“Censure. Expulsion. Impeachment. Resignation. These are the only things MAGA Republicans seem to care about, anything but delivering on the issues that matter most. That’s why this Republican-led House has the unfortunate distinction of being the most inefficient and least productive since the Great Depression.”
That’s how the DCCC is describing the House Republicans. Tom Suozzi is likely to be back in Congress early next year— the clear favorite to win the Long Island special election for the seat a bipartisan majority tossed George Santos out of. The Nassau County Republican political bosses put up as implausible a candidate for the special election as Santos was. Yesterday during a trip to Israel, Suozzi, exasperated, told me that “People are worried about the cost of living, the immigration crisis, the never ending storms and climate events, Israel, Ukraine and more. When they look to Congress for a path forward, what do they get— a battle to remove the Speaker, a failure to get a budget done and even a government shutdown. People never seem to like Congress, but now their dissatisfaction is reaching record levels. How about we get over all the attacks and finger pointing and start working to actually address the problems people face?”
Oklahoma Republican Tom Cole explained the do-nothingness of the do-nothing 118th Congress as a plus for reactionaries, arguing, according to Emily Brooks and Mike Lillis, “that Republicans notched a win simply by preventing Biden from moving his legislative wish-list through Congress, as he had in his first two years when Democrats controlled both chambers. There were a lot of victories. There were a lot of things that didn’t happen that would have happened absent this majority. So we’ve been able to stop a lot of the spending… But again, when you control one House by margins like this, your victories are usually what you keep from happening, not what you can make happen. If you’re a Republican, you believe in less government, and not doing something is sometimes a good thing. So, just because we passed a law doesn’t mean it was a good law, it doesn’t mean it has a positive effect.”
Ted Lieu (D-CA) doesn’t see it quite the same way Cole does, “Democrats,” he told me, “are unified behind a policy agenda that helps the American people, not special interests. We believe in governing instead of kooky conspiracy theories and political theater. Democrats have bills ranging from reducing drug costs to restoring the child tax credit to securing voting rights, all of which were stopped by the Republican majority. We only need to flip five House seats next year to restore sanity to Congress.”
Derek Marshall is running for the San Bernardino County/High Desert congressional seat occupied by a walking, talking example of a do-nothing Republican, Jay Obernolte. Marshall acknowledged that “The Democrats are not perfect by any means, [but] the Republicans in Congress aren’t even trying to get anything done. My opponent votes no on anything that would bring back money to our district, like the infrastructure bill that brought us a $3 billion investment.”
What no Republicans want to talk about out loud is the Trump factor. He explicitly demands his congressional allies deliver chaos and dysfunction, which his odious MAGA campaign feeds on. No matter how much disorder the Freedom Caucus, Gaetz and his allies and Marjorie Traitor Greene manage to pull off, Trump always accuses Biden of whatever results. This Congress has spent more energy on nonsensical, partisan “investigations” of Biden, his son and his administration than on getting anything done for the American people.
Jamie McLeod-Skinner is the Blue America-endorsed challenger in a district south and southeast of Portland. “Lori Chavez-DeRemer takes her marching orders from right-wing extremists,” she told me this morning, “and she has been consistently voting for the chaos of dysfunctional government rather than moving Congress forward in addressing the challenges that Americans are facing. She claims to be a moderate, then voted to elect Mike Johnson— an anti-democracy, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ extremist— as Speaker of the House and joined her MAGA allies in voting for an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, despite a lack of evidence. Lori Chavez-DeRemer has chosen this political circus and party politics over getting things done for working people. Oregonians deserve better.”
Brooks and Lillis reminded their readers that one of the most extreme right-wing members of the House, Chip Roy of Texas, “vented his frustrations about Republicans not delivering enough in a fiery floor speech in November— arguing that lack of results had to do with a lack of will among Republicans. ‘One thing! I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing― one!― that I can go campaign on and say we did,’ he said. ‘One! Anybody sitting in the complex, if you want to come down to the floor and come explain to me, one material, meaningful, significant thing the Republican majority has done besides, Well, I guess it’s not as bad as the Democrats.’” In Roy’s world, shutting down the government— another Trump demand on his allies— will be something he wants to campaign on.
By the way, when Roy was first elected to his seat that connects San Antonio and Austin and includes much of the Texas Hill Country (2018), the partisan lean was R+10. After the last gerrymander, the lean is now R+24. The only competitive parts of the district are the precincts in Bexar, Travis and Hays counties. The rest of the district is beet red MAGA country. His constituents buy all of Trump’s bullshit and, in fact, Trump won the district by close to 20 points.