Two Tales Of the Same GOP House

Today was the brutal indictment of how badly the modern Republican Party can run the House of Representatives.

First off, they staged - yet again - another impeachment hearing on Joe Biden by going after Biden's son Hunter for contempt, claiming he was refusing to testify before their committee when in truth he wants to testify but in public so everyone can confirm his answers are his and not quoted out of context - or lied about - by the Republican committee members.

In fact, Hunter Biden showed up unannounced at today's hearing, openly conflicting with the House Republicans' narrative, practically daring them to let him testify right then and there (via Gabriel J Sanchez for NPR):

President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden surprised members of the House Oversight Committee Wednesday when he made an unannounced appearance at a hearing on a resolution to hold him in contempt of Congress for refusing to appear before the same committee.

Sitting in the audience, not appearing for a private deposition, spurred Republican House members like Congresswoman Nancy Mace from South Carolina to call his appearance a "PR stunt."

Hunter Biden refused last month to testify in a closed-door setting, despite a subpoena for him to appear. The younger Biden and his attorneys cited concerns that Republicans would distort his comments and offered instead to appear at a public hearing.

Representative Mace questioned why the eldest son of the first family showed up. "My first question is, who bribed Hunter Biden to be here today? That's my first question."

Maybe Hunter showed up knowing it would make YOU look bad and he did it for free. But you won't put him under oath and ask him those questions, would you Mace?

The committee continued without the unscheduled star witness in a hearing that devolved into lengthy disagreements between members over everything from the rules of procedure to personal bickering.

Basically the hearing devolved in a circus, with Committee Chair James Comer unable to keep his wilder allies - Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Jim Jordan - under control. It took one of the Democratic representatives Jared Moskowitz to point out the folly of the entire shit-show (via Tori Otten at the New Republic):

Toward the end of the hearing, Moskowitz pointed out that if the issue is that Biden won’t testify, it could be easily resolved then and there. After all, Biden was at the hearing.

But when Moskowitz asked for a show of hands from people who wanted to hear Biden’s testimony, almost no Republicans raised their hand.

“I’m a visual learner,” Moskowitz quipped. “And the visual is clear. Nobody over there wants to hear from the witness.”

“The majority of my colleagues over there, including the chairman, don’t want to hear from the witness with the American people watching.”

This was never about Hunter Biden's possible criminal acts. This was never about investigating corruption in the White House. This was always about embarrassing Joe Biden to weaken his chances of winning re-election against a truly corrupt monster in donald trump.

In another part of the universe, probably about three or four doors down the hallway, the House Republicans were screwing up another matter of legislative importance: The passing of any kind of federal budget - even a continuing resolution - because their extremist Freedom Caucus members still want their bloody shutdown (via Amy B Wang and Marianna Sotomayor at the Washington Post (paywalled)):

House GOP hard-liners tanked a procedural vote Wednesday, in protest of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) striking a bipartisan spending deal with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). The revolt has once again paralyzed the chamber, even as lawmakers have fewer than 10 days to pass legislation to fund the federal government in order to avert a partial shutdown.

In a 203-216 vote Wednesday afternoon, the House failed to pass the rule to consider upcoming bills, with 13 hard-right Republicans joining Democrats in voting no. The “rules” vote has historically been a mundane procedural step in considering legislation — and one that is typically easily passed by the majority party. However, hard-line GOP lawmakers have in the past year adopted the tactic of sinking rules votes to protest decisions by party leaders that they dislike.

Hard-right Republicans sank a similar procedural vote in June, lashing out against then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for working with Democrats to pass a debt ceiling bill. It was the first rule vote to fail since 2002. In November, after McCarthy was ousted and Johnson elected speaker, a small faction of Republicans once again sank a procedural vote to protest the fact that Johnson had relied on Democrats to pass a stopgap funding measure to keep federal agencies open for several weeks...

Notice the trend here? The wingnuts keep shooting down even partial victories that their own party leadership can hammer out all because it offends their contractual purity to shut everything down and drown it in Grover's bathtub.

The vote also followed a tense Republican conference meeting Wednesday morning. It was the first time Johnson had faced GOP lawmakers to explain his deal with Schumer, and some lawmakers were angry that they had learned of the bipartisan spending agreement over the weekend via the press, rather than from their own speaker.

Several members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus criticized Johnson for accepting a deal McCarthy had made. Notably, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a House Freedom Caucus member who unsuccessfully ran for the speakership, stood up to confront Johnson during the meeting, according to people familiar with the exchange who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail the private meeting. Jordan accused Johnson of accepting a $69 billion “side deal” and not fighting hard enough to cap spending at $1.59 trillion, as the House Freedom Caucus had wanted.

What the Freedom Caucus demands are things that will never pass a Democratic Senate... and they know it. This is the wingnuts' way of pretending the problem is with everyone else not surrendering to their whims.

There'd been buzz earlier today that the Freedom Caucus were plotting yet another Motion to Vacate, so quickly on the aftermath of removing McCarthy, but it's died down since because even the crazies know they can only crash that particular bus over the cliffs so many times before they lose the control they think they still have. If they try that motion - if they remove yet another Speaker of their own party - it opens up further rifts between the Rational and Irrational wings of the House. It may scare away any remaining Rational leader from trying for the Speakership (again), but it will convince the Rational factions to refuse promoting any Irrational knowing full well they shouldn't reward this bad behavior with that prize.

If the Freedom Caucus thinks they can get the Democrats to relent and give them everything they want - destruction of immigration policy, tax cuts for the rich and deregulations across the board, defunding the IRS, making donald trump Queen of the May Fair, what have you - they haven't noticed how the Democrats refuse to concede in previous hostage-taking attempts, and simply waited out until the GOP Speaker wriggled out a compromise deal the Freedom Caucus can't sabotage. No, it won't be what the Dems would like to pass, but it'll be better than caving to the Crash-The-Bus-Over-the-Cliffs extremists.

It may seem odd that Speaker Johnson committed a bipartisan deal like this considering how it was the same type of deal-making that doomed McCarthy earlier. But this proves that once in the seat of power, even the Republican wingnut Speaker realizes that leadership requires action, and that in spite of the bomb-throwing anti-government rhetoric of his own party he is responsible for getting things done. Hence making deals that the angry Irrational factions can't abide.

In the meantime, the House Republicans keep demonstrating two things over and over: They are not serious about passing legislation a majority of Americans truly want; and they are incapable of governing themselves let alone the entire nation.

Kakistocracy in action, people. Gods, they suck.