The House GOP's "Bread and Circuses"

To listen to House Republicans they claim they were given a mandate to govern in the 2022 midterms, except they aren't governing.  Instead, Americans are witnessing a freak show where insane extemists have been empowered in the House and the serious business of governing and furthering the interest of a majority of Americans is nowhere on the radar.  Supposed "investigations" into Hunter Biden -  popular with the lunatic GOP base - are starting even as the extremist threaten to block an increase in the debt ceiling and drive the nation (and likely the world) into an economic meltdown that would savage American families and businesses.  One sane Republican - a truly rare species - has lamented the "bread and circuses" that Kevin McCarthy is overseeing and/or enabling to thrill the most unhinged elements of GOP base while nothing has been done on issues like border security, a crime bill or the economy.  Meanwhile, every day new stories come out about still more lies and possible crimes by George Santos - the latest at Mother Jones reports that many of his 2020 campaign donors were fabricated and did not actually exist, raising the question of where the funds actual came from.  McCarthy, of course, will do nothing against Santos given his need for Santos' vote.  A column in the Washington Posts at the GOP freak show.  Here are excerpts:

Rep. Victoria Spartz was hopping mad.  “We cannot have these kangaroo courts — it’s unacceptable,” the Indiana Republican declared this week. Her criticism was all the more biting because she directed it at the Chief Marsupial of this particular tribunal, Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Why such indignation aimed at her fellow Republican? It turns out Spartz possesses that rarest of attributes among her colleagues: intellectual consistency.

Two years ago, when the Democratic House ousted two Republicans from committees for glorifying violence against their colleagues, McCarthy (Calif.) railed against the removals as evidence of a “broken Congress.” Now, voters have given McCarthy the majority — and he is doing exactly that which he decried: He has already removed two Democrats from committees without due process, and he plans to evict a third.

“Speaker McCarthy needs to stop ‘bread and circuses’ in Congress and start governing for a change,” Spartz said in a statement objecting to the “charade” of kicking members off their committees.

It was an apt invocation of the Roman writer Juvenal’s lament 2,000 years ago that the people had abdicated their duties as citizens of the Republic in favor of “bread and circuses” provided by their imperial rulers.

Emperor McCarthy grinned when Spartz’s words were read to him this week. Asked how he would respond, he replied, “Not at all.”

In truth, the new majority doesn’t have much bread to dole out (aside from the free doughnuts and Chick-fil-A that Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) offered reporters this week in lieu of answers about his fabricated life story). But it has more clown acts than could fill the Circus Maximus.

In a column earlier this month, I referred to the growing number of “bomb throwers” in the House GOP caucus. It was more accurate than I knew.

Freshman Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) this week celebrated his appointment on the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees by handing out grenades to members of Congress. . . . This is not Mills’s first stint as arms dealer: He previously claimed to have “sold tear gas used on Black Lives Matter protesters.”

When it comes to productivity, though, the new majority is so far unarmed. McCarthy berated the previous Congress for failing to deal with the “chaos on the southern border,” “out-of-control crime” and the economy. So what is he doing about those issues now?

As for crime, the new majority had to pull two pro-police bills from the floor over internal Republican disagreements.

As for the economy, Republicans are squabbling over a bill imposing a national sales tax, which McCarthy promised the far right he would bring to the floor.

And their plan to address “chaos on the southern border” has itself devolved into chaos.

Chairman Jim Jordan (Ohio) announced that the House Judiciary Committee will hold its first hearing next week on “The Biden Border Crisis.” In case that’s too subtle, seven immigration hard-liners assembled in the House TV studio this week and alleged that President Biden is running “narco-slavery support programs.”

But the new majority isn’t actually doing anything about the border. The GOP border bill, which McCarthy promised to bring to the floor as a condition for securing the speakership, is now bogged down in intraparty disagreements. When the seven hard-liners were asked about the endangered legislation, Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) acknowledged: “I’m not sure where negotiations stand.”

Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas, co-chair of the Republicans’ Congressional Hispanic Conference, complains that the GOP bill is “not Christian” and “very anti-American,” and he worries the party is being “hijacked” by those who would block all asylum seekers, who include unaccompanied children and victims of torture and human trafficking.

While Republicans have so far stalled on crime, the economy and the border, they are moving ahead rapidly with more pressing matters — such as Hunter Biden’s artwork.

Chairman James Comer (Ky.) of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee fired off a letter Wednesday demanding information from the Georges Bergès Gallery about paintings done by the president’s son.

In the letter, Comer (his training is in agriculture) played art appraiser, declaring prices for the younger Biden’s work “exorbitant.” He wants answers from Hunter Biden’s dealer (art, not drugs) by Feb. 8. That is also the day Comer’s committee plans to hold a hearing on another matter of national urgency: Hunter Biden’s laptop.

House Republicans are saying they’re willing to risk default — an economic disaster — unless Biden agrees to cuts. But they won’t specify which cuts they want; Biden will just have to guess. “I want to look the president in the eye and tell me there’s not one dollar of wasteful spending in government,” McCarthy said, in his inimitable syntax.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has already washed his hands of the looming disaster, saying no bipartisan debt limit deal the Senate reaches “could actually pass this particular House.”

In an account of the tender friendship that has blossomed between McCarthy and Rep. Marjorie “Jewish Space Lasers” Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the New York Times had this touching remark McCarthy made to a friend: “I will never leave that woman.” . . . . McCarthy has displayed his affection with gifts, seating Greene not just on Comer’s Oversight Committee but also on the select committee probing covid-19’s origins. Greene already has ideas on the subject: She has speculated that NFL player Damar Hamlin’s collapse and the death of Diamond and Silk’s Lynnette Hardaway were both vaccine-induced.

Greene’s appointment is part of a wholesale takeover of key committees by the far right. The House Freedom Caucus, about 20 percent of the GOP caucus, now controls 38 percent of the Oversight Committee, 44 percent of the Judiciary and coronavirus panels, and 50 percent of the “weaponization of the federal government” select committee, the Post’s Aaron Blake calculates. The far right also has effective veto power over the House Rules Committee, which determines what goes to the House floor.

With so many committees overloaded with loons, it’s but a matter of time until things blow up. . . . . This is life in the circus.