There's an air over the House Republican caucus that is both petty and baroque, some amalgam of late Soviet nomenklatura and Real Housewives franchise, @joshtpm.bsky.social writes.
talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/reali…
We love this for them! Josh Marshall, at TPM:
… When a group is in danger it pulls together. But at a certain point the Titanic isn’t “in danger”; it’s sinking. And at that moment of crystallization one person looks at another and says, ‘I never liked you, motherfucker!’ and throws a punch. What else is there to do? You look at the person next to you and you either kiss them full on the mouth or punch them in the face. There’s no future and no consequences and no reason not to let it all hang out, get every suppressed urge out there. That is what is happening right now in the House GOP conference, though admittedly with more of the latter than the former — at least as far as we know.
This is the fallout of the November election and Tuesday’s special election in Tennessee, where the Democrat overperformed despite losing to her Republican opponent. GOP lawmakers seem to have accepted that their House majority is gone. So every restraint has disappeared, not against Donald Trump but against each other in the House.
‘Politico chief’ Jonathan Martin smells blood in the water, but he seems to think the members are still terrified of Mango Mussolini. Per the Daily Beast — “Republican Insider Reveals Exact Moment Trump’s Party Will Abandon Him”:
… Politico’s politics bureau chief Jonathan Martin told MSNBC’s Morning Joe when he expected lawmakers to break ranks with Trump.
“Quite frankly, I talked to a former GOP senator,” Martin said. “[They] said two words to me: filing deadlines.”
He added, “Why do filing deadlines matter? Because what the senator was talking about was the filing deadlines for primaries next year. Which is to say, when that clears, when that passes, when these lawmakers know who is or is not running against them in primaries next year, then you’ll see even more freedom, even more independence.”
Martin’s comments on the show came amid a discussion about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s alleged commission of war crimes and Trump’s pardon of a former Honduran president convicted of narco-trafficking.
These represent only two instalments in a firestorm of controversies that has burned almost nonstop since the MAGA leader assumed office for the second time in January.
That storm has, in turn, torched Trump’s approval ratings down to a miserly 38 percent, and left an increasing number of GOP officials wondering how they went from a resounding presidential victory last year to staring down the barrel of a potential electoral bloodbath in next year’s midterms.
“I think it’s one more rock on the back of the members of Congress that they’re carrying up the hill,” Martin said of forthcoming congressional hearings into whether Hegseth may have committed crimes against humanity under international law.
“The hill is Mount Trump,” he went on. “And the hill is having to burden this daily humiliation.”…
“These guys care about their seats and about their reelections,” Martin said. “If they see that they don’t have a primary challenger by a date certain next year, 2026, they can start saying what they actually think about what [right-wing pundit] George Will calls the ‘moral slum’ of this administration.”…
We’re still the good guys, really! It’s just that we’re all terrified of this monster who *somehow* gained control of our party, no one knows how…
Late Night Open Thread: <em>Throwing Punches on the Titanic </em>Post + Comments (47)