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JANUARY 3, 2023

Meyerson on TAP

A Party Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand (to Govern)

The GOP's 'We can't even convene' circus commences

Never have I felt the absence of H.L. Mencken more keenly. Mencken, who
had the most brilliantly dyspeptic voice in American journalism of the
1920s, could savage the idiots who then populated American politics with
more verve and disdain than any of his contemporaries. The '20s were a
time when such idiots were in abundance-more representatives of what
Mencken termed "the booboisie" littered the landscape then than before
or since.

Until, so it seems, today.

In the first two votes for Speaker of the House, Republican Leader Kevin
McCarthy suffered 19 defections from GOP ranks-claiming just 203 votes
instead of the 218 he needed, and running behind Democrat Hakeem
Jeffries, who claimed the votes of all 212 Democrats. On the third vote,
the far right's alternative, "Freedom Caucus" leader Jim Jordan, upped
his vote from 19 to 20, pulling down McCarthy's to 202.

That's the numbers, but it doesn't even begin to describe the
spectacle, which began when New York's Republican caucus chair Elise
Stefanik placed McCarthy's name in nomination. It's the caucus chair
who routinely puts the party's choice up for a vote, but in some ways,
Stefanik was uniquely qualified to sing McCarthy's praises, as she is
the one member of the Republican caucus who is, by unanimous account,
even more driven by ambition, divorced from all considerations of
belief, than McCarthy himself. The timing was delicious: Just one day
before, she had been the subject of extensive, scathing front-page
profiles in both The Washington Post
<[link removed]>
and The New York Times
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(the latter a masterful piece by long-ago

**Prospect**writing fellow Nick Confessore), in which seemingly all her
former mentors and friends expressed anger and bewilderment at her
transformation from an intellectually gifted moderate to a slavish,
sound-biting, non sequitur-spouting MAGA acolyte. (She's the only
leading Republican who's endorsed Donald Trump's 2024 presidential
candidacy.)

Strictly speaking, no one can accuse McCarthy of abandoning his beliefs,
as no one has ever detected any. But his willingness to make virtually
any deal, no matter how absurd, to boost him higher up the careerists'
greasy poll, is the stuff of legend. Appropriately, then, in recent
profiles, both McCarthy and Stefanik were repudiated by their respective
mentors-Bill Thomas, who employed McCarthy in his congressional office
and whom McCarthy succeeded as the Member from Bakersfield; and Paul
Ryan, he of the short-lived Speakership, who gave Stefanik his master
class in strategic conservatism-for subordinating every shred of
conviction or decency to the stronger pull of ambition.

We Can't Do This Without You
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In nominating Hakeem Jeffries as the Democratic candidate for Speaker,
caucus chair Pete Aguilar contrasted Jeffries's record with the
best-known incident of McCarthy's self-abasement in the cause of
ambition: his trip to Mar-a-Lago to get back in Donald Trump's good
graces after making some critical remarks about Trump's role in the
January 6th insurrection. Jeffries, said Aguilar, "does not grovel to a
twice-impeached so-called former president."

Aguilar was soon one-upped in his condemnation of McCarthy's
malleability, however, by Republican Matt Gaetz, who nominated "Freedom
Caucus" leader Jordan for the speakership by noting that Jordan wasn't
"selling off shares of himself" to win the post.

And so, we are stuck. The last time a Speaker's election went beyond
the first ballot-100 years ago, in 1923-it was the Republican
moderates and liberals (they actually existed then) who held out until
winning rules concessions on the ninth ballot. Among those GOP liberals
was future New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia (who having actually
lost the Republican primary for his East Harlem seat a few years
earlier, had asked the Socialist Party if he could be their candidate;
they said yes, and he retained the seat on the Socialist line in
November). In the pre-Civil War days, when parties occasionally
vanished as conditions changed and constituencies fragmented (see:
Federalists, Whigs), multi-ballot elections for Speaker were a frequent,
if not regular, occurrence. In 1856, when the differences between North
and South on the slavery issue had effectively killed the Whig Party but
not yet enabled the fledgling Republican Party (then only two years old)
to attain sufficient growth, the contest dragged on for 133 ballots over
a period of several months.

The issue that unifies this year's anti-McCarthy Republicans is really
one of attitude. This is the wing of the party that has defined itself
by Fox News ad hominem attacks, by "owning the libs" through their
tweets, by casting those outside their ranks as enemies of the people
and apostles of Satan-sometimes metaphorically, sometimes not. There
are plenty of McCarthy supporters-Marjorie Taylor Greene, for
one-who share all those attributes, but there are a hardy few who
don't, while every one of Kevin's critics fall into this camp. Not
just nativists, but revilers of immigrants; not just cultural
reactionaries, but homophobes; not just critics of letting all Americans
vote, but slandering those who register them and count their ballots,
and casting doubt on legitimate electoral outcomes. And no wonder, since
most of those outcomes in 2022 featured the rejection of democracy's
howling critics at the hands of the voters.

But that howling is what defines an exemplary Republican in the eyes
(well, ears) of today's far right. Giving credit where credit is due,
McCarthy has tried to howl with the best of them, at one point speaking
for more than eight hours on the House floor against the presumable
horrors of some Democratic legislation. But McCarthy meandered aimlessly
during his talk, vainly hoping that duration would substitute for
passion. Problem is, McCarthy's only passion is McCarthy, as his
critics on both sides of the aisle-for that matter, his supporters,
too-have long realized. He's the empty suit, the hollow man, and his
Republican opponents want a Speaker who fills that hollowness with rage.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter <[link removed]>

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Project Censored: Billionaire Press Domination

BY PAUL ROSENBERG

* Part 1
<[link removed]>:
Fossil fuel subsidies, wage theft, EPA risk reports, congressional
conflicts of interest, and dark, dark money: Concentration of corporate
wealth and power distorts everything we see-and don't see-in the
world around us every day.

* Part 2
<[link removed]>:
The real causes of inflation, Gates Foundation media investments, the
CIA and Julian Assange, ALEC's push to preserve its influence networks
in state legislation, and surveillance advertising are the next five
stories on the list.

Who Will Talk Jay Powell off the Ledge?
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He has committed the Fed to an interest rate course that will create a
needless recession, and he refuses to admit that inflation is subsiding
on its own. BY ROBERT KUTTNER

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The Rise of Undocumented Inflation
<[link removed]>
Quality deterioration, not factored into inflation statistics, means
that we spend the same amount for inferior products. BY MAROUN MEDLEJ &
DONALD L. LOSMAN

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