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In all of 2023, a dysfunctional Congress handed solely 27 payments. Worse nonetheless, apart from kicking the can down the street by passing short-term extensions of funding, what they handed was largely issues like renaming some Veterans Affairs clinics and commissioning a commemorative coin for the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps.
Republicans took a file 15 humiliating votes to elect a speaker, then eliminated that speaker regardless that he was the social gathering’s greatest fundraiser, then they spent extra weeks in fruitless makes an attempt to call a brand new speaker earlier than settling for somebody whose solely attribute was that he was too unknown to have devoted enemies. Then there was the resignation of the previous speaker, deeply embarrassing failures to easily rely their votes, inside divisions of each description, a Republican member expelled from Congress, and the deep, deep ignominy of destroying the border deal they’d spent the whole yr demanding simply to please Donald Trump.
The partitions on the Republican aspect of the Home and Senate might not really be inscribed with mene mene tekel upharsin, however they could as nicely be. Weighed and located wanting is a superb description of Republicans in Congress—and it doesn’t take a Biblical prophet to learn this message. As CNN studies, confronted with a chaotic social gathering engaged in consuming its personal to learn a candidate who has already taken them to defeat within the final three election cycles, some big-name Republicans are heading for the exits.
As of Monday, 23 Republicans within the Home and Senate have introduced they received’t be in search of reelection in 2024. That features 5 committee chairs.
A kind of departing is Home Homeland Safety Committee Chairman Rep. Mark Inexperienced, whose announcement featured this assertion: “Our nation—and our Congress—is damaged past most technique of restore.”
After all, there’s a answer. Below Democratic management in 2022, Congress handed 310 payments, 95% of them with bipartisan help. It’s superb what could be carried out when congressional management doesn’t have to attend for the phrase from Mar-a-Lago earlier than taking a step.
With Congress mired in dysfunction and Trump working on a retribution tour that guarantees nothing however fireplace and brimstone for his enemies, the Republican platform for 2024 is shaping as much as be precisely what it was in 2020: a pledge of Trump loyalty and nothing else.
Apart from main the group in chants of Trump, Trump, Trump, Republicans in any respect different ranges have precisely nothing left to run on in 2024. Republicans haven’t simply tied their social gathering to the identical man who led them to failure in 2018, 2020, and 2022, they’ve made following this pie-faced piper the solely measure of Republicaness.
Because the self-immolation over the border deal confirmed, it’s not sufficient for Republicans to only swear fealty to Trump. They should give up all concepts of unbiased company. They don’t simply haven’t any platform, they’re not allowed to have concepts. Even candidates who’ve made a present of endorsing Trump and loved his favor prior to now can discover themselves the goal of a few of that boundless retribution in the event that they cross an invisible line.
The just lately ousted speaker has severe doubts about American voters becoming a member of in simply so Trump may give a thumbs down in a spherical of vengeance video games. “America would not wish to see the thought of retribution,” mentioned McCarthy. Besides retribution is all Trump has left to promote. Effectively, retribution and sneakers.
“Trump actually cares solely about retribution for himself, and it’ll devour a lot of a second time period,” wrote former nationwide safety adviser John Bolton. Bolton went on to explain Trump’s fondness for humiliating individuals, and his unwillingness to contemplate something that doesn’t supply a profit for himself.
That is all Trump is worried about. Trump, and Trump alone, is all that is still of the Republican Occasion.
Add on 91 felony counts, a current loss in a large fraud case, and a second spherical of losses to a girl he sexually assaulted in a division retailer, and the Republican Occasion is left bending the knee to a three-time loser who’s going to spend most of 2024 in courtroom and stands a really actual probability of spending 2025 in jail.
No platform. No plan. And a closely broken candidate who has already loved a seven-year string of unbroken losses. Republicans don’t have anything to run on however chaos, and nothing to stay up for however the worry that they’ll be Trump’s subsequent goal.
“MAGA disowns her and anybody else that associates/works along with her,” learn a current Trump marketing campaign social media message concentrating on the marketing campaign’s 2020 communications director for working final yr to elect DeSantis. “TRAITOR!”
This can be a recipe for Republican catastrophe. And whereas Republicans might not wish to admit it, they will actually see the storm forward. These high-profile departures from Congress aren’t taking place as a result of they’re bored with Rep. Matt Gaetz’s sneer (or a minimum of, not solely due to that). Republicans are working for the exit as a result of they don’t wish to face the thought of being again within the minority, and not in a position to waste all of the Home time mumbling about Hunter Biden’s laptop computer.
If Trump wins, Republicans can see that they’ll haven’t any company and be diminished to marching in lock-step with the nice chief it doesn’t matter what. As one unnamed lawmaker informed CNN, “A few of them say, ‘I don’t wish to should endorse him, I don’t wish to should serve underneath him.’ That’s one thing else that’s weighing in a variety of the non-public conversations I’m having.”
If Trump loses, Republicans notice that they’ll be consigned to the again bench the place they will proceed their inside squabbles and attempt to rebuild their wreck of a celebration. With no insurance policies. They usually nonetheless would possibly discover themselves compelled to put on ridiculous crimson hats and much more ridiculous gold sneakers as a pledge of allegiance to the dying coronary heart of a dying social gathering.
Neither certainly one of these prospects appears to be like like a variety of enjoyable. Which is making that exit signal extra engaging every single day.
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Ohhhhh yeah! Democrats kicked ass after which some in Tuesday’s particular election in New York, so after all we’re speaking all about it on this week’s episode of “The Downballot.” Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard clarify how Tom Suozzi’s win impacts the mathematics for Democrats’ plan to take again the Home, then dive into the seemingly bottomless listing of excuses Republicans have been making to handwave their defeat away. The underside line: Suozzi successfully neutralized assaults on immigration—and abortion remains to be an enormous loser for the GOP.
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