidate with the second-most Fox appearances, and nearly nine times as frequently as Emmer, who has the third-most.
There is a great bar graph at Media Matters that shows Donalds has parked his ass over at Fox far more often then the other eight Republican candidates running for speaker.
The disparities are all the more startling given Donalds’ recent entry to national politics — both Emmer and Johnson are members of the House Republican Caucus leadership and entered Congress in 2015 and 2017, respectively.
And Donalds hasn’t just picked Fox to be a regular on:
Donalds’ profile in right-wing media is not limited to Fox; he’s made dozens of appearances on the far-right One America News Network and drawn fulsome praise from right-wing influencers including Charlie Kirk and Roger Stone. He was lauded by conspiracy theorists like Dom Lucre and Benny Johnson over the weekend for going on Fox and saying that as speaker, he would release all security footage from the January 6 insurrection.
But you are probably saying, “Didn’t Jim Jordan do the same damn thing? And look what happened to him!” It appears that Donalds has help in his insane quest. At least two — ahem — power players from the Florida congressional delegation have assisted Donalds: Matt Gaetz and Vern Buchanon.
Gaetz is not a surprise. But Vern Buchanon? This is the description of Buchanon:
On the surface, they don’t have much in common. One is a younger, more bombastic flame-thrower who has basically set the U.S. House of Representatives ablaze. The other is the typically even-tempered business maven whose ability to navigate the legislative process has earned him a reputation as one of the savvier members of Congress.
But together U.S. Reps. Matt Gaetz and Vern Buchanan may have collectively charted a path to deliver the first-ever Speaker of the House from Florida.
Savvy? Huh? It turns out that Vern Buchanan was extremely pissed at McCarthy.
Florida’s outsized influence on the congressional map would give Gaetz and Buchanan the opening they desired to ensure Florida secured an outsized presence at the leadership table.
Gaetz did this by drawing procedural and legislative concessions from McCarthy while forcing him to endure 15 brutal rounds in his quest for Speaker.
Buchanan accomplished his part by running for Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the most powerful legislative panel in Congress.
But that’s when things went off the rails.
In one of the most transparent backstabbings in recent memory, McCarthy turned on Buchanan, costing Florida the opportunity to claim its only committee chairmanship. The blatant snub would be followed by a dust-up on the House floor where Buchanan laid into McCarthy, earning widespread cheers from MAGA influencers and the right flank.
Months later, state Sen. Joe Gruters, one of former President Donald Trump’s biggest backers, would cite McCarthy’s snub in a tweet praising Gaetz for “not giving in to the McCarthy machine that robbed our region of a committee chairmanship.”
Seems that McCarthy decided to take out his Gaetz frustration on Buchanan. And you can see why more than a few House members didn’t trust old McCarthy. In fact, while Gaetz brought down McCarthy, Buchanan stood with Jordan for at least two rounds of voting. Notice that on the third that Buchanan cast his vote for Donalds.
Will all of this be enough to get Donalds the speakership? No. I would be shocked if Donalds becomes speaker for one really good reason. No, it’s not that Donalds has no fucking experience. Two hundred Republicans didn’t give a shit that Jordan had no legislative record or ability to lead. What may be the determinative factor, besides Donalds race, is that the speaker is supposed to raise a ton of money for House candidates. And does anyone think that Donalds has the experience to tap wealthy donors for 2024 House Republicans?
The other factor that cannot be discounted is the racism of the MAGA faithful. My working hypothesis is that Republicans may vote for a black Republican as long as there is a white Republican to tell him/her what to do. I suppose its possible that the MAGA faithful will see Trump as the guy to their “boy” Speaker Donalds what to do, but this is speaker of the House. Second in line to the presidency. And the presidency has to held by a white guy — Donald Trump.
Anyway, it should be a bit of fun to watch Donalds have his microsecond in the spotlight, only to see the light turned off.