Trump Has Wrecked The GOP Entirely
According to Forbes, conservative Democrat Dean Phillips (New Dem-MN), heir to the Phillips Distilling Company, has a net worth of $150 million. First elected to Congress from the Twin Cities western suburbs in 2018 (a blue wave year), he joined the Problem Solvers Caucus that is fiercely dedicated to making sure no problems ever get solved, especially not any problems that plague the working class. Yesterday he tweeted that “The dysfunction in the House is a national and global security issue. I would sit-out the Speaker vote if Tom Emmer will fund our government at negotiated levels, bring Ukraine and Israel aid bills to the floor, and commit to rules changes to make Congress work for the people.” That’s generally the House Democratic position and Phillips was either sending out a trial balloon for Hakeem Jeffries (not likely since no one in the Democratic leadership trusts him) or beating him to the punch (pretty likely, which helps explain why no one in the Democratic leadership trusts him.) In any case it was too late— Emmer dropped out of the race right at the same time, just a couple of hours after he became the latest GOP speaker designee with no path to victory, in a House that Punchbowl described as "paralyzed, unable to take up even the most basic legislation. The House has to either elect a new speaker or elect a speaker pro tem on a short-term basis. Republicans appear completely incapable of anything right now, however."
You probably know what happened yesterday inside the dysfunctional mess they call the House Republican Conference. Briefly, each of the 9 speaker candidates either withdrew or were voted off the island until only crypto-corrupt Tom Emmer (also from Minnesota, the Bachman replacement) was left. Señor Trumpanzee was furious and put this up on misfiling social media site right after the vote:
And that was that. Now Trump is actually bragging that he killed Emmer's chance to become speaker! “He’s done. It’s over. I killed him.” Trump really got pissed off when Emmer refused to endorse his presidential campaign on Monday. That was the end for Emmer. "Trump previewed his annoyance late Monday, when he shared a post on Truth Social from far-right activist Laura Loomer bashing Emmer as a 'NEVER TRUMPER' and 'COMMUNIST ENABLER' for his involvement in The National Popular Vote campaign, which supports electing a U.S. president by popular vote, over a decade ago. President Trump doesn’t support Tom Emmer and neither should you!' Loomer wrote."
Jordain Carney then reported that Emmer’s biggest rival, Jim Banks (R-IN), said he would never vote for Emmer. He’s not the only one. Banks, more of a fascist and less of a conservative urged his colleagues to ditch Emmer, complaining that they shouldn’t put one of the “most moderate members of the entire Republican conference in the speaker’s chair… I hope there’s a change along the way. [Emmer] doesn’t have the support in the room right now. … It’s been a heated discussion.”
I don’t know how accurate this list is but a Democratic Member of Congress told me that “some of these Members would change their gender before they would ever change their mind.” This was the list of holdouts, which includes 20 members who voted for someone else and 5 who voted present (Warren Davidson, who was in on the Sam Bankman Fried scam with Emmer and also belongs in prison with him; his “good friend Andy Biggs; Troy Nehls, who’s holding out for Trump to be speaker; Chip Roy, who always has his own crackpot agenda; and Greg Steube, who’s never been the same since he fell off a ladder and smash in his brains). There were also absentees. Most of the extremists on the list, like Marjorie Traitor Greene, voted for Gym Jordan. Anyway, here’s the list that was circulating yesterday just before Emmer pulled the plug on himself. Most of them are in the “Freedom” Caucus
Rick Allen (GA)
Jim Banks (IN)
Andy Biggs (AZ)
Josh Brecheen (OK)
Michael Cloud (TX)
Andrew Clyde (GA)
Mike Collins (GA)
Eli Crane (AZ)
Warren Davidson (OH)
Bob Good (VA)
Paul Gosar (AZ)
Marjorie Traitor Greene (GA)
Diana Harshbarger (TN)
Ronny Jackson (TX)
Thomas Massie (KY)
Mary Miller (IL)
Max Miller (OH)
Cory Mills (FL)
Troy Nehls (TX)
Ralph Norman (SC)
Andy Ogles (TN)
Scott Perry (PA)
Chip Roy (TX)
Keith Self (TX)
Greg Steube (FL)
Many of them would have been easy enough for Emmer to flip, but not enough to win on the floor— not with Trump loudly against him… unless he took the Democrats up on their proposal for a bipartisan approach. But Tom Emmer was never going to be that kind of congressman, let along the kind of speaker. By the evening, the Republicans picked Louisiana extremist kook Mike Johnson, a homophobic ex-Hate Talk Radio host-- over Byron Donalds (FL), Mark Green (TN), Roger Williams (TX) and Chuck Fleischmann (TN)-- and plan to take it to the House floor for a vote today. There's almost no chance he isn't elected. Everyone is exhausted by Matt Gaetz's institutional anomie. There aren't 4 Republicans who will vote NO. In fact, I don't think there is ONE. And last night McCarthy had the sign with his name over the door to the speakers suite taken down.
On Monday, during an interview with Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC, Chris Christie put the GOP problem out there for everyone to see: “We’ve gotten through two nominees of the party since Kevin McCarthy, it’s an embarrassment. It’s an embarrassment to the party and to the country. And my view is just pick somebody now… We need a House of Representatives to function, to be able to address these problems and they should just pick a Speaker and let’s move on.” Clearly this is not a governing party.
Awesome… and just in time for DeSantis to finally (in New Hampshire yesterday with Chris Sununu trying to give him a spine)— too late— to start blasting away at Trumpfor being too senile to hold office. “And what Donald Trump does now, he is wedded to the teleprompter. He can’t get off that teleprompter, any time he does, he says things like ‘Don’t vote.’ He’s telling people not to vote like we have all the votes we need. Really? Wait a minute, you lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016. You don’t have all the votes you need. And so I think that it’s just shown this is a different Donald Trump in 2015 and 16. Lost the zip on his fastball, has a sense of entitlement— all this stuff— doesn’t think he has to go through and earn it like other candidates. And that’s just not going to fly in Iowa and New Hampshire. And that’s why, you know, how this came to be with Iowa and New Hampshire along the way, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you, just having been here, I’m glad that it works this way because I do think you’ve got to earn it. I think the voters expect that. That’s the first thing. Second thing is, I think Chris has said and I’ve said, we need a candidate that can win the general election. There’s too many people that just are not going to vote for Trump at this point, is my view and I think Chris’ as well. But you have another wrinkle now with RFK Jr. as a third party, RFK Jr. will be a vessel for anti-lockdown and anti-Fauci voters if Trump is the nominee. If I’m the nominee, they all go to me because I stood up against Fauci, I’m going to clean out CDC and all those. It’s a big part of my platform. With Trump though, he he created Fauci, he elevated Fauci, he never fired him. He said that he did everything right during Covid, claims he saved 100 million lives, you know, with the mRNA vaccine and all this stuff. And I think those voters who are understandably still very frustrated with how this federal government handled Covid, and the lies that were told and all the mistakes that were made with no accountability, they’re going to want a vessel for that. And I think they may default to Kennedy. So I think he will hurt Trump way more than he would hurt any other candidate. And that makes it even a tougher uphill battle.”
