Friday, October 20, 2023

Bottom of the Barrel

 There is nothing normal or acceptable about the ongoing inability of the Republican Party to select a Speaker of the House. For days, the leading candidate has been the bomb thrower from Ohio, Jim Jordan, who over many years in Congress has not even been able to craft one piece of legislation or make any other positive contribution to public policy.

That’s largely because as a founder of the so-called Freedom Caucus, the right-wing extremist faction of the GOP, his goal is disruption and chaos, not legislation and governance.

As part of his bully campaign to win the Speaker position, he has marshaled his conservative allies to generate pressure on his ~20 colleagues who (so far) have not been willing to vote for him.

That campaign includes death threats, reminiscent of course of the tactics used by his mentor, Donald Trump.

When some warn that Trump represents an authoritarian ideology that would undermine our democracy, it is this sort of thing we are talking about. Death threats against political opponents have no place in a democracy, where free and fair elections determine who holds power.

Jim Jordan is not fit to be Speaker of the House any more than Trump is fit to be President. It is a measure of the degree of the crisis we face that they continue to pollute our public spaces when they belong, at best, in the dustbin of history. And in Trump’s case, in jail.

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