After writing that politics blog post yesterday, I switched my attention to vacuum sealing some Mason jars of dried herbs and a few other dried things I had put into jars. That got me thinking about how my first container gardening effort went, what I want to change this year, problems to work on fixing, and looking through my pantry and doing some rearranging.
Of course, last night I watched the 14th vote for Speaker of the House and the 15th, final vote. I looked at the Twitter politics commentary and I had FOX News on my TV. The FOX primetime was a disingenuous spin show, as ridiculous as anything CNN and MSNBC churn out. There were efforts to recast this spectacle as some important political happening that’s going to usher in momentous change and “accountability” in Washington. There was political reputation rebuilding efforts for Chip Roy and Hannity even had on Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz, two of the most ridiculous spin clowns ever to get elected to office, on his show. Hannity was working hard to offer them face-saving too.
McCarthy’s team believed a deal had been reached, hence the FOX primetime effort to plaster on a united front and paint this spectacle as some important change, before the 10 pm, 14th vote. Matt Gaetz set-up a surprise ambush at the end of that vote, leaving McCarthy one vote short.
It’s always been easier for me to see the corruption and moral bankruptcy of liberals and the far-left, because their politics and tactics are an affront to everything I believe. It’s been much harder for me to realize how corrupt and morally bankrupt so many Republican politicians and right-wing media are. And of course, the right’s embrace of Trump, exposed the hypocrisy of the moral preening, when Trump supporters would bend over backwards to make excuses for Trump’s appalling conduct – conduct they would never condone from anyone else. All the crap FOX News was selling last night was a pile of rotting garbage.
I seriously doubt the rule changes Chip Roy negotiated will change anything for the better in Washington, when Democrats control the Senate and the White House. What McCarthy did was sell all the power of the speakership to a handful of political arsonists. I have nothing against Chip Roy, but I will say that when you align yourself with spin clowns like Boebert and Gaetz, who are the GOP version of liberal activists who obstruct traffic or glue themselves to paintings in art museums (political arsonists), you shouldn’t be surprised when they pull a stunt like Gaetz did in that 14th vote. The GOP House is now set to be held hostage by these “burn it all down” fools.
A long time ago I wrote about The Last Refuge blog, which became a popular conservative blog back in the Obama years, then that blog became like Trump Polling Central with inside the campaign updates, when Trump ran for president in 2016. I came to being aware of that blog when it made a list of the most popular right-wing blogs in the Obama years. Well, last night on Twitter, I saw The Last Refuge account had moved from trying to trash Ron DeSantis to smearing Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG,) one of the Trumper darlings. MTG had voted for McCarthy all along, so The Last Refuge blog was spreading a story that MTG and McCarthy are having an affair. I was waiting for them to label MTG a RINO, because this is the mentality Trumpian politics has ushered in – you’re either with Trump or you’ll be destroyed and smeared. Eventually, I expect the most extreme Trump zealots to toss Trump to the wayside too.
This is an orchestrated spin smear campaign:
Last night, apparently Trump still had enough sway to get the Gaetz crowd to stand-down, but among the most rabid section of the Trump-right, there was a distinct power shift and Gaetz and Boebert increased their “toughness” cred, while Trump lost some. MTG has been discarded for the moment. That’s how “take no prisoners” politics, that Trump normalized among the right, works. The American political left has operated like this for decades. Trump will be perceived as blinking first. And when the next issue emerges that this extreme faction of Trumpworld gets behind and demands a “burn it all down,” approach, it won’t be Chip Roy they’ll be rallying behind – it will be Matt Gaetz or other political arsonists, who will hold out longer.
Plenty of the online social media right-wing crowd will buy into all the “burn it all down” politics and all the crazy conspiracy theories too, because reactionary behavior and embracing outrageous political sideshows has been normalized in right-wing media and by too many Republican politicians. Getting a Speaker selected should be basically a ceremonial function, when your party won the majority – not a fight to the death among your own side, while your political opponents are gleefully watching you burn your own credibility to the ground. They had since November to work all this out. The political arsonists are more energized at destroying “RINOs” and anyone else on the right who doesn’t march in lockstep with them, than they are about defeating Democrats and their policies. You can’t slash and burn your way to getting legislation passed; you have to build consensus and cut deals. That’s just how it works. More effort will go into in-fighting by the Gaetz crowd.
That’s how I see it and I’m done with the politics for a bit and want to work on things around my own home – that really matter in my life. Both sides in Washington are hopeless pits of corruption and truly amoral opportunists and zealots.
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