New: McConnell responds to Republicans blaming him for border debacle
“I’ve had a small group of persistent critics the whole time I’ve been in this job. They had their shot … The reason we’ve been talking about the border is because they wanted to"https://t.co/VRG6ZtrAPe
— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) February 7, 2024
To highlight a powerful statement from Adam’s Ukraine update, last Sunday:
McConnell broke the Senate in order to accumulate the power to achieve a very specific set of political objectives: 1) to cut taxes for the wealthy, 2) to remove as many regulations on the wealthy and on businesses as possible, 3) to remove as many campaign finance regulations as possible to ensure it was legal for the wealthy to shovel obscene amounts of money at him and his caucus members making them wealthy beyond their dreams, and 4) to pack the courts with Federalist Society apparatchiks who would both do through the judicial process what he could not accomplish legislatively and, perhaps more importantly, ensure that none of this could ever be reversed by Democratic presidents working with Democratic majority Congresses.
What McConnell did not foresee that in doing so he was hollowing out the Republican Party and the conservative movement – including the white traditionalist Catholic and white evangelical churches – that sustain it. The result of McConnell’s labors is that instead of one Republican Party and one conservative movement, we now have dozens. The one the Kochs fund, the one the Mercers fund, the one the Uhliens fund, the one Art Pope funds in NC, the one the DeVos/Prince clan funds, etc, etc, etc. In some cases these ultra-high net worth individuals just buy their own Republican officials. Peter Thiel owns JD Vance. A multi-millionaire in Miami created the political career of Marco Rubio. And it was into this hollow shell of a party and a movement that Donald Trump, ever looking for his next set of marks and preternaturally capable of identifying them, recognized that he could just waddle right in and execute a hostile takeover for pennies on the dollar. And, in fact, get others to provide the pennies for him to do so.
Now that McConnell wants something else from his caucus, as well as their counterparts in the House for his “legacy”… he’s not going to get it.
But never forget who the architect of the current moment is. Sure he had accomplices like Leonard Leo and Don McGahn and a host of others you’ve never heard of, but we are where we are because McConnell had four objectives and he was willing to and did break every rule, norm, and tradition to achieve them.
Could not happen to a more deserving elderly villain.
From the Politico story — “Behind the border mess: Open GOP rebellion against McConnell”:
… McConnell, now nearing his 82nd birthday, is determined to fund the Ukrainian war effort, a push his allies have depicted as legacy-defining. But now that his party is set on Wednesday to reject a bipartisan trade of tougher border policies for war funding, his far-right critics are speaking out more loudly: Several held a press conference Tuesday where they denounced his handling of the border talks, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) calling on McConnell to step down.
In an interview, McConnell rejected the criticism and said his antagonists fail to recognize the reality of divided government.
“I’ve had a small group of persistent critics the whole time I’ve been in this job. They had their shot,” McConnell said, referring to Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) challenge to his leadership in 2022.
“The reason we’ve been talking about the border is because they wanted to, the persistent critics,” he added. “You can’t pass a bill without dealing with a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate.”…
More and more of Senate Republicans’ internal strife is seeping out into public view, exposing years-old beefs that are still simmering. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) posted a fundraising link asking donors to “kill this border bill” in the middle of a closed-door GOP meeting on Monday and demanded “new leadership,” while Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) memed McConnell as Charlie Brown whiffing on an attempt to kick a football held by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.).
“I’ve been super unhappy since this started,” Johnson said in an interview. “Leader McConnell completely blew this.”…
McConnell’s loud critics are among those most responsible for raising opposition to the border deal, attacking its provisions while the text was being finalized. They raised such a ruckus that none of McConnell’s potential successors as leader — Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), John Cornyn (R-Texas) and John Thune (R-S.D.) — offered to support it.
McConnell can’t be ejected spontaneously like a House speaker, meaning his job is safe until the end of the year. He also has major sway over the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC that may have to help Cruz, Scott and other Republicans win reelection…
The animosity McConnell now faces from Ron Johnson, Lee and others isn’t new either: They’ve questioned Senate GOP leadership’s decisions for years.
Ron Johnson’s been a thorn in McConnell’s side for years, particularly after many Republicans abandoned his reelection bid in 2016. Cruz has sparred with McConnell since getting to the Senate in 2013, Lee frequently breaks with leadership and a number of newer GOP senators voted for Scott over McConnell in 2022.
One GOP senator, granted anonymity to assess the situation candidly, said that the new wave of attacks could be happening because McConnell’s opponents sense weakness — or just out of “personal pique” over years-old disagreements…
“This wasn’t good for him. This wasn’t good for any of us,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) of McConnell, whom he backed in 2022. “And I’m not gonna say he’s the total cause of it, but we got to have a better plan. This didn’t work out for us.”
It’s got to particularly sting for McConnell that his challengers are the dumbest / most venal / least crafty but loudest members of ‘his’ party. Right now, his legacy is being framed as destroying the Senate for the benefit of… Donald Trump. At least selling his office to the Federalist Society and its billionaire supporters could be disguised with a figleaf of serious conservatism; all Mitch has now is the ‘honor’ of leading a smash’n’grab mob.
steve g
Not only that, but Mitch is too old.
BeautifulPlumage
Ah yes, vultures coming home to roost
West of the Rockies
And yet I hope that Mitch (who now resembles an amphibious Crypt Keeper) outlives Trump.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I think that’s giving Turtle to much credit, the rot really started in the ’90s when the GoP outsourced their messaging and get out the vote to the conservative Evangelical churches and Right Wing Media. Neither group is interested in governing.
piratedan
kind of ironic, when the cause is making sure that all of the cash can flow into their coffers at the expense of offering the cruelest outcomes to our democracy everyone (in the GOP) is on board and the one time he actually strives to do a semi-decent thing (aid to our allies), he finds that the methods he used to allow his colleagues to be bought have turned out to have them be arrayed against his one decent impulse.
so just when our allies need him, our immigration crisis needs him, McConnell can’t deliver because he’s crated a caucus full of grifters and rogues that are beholden to no party, no country. Damn Mitch, you got yourself played.
Biff Baxter
Always thought that Mitch is an awful person but he isn’t stupid. His opponents within the GOP are both awful and stupid.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Biff Baxter: Smart and unprincipled is more dangerous than stupid and unprincipled, any day. The real danger lies in someone who’s smart, unprincipled, and desperate.
tokyokie
I think McConnell may be somewhat more sympathetic on the immigration issue because his wife is foreign-born. True, she’s from a wealthy family, but McConnell caucuses with a lot of racists assholes who’d prefer immigration be limited to natives of countries that speak Germanic languages.
mrmoshpotato
It’s been a while since I’ve called this bastard a turtle-faced fascist motherfucker. Go fuck yourself, Moscow Mitch, you turtle-faced fascist motherfucker.
Enjoy the monster you’ve been building for 40+ years.
Baud
Via Reddit
mrmoshpotato
@West of the Rockies:
Thanks for the early morning laugh!
NotMax
As always,the moving finger points to Reagan. Did not take many steps to travel from “Morning in America” to “Mourning for America.”
//
brantl
I’ve seen several pictures, taken recently of McTurtle, and they all could best be captioned “Oh, I’ve shart myself!”, and truth be told, he has, for all intents and purposes.
Baud
@NotMax:
Agreed.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: One more reason to impeach Biden.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Or at least defeated.
Reversing this will be the first thing a Republican controlled government does.
Baud
They learned not passing bills from you, dad.
mrmoshpotato
Pups inside!
via bluegal
The Hellhounds are getting excited. They heard that some chefs from Kansas City are busy preparing big supper bowls for Sunday. They can’t wait!
eclare
I wonder if part of this is also retribution from TIFG. McConnell denounced him pretty harshly for Jan 6, they haven’t spoken for years, and McConnell has yet to endorse him. I am sure nothing would make TIFG happier than to see McConnell fail, bigly.
satby
@eclare: good point.
Anotherlurker
I have a modest proposal: Gather the top 100,000 republican office holders in this country in a SEC Conference mega stadium. All 100,000 must be armed with multiple handguns, assault rifles, knives and baseball bats. Pass out all the top shelf booze they can drink. pass out 1/2 a day’s food supply. Spike said food supply with home made Meth. Lock all the doors. Pump in the non-lethal but psycho active gas of your choice.
Antics will ensue. Televise the antics on pay-per-view, worldwide. Use the proceeds to fund a raise for social security and fund women’s healthcare.
This is my modest proposal. s//
brantl
Mitch McConnell, the douche that keeps on douche-ing.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Anotherlurker: I have limited faith in humanity, but enough to postulate that your endeavor wouldn’t make back its expenses, let alone enough profit to provide aid to those worthy causes. Watching horrible people do horrible things to one another may be entertaining in small doses, but at the large scale, it’s something to be endured more than enjoyed, and the schadenfreude needs to be leavened with at least some hope.
:)
OzarkHillbilly
I detect a flaw, but I can propose a solution. Take all that top shelf booze and pour it out of their bottles into appropriate containers. Replace it with the cheapest rotgut you can find. They will never admit it’s paint stripper and after awhile they won’t care.
Save the good shit for yourself and your 100 closest friends to sip on lazy Sunday afternoons.
Baud
@Anotherlurker:
Wait, Republicans don’t naturally produce their own psycho active gases?
Van Buren
I wish I could feel sympathy for Mitch, but since he and Newt were the prime causes of the enshitification of politics, I have none to give.
satby
I thought eliminationist fantasy was a Republican value.
And Republicans have been traitors since the Nixon campaign promised the
NorthSouth Vietnamese they’d get a better deal from the peace talks from him during the 1968 election.lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
Reagan’s crew killed the Fairness Doctrine, and where we are now flowed from there.
To refresh people’s memories, the Fairness Doctrine wasn’t the same as the equal-time provision, which only applied to campaign ads. But what the Fairness Doctrine did was require that if a TV or radio program presented one side of an issue, the other side had to be given at least some modest opportunity to reply on that same program.
Rush Limbaugh would have gone nowhere if the Fairness Doctrine had remained in place. And of course, downstream from Rush’s success we had Newt Gingrich & Co. winning the House in 1994, and Rush was basically the proof of concept for Fox News. And most of the shit we’re in today is downstream from Fox News.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
This. When Mitch became Senate GOP leader in 2007, he took the filibuster from being used occasionally to being used every time the other side didn’t have 60 votes. And if there’s any one thing that’s broken Congress, that’s it.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Agreed. It stopped being a somewhat workable gentleman’s agreement because of him.
Baud
Oh, Sinema is on my TV looking and sounding professional.
If she has done that all along, she would have been a Senator for life.
Betty Cracker
The Times says Marianne Williamson has “suspended” her campaign. Didn’t she beat the pants off Rep. Phillips in
New HampshireSouth Carolina, like 2.6% to 1.7%? Drop out, Dean!mrmoshpotato
@lowtechcyclist: Limbaugh is still dead, right? Ah yes. He is. Excellent.
satby
Historian Thomas Zimmer had a good post yesterday.
Domination or Dissolution, Rule or Ruin
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker: Someone lost to Marianne Williamson?!
Dean Phillips apparently has no self respect.
satby
@mrmoshpotato: But Joe Rogan carries on to a new generation.
Soprano2
@Baud: Then they’ll complain about the debt.
mrmoshpotato
@satby: This – is unfortunately true.
Baud
@Soprano2:
Only solution is to cut Social Security and Medicare.
mrmoshpotato
Can someone send me some winter weather? February, Chicago, 50°
This. Ain’t. Right.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Well, we finally know your identity.
GFY Paul Ryan!
:)
Frankensteinbeck
Adam left out three goals: Overturn Roe, erase all evidence a black man was ever president, and punish America for the obscenity of electing one to a job that in any way be considered his boss.
He’s from a pre-desegregation Alabama aristocratic family. He went apeshit, total war obstructionist before anybody else. Just because he can string ten polite words together doesn’t mean he’s not a rabid, hate-fueled bigot.
Chris Johnson
@eclare: That’s an understatement.
Trump is Putin’s guy, and McConnell’s enemies are Putin’s Senators, and the reasons Mitch flipped on Putin after working with them are twofold:
Putin’s a loser. Cannot even beat Ukraine and does everything by espionage and subversion and is running out of money. Got Trump into office and wasn’t able to do anything with it, and the resulting coup attempt was total shit, otherwise Mitch would be backing Trump and Putin to this day.
And: McConnell is a treacherous fuck and will never stop being one, and is way smarter than the lot of them. He was on Putin’s side only as long as it suited him, and when he flipped it was because Putin ceased to be useful to him, and Mitch has stainless steel cojones as far as having the nerve to be treacherous. I still suspect some of his injuries were because he’d got roughed up by Russian goons. Didn’t matter, he’d flipped and Putin wasn’t going to get him back.
Mitch is still alive, and that’s why I think he’s got dirt on these people and has their nuts in a vise. For him to flip again, it’d require that they prove they can conquer America for Putin WITHOUT his help, and he surely knows Russia won’t trust him again so a re-flip won’t be easy.
Yeah, Mitch is not going to be endorsing Donald Trump. Right now he’s not even sorry for what he did, he’s just sitting in his position as one of the most powerful and treacherous people in the world, poking Russia with a stick, laughing at them, and making their goals more difficult just to fuck with them.
That part at least, I appreciate.
MagdaInBlack
@mrmoshpotato: Possible thunderstorms tonight, maybe even a tornado watch.
Baud
@satby:
Yes. I hope we can retire “The Kids are Alright” phrase.
All people suck. It’s just a question of relativity.
mrmoshpotato
@MagdaInBlack: Nice, but I’m greedy and would like a thundersnow blizzard. 😁🌩️🌨️
ETA – also probably preferable to tornadoes.
MagdaInBlack
@mrmoshpotato: You keep those wishes to yourself, tyvm.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chris Johnson:
People’s belief in Putin’s ability and inclination to assassinate people is wildly overstated. He almost exclusively kills people who threaten his rule over Russia. He almost exclusively does it in Russia. He has managed to assassinate a couple of Russian critics in England who had no protection, which has made people think his reach must be infinite. Mitch is entirely safe.
mrmoshpotato
@MagdaInBlack: Hehe! But thundersnow is so weird and awesome!
Craig
@Biff Baxter: I don’t think Mitch is as smart as he thinks he is.
Nelle
@steve g: But, just as Mike Johnson followed Kevin McCarthy, the successors to McConnell may be worse. And if D’s lose the Senate? Who then? Win or lose, the Orange One and Putin are in control of the R’s. What kind of threats are keeping them in line?
Chris Johnson
@Frankensteinbeck: I agree. Putin’s ability to just murder anybody anywhere is mobster fantasy.
That’s why it has worked so well on so many Republican office-holders, and why it doesn’t work on Mitch. There’s still a lot of Republicans who are conspiratorially minded, and those are the ones who see vengeful Putin goons lurking everywhere, and so they willingly go along because they’ve mentally inflated his ability to punish them for unfaithfulness.
Frankensteinbeck
@Craig:
I don’t think he is, either. The myth of Mitch’s genius is also vastly exaggerated. He rabidly wanted to overturn Obamacare. His caucus rabidly wanted to overturn Obamacare. He still failed, largely because he just couldn’t resist trying to gut the safety net in the process. His only big legislative accomplishment was a tax cut that was absolutely non-controversial among his caucus. Obstruction is much, much easier than doing things.
Mitch’s genius is his complete psychopathy. Even more than Trump, McConnell sees the unwritten rules of the world and is willing to break them. This is so much harder and rarer a power than people realize.
Craig
@Frankensteinbeck: agreed.
Dagaetch
@Frankensteinbeck: Mitch is the smartest Republican in elected office, that just isn’t saying much.
Betty Cracker
@Chris Johnson:
Alternate theory: McConnell is an old man who occasionally falls down.
Baud
I feel like emphasizing the threats to Republicans has the effect of mitigating their agency. Maybe they want to help their allies.
Betty Cracker
@satby: My millennial brother listens to that douchebag and gets mad when I point out Rogan is the heir of Limbaugh. But it’s true! 😂
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Yeah, I’m pretty sure Putin gets exactly what he wants from them because they are fellow travelers.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Why does he get mad? Does he consider himself a liberal?
MagdaInBlack
@mrmoshpotato: If you can arrange this awesome weirdness for AFTER my evening commute, Im in. 😉
Craig
@Baud: yeah. They want rich people to have all the money. Corporations to have the power to do whatever they want to make more more for rich people. Have crazy Evangelicals able to persecute anyone who doesn’t toe their line. They like the cut of Putin’s jib and are welcoming of emulating that here. Putin is aligned with those desires.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@lowtechcyclist:
So much of what that bastard enacted we’ve seen play out, badly, over the last 40 years.
satby
@Baud: Exactly.
satby
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Well, it certainly helped, but the slavers, the Know-Nothings and the John Birch Society had large followings before the Fairness Doctrine existed. The current struggle is the latest in the battle for the soul of this country, as President Joe has often said.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: He definitely doesn’t consider himself a liberal. He’s sort of libertarian-ish, i.e., mostly liberal on social issues but buys into some of the anti-woke garbage Rogan peddles. (I consider that a personal failure since I helped raise him.)
He gets insulted when I say Rogan is his generation’s Limbaugh because he thinks Rush was an uncool GOP shill who got rich propagandizing uncool boomer douchebags. Which is true! He just doesn’t see Rogan is doing the exact same thing with a new generation of gullible marks.
Baud
@satby:
Yeah, it’s complicated. Obviously, the right has gotten worse, but our side has gotten better. The country is more polarized, but the average is about the same.
@Betty Cracker:
That’s so funny. I have to admit, oftentimes when I hear young people talking about Boomers and other things, it remind me of how Boomers were when they were young.
ETA: Never trust anyone over 30.
Dorothy A. Winsor
It’s not quite 7am and it’s 45 degrees. Positively balmy!
Supreme Court arguments re Colorado removing Trump from the ballot start at 10 blog time. I’m going to find a live poster.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Should be easier than finding a dead poster.
lowtechcyclist
@satby:
The Know-Nothings are a century or so before my time. But growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, AFAICT even most Republicans thought the Birchers were a bunch of kooks. Their following was bigger than what we call “the Left” around here, but that’s not saying much.
Layer8Problem
Putin threatening Republicans is no more likely than mobsters targeting cops and for the same reason: it has tremendous blowback, actually promoting a strong reaction.
As for Republicans excusing their voting behavior because of the crazies in their base threatening them and their families, welcome to public service. Democrats and judges have had threats against them forever, and yet they still seem to get out of bed in the morning and do the job. Republicans just like having a convenient excuse for doing exactly what they wanted to do in the first place to justify to centerists why they had to make those awful votes with the rest of their party. Vote for me, I really didn’t want to do the bad thing I did.
satby
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Link at end of this post which you may have seen, on what to watch for during the arguments from Democracy Docket.
lowtechcyclist
@Layer8Problem:
Totally with you on this. The response is simple: if they can’t stand the heat, they can fucking resign and let someone else take over who can. And in the meantime, are they leaning on the FBI to crack down on the people who do the threatening? (Of course they aren’t.)
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Everything was different when communism and (actual) socialism were a geopolitical and ideological threat. Say what you will about the Cold War, but it had a disciplining effect on the right.
(Along with the discrediting of fascism because of WWII, which unfortunately is dying off).
Dorothy A. Winsor
@satby: Thanks
Geminid
House Democrats will shuttle across the Ptomac to Leesburg today for their annual retreat. President Biden will address them at 4 p.m. His opening remarks will be covered by news cameras, according to this mornings Politico Playbook.
Then the cameras will leave and the fun begin. With the Border bill now scuppered by the Republicans, the pressing topic will likely be the Israeli/Gaza War and I expect there will be some fierce exchanges. This has always been a potential wedge issue for Democrats, maybe our biggest.
Baud
@Geminid:
Thanks. Reports should be interesting.
satby
@lowtechcyclist: I would guess that the overlap in % of population between Birchers and Q-Anon is pretty close. My point was that we’ve always had anti-democratic groups trying to subvert the laws of this country since its founding. The names of the groups change, their goals never do.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
OTOH, I could loan her a wall poster. ;-)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@lowtechcyclist:
Exactly. All that crap was around long before Reagan, it’s simply with his election, that crap started to become mainstreamed and here we are 40 years later dealing not just with things like the demise of the Fairness Doctrine but whole host of other, previously dismissed claptrap (Reaganomics anyone?).
And all the underlying racism that’s made up the GOP and GOP political stragety (Fuck You Lee Atwater, no deathbed forgiveness from me) is no longer underlying, it’s out loud and proud.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Good point. The biggest change in US politics from pre- to post-Reagan was Dems losing whites in the South (and to a lesser extent, in the mountain west).
Geminid
@Baud: This morning’s Playbook led with an item about Mark Meadows with links to a NYT Magazine about him. The report is that when Jack Smith’s team subpoenaed Meadows he met with them for hours, followed by 6 hours in front of the grand jury.
Chief Oshkosh
@Betty Cracker: And he, his guests, and the commentary are just so.fucking.stupid. Just mind-blowingly DUMB. It’s like they revel in the inanity. And, of course, he has to ratchet it up just daily. He is the Limbaugh of his time, a dash of Stern (in that he hosts guests who mainly agree with him and desperately want to be seen as the dudest of the dude-bros).
Eyeroller
@Betty Cracker: Mitch is an old man with post-polio syndrome. He probably should be using a cane or walker at all times, but won’t. Maybe he does in private. It’s no surprise he’s been falling recently, and there is no need for conspiracy theorizing.
Anne Laurie
YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!!!, the universal
whingeballad of men who grew up with older sisters. (As I have reason to know.)lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Maybe with respect to foreign policy. But the thing about the Fairness Doctrine was that it really minimized the extent to which political viewpoints were expressed on the airwaves at all, and in a pre-Internet era, that limited the spread of craziness. Stuff like the anti-D&D bullshit had to spread by word of mouth, mimeographed handouts, and local non-megachurch (weren’t a thing yet) pastors preaching about it.
NorthLeft
If you could pick one person in the world to be your arch enemy/nemesis, I don’t think you could pick a “better” one than the dumbest person in Congress, Senator Ron Johnson.
I doubt Mitch loses any sleep at night or during the day worrying about what super genius Ron Johnson is plotting.
lowtechcyclist
@satby:
And my point was that they don’t usually constitute much of a threat because their following is limited. In our lifetimes, getting rid of the Fairness Doctrine was a big step towards changing that.
The 19th century was a whole different thing: the differences between the slave and free states were papered over from the very beginning in order to maintain a fragile Union, and the possibility of secession was never far away; it’s not like nobody talked about it until Lincoln got elected. Hell, Jefferson wrote about the causes of what would become the Civil War more than four decades before it happened.
Eyeroller
@lowtechcyclist: Jefferson wrote about “the firebell in the night” while enthusiastically participating.
But as to the Fairness Doctrine, it could not have survived the appearance of cable. Cable was not regulated by the FCC and once one-sided political speech started there, it would have inevitably led to it spreading to the “public” airwaves.
Subsole
@Baud:
I was about to say.
The irony is far too rich for human consumption.
grubert
long time ago thought that if you give billionaires the freedom to throw bags of money directly at politicians, the country would be plagued by battling billionaires.
so reading this take on the Republican party, at least the confirmation of obvious logic.. that part feels good.
Yeah, I really love what Godzilla vs King Kong does to the neighborhood.. /s
Replier
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
You are wrong, comrade.
artem1s
It’s unlikely McConnell would ever lose an election to a Dem and no GOPer could primary him. But let’s be honest, the MSM has ignored his health problems as much as (or more than) they’ve ignored TIFG’s. When he goes, it’s going to leave a vacuum in the GOP Senate leadership so HUUGE that it will make the revolving Speakers seat fiasco look like a small skirmish in comparison. I don’t get a sense that the GOP is anymore prepared to find a comparable substitute for him anymore than they were prepared to replace Ryan or McCarthy. Loosing that last anchor to the Glory Dayz of the GOP is going to kill the Party faster than losing their orange cult leader. When it finally happens, I’ll be rooting for injuries.
Chris T.
@West of the Rockies:
I suspect he will: McTurtle is in worse shape (older and, with polio, sicker) than Orange Bastard, but he’s degenerating a lot more slowly. He probably has a much healthier diet, and probably gets actual exercise.
stinger
@Baud:
Love this!
Paul in KY
@Anotherlurker: That would be must-see TV!
Ruckus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
They aren’t interested in governing, they are interested in owning.
These are the type of people that owned slaves and thought it was right and proper to do so, back in the day. A day which thankfully is long gone. At least for normal people.
Ruckus
@OzarkHillbilly:
Even as one who does not drink alcohol I applaud your proposal.