I know most on Daily Kos are going to quibble with me that there are actually different factions in the House GOP, but there are two major factions: MAGA and the cowards who bow to the MAGA. And the latest House GOP “retreat” led my Mike “Moses” Johnson didn’t part the waves for the Republicans to reach the promised land. Instead, Johnson and the other so called leaders told the kids to knock off the attacks on each other, especially by running candidates against other incumbents in Republican primaries. But the kids in the back seat yelled, “He/she started it first!” And CNN has a great write up of the demolition derby that has engulfed the House GOP.
The number of targets for both sides has gone up in multiple states. So far it includes candidates in Texas, Illinois, South Carolina, and Virginia. And as pointed out in the article, the cowards who bow to MAGA are targeting at least one MAGA maniac: Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good of VA.
In fact, House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers is part of a fundraiser for Good’s primary opponent, John McGuire. Rogers and the other cowards are still a little pissed off that Good helped oust Kevin McCarthy. And I am surprised that this article didn’t mention that Congresswoman Nancy Mace is also on the Kevin McCarthy revenge list. This also goes for Eli Crane of AZ too.
As for MAGA, Gaetz is taking the lead on going RINO hunting. Looks like Gaetz blew off the retreat to campaign for MAGA lunatics who are challenging Mike Bost of IL and Tony Gonzales of TX. The article goes into at least one of Gonzales’s sins — he voted for that weak gun control bill, but I’m not exactly sure what Bost did to piss Gaetz off. But it doesn’t take much to piss of Gaetz.
Here is the money quote on why Gaetz is RINO hunting:
“I would love nothing more than to just go after Democrats,” Gaetz, who led the charge to oust McCarthy, told CNN. “But if Republicans are going to dress up like Democrats in drag, I’m going to go after them too. Because at the end of the day, we’re not judged by how many Republicans we have in Congress. We’re judged on whether or not we save the country.”
And he is not the only Freedom maniac who is RINO hunting. Seems Ralph Norman and a few other lunatics have Congressman William Timmons of SC in their gun sites. They will be holding a “big event” for his challenger, Adam Morgan.
Quote from Norman:
Norman brushed off the criticism from his colleagues and said Morgan will be “one of us.”
“We have to make some drastic changes,” Norman told CNN. “We’re losing our country. We’re going bankrupt. He just had to take a leadership role in my opinion. And we’ve got a man now that’s heading the Freedom Caucus in South Carolina. He will fight for freedom. And he will be one of us.”
As for the rest of the cowards caucus, they are just crying into their beers about what has become of the House.
Rep. Don Bacon, a swing-district Nebraska Republican, said the mood within the House GOP is “depressing” and that his party needs to do “some soul-searching.”
“It is depressing when you have your own team turning on each other because you don’t win when that happens. Teams win,” Bacon said. “We’ve undermined the norms of what we’ve had going back, really, a couple centuries, frankly. … And now we’re campaigning in each others’ districts. It undermines the team. So, I think it’s wrong.”
How often have we heard that phrase, “some soul-searching” from Republicans? None of these louses have souls. They sold their souls a long time ago.
What I find remarkable about this demolition derby is this is what us dirty fucking hippies were always accused of by the media. If progressives kicked up a fuss about say some Blue Dog Democrat from a safe House district, congressional leadership and the media would gang up on us and scream we were divisive and just purity test fanatics. But how often did progressives manage to actually successfully challenge any sitting House Democrat?
Yes, we got AOC (Thank God!) and a few others, but it took a lot of hard work and time over multiple elections. I don’t ever recall that we went after so many of our own in one election.
But is this getting much play in the media? Not really. It appears to be OK for MAGA nuts to go after their fellow Republicans. In fact, it’s getting the Trump treatment by the media. MAGA extremists are expected to act like this, so it is no biggie.
However, the House GOP internal revenge/purity test blood letting is good news for Democrats (and not John McCain!), so I imagine the media will treat it like every other bit of good news for Democrats. They will ignore it.
But bad news has a way of piling up, even for the GOP. And while the House GOP play Game of Thrones, it is not going to impress independent voters come November. I’m reasonably sure that House Democrats will be running advertisements highlighting how the GOP is eating its own. And who knows? It might actually turn off some Republican voters?
Nah!