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JANUARY 5, 2023

Meyerson on TAP

The Revolution Eats Its Own

Like the Jacobins and Stalinists of yore, today's Republicans have
extirpated their moderates and have no one left to execute besides
themselves.

Time was when the conservative credo was "That government is best which
governs least." If that needed quantitative metrics, Grover Norquist
came along to say that government should be small enough that "it can be
drowned in a bathtub."

But that was oh, so then. Today's Republicans repudiate those nostrums
as way too statist. What they're making ridiculously clear (and just
plain ridiculous) on the floor of the House this week is that their new
credo is "That government is best which cannot even convene."

The process of revolutions growing more radical by bumping off every
previous revolutionary cadre is well established. In revolutionary
France, the Girondins supplanted the royalists, the Montagnards
supplanted and executed the Girondins, the Jacobins supplanted and
executed the Montagnards, and having run out of rival factions, the
Jacobins executed each other. In revolutionary Russia, the Leninists
overthrew and executed the czarists, the Stalinists overthrew and
executed the Leninists. And having run out of Leninists, the Stalinists
executed each other.

Today's Republicans seem to have reached that final phase this week,
the supplanting and political execution of each other. Here's a quote
from a speech preceding the eighth ballot for Speaker, in which a
Republican described the candidate he was nominating:

"He's not Paul Ryan! He's not Mitch McConnell! He's not John
Boehner! He's different!"

That was not, however, from a speech nominating the Gang of 20's
oppositionist de jour. It was the nominating speech for the hapless
Kevin McCarthy, who apparently still clings to the forlorn hope that he
can win the Speakership by repudiating every Republican leader and tenet
to the left of Matt Gaetz and the Proud Boys.

To be sure, that's a strategy that didn't play all that well at the
polls last November. Arizona Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake
made clear that she didn't want the votes of Republicans who'd
supported that squishy John McCain. In that, she succeeded, which was a
major reason why she lost. But today's Republicans are undaunted by
anything so ephemeral as electoral results.

Even in comparison with the first two days of McCarthy's public
humiliation, today has been particularly cruel. The news this morning
was full of reports that a team from McCarthy's opposition had spent
the night bargaining with McCarthy's minions and came away with every
concession under the sun. McCarthy agreed that a single member of the
Republican caucus could call for ousting the Speaker and that would be
all that was required to force a vote. McCarthy's PAC cut a deal with
the Club for Growth that it would no longer intervene in open-seat
primaries. Hope sprung yet again among the Kevinoids that these
concessions would bring perhaps 10 of the 20 malcontents into Kevin's
camp. In fact, however, through today's seventh and eighth ballots,
precisely none of those 20 dissidents, including those in last night's
meetings, came into Kevin's column. McCarthy's vote total remained
stuck at 201.

There are some reports that the Gang of 20's negotiators want the
agreements in writing. To get his total up to the required 218, however,
I suspect McCarthy will have to go beyond that, promising committee
chairmanships and seats on the Koch Brothers board of directors to every
one of the 20, and that he'll have to sign this promissory note in his
own blood. And a small cut on the finger won't suffice.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

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Research shows that economies perform better at modestly higher
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