Inquiring Minds Ask Republicans: How Low Can You Go?
Donald trump jr. is selling “We the People” bibles, his father, the greatest maker of turmoil ever, is blaming Rep. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for creating “unnecessary turmoil” in the Republican Party and Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, says far right Republicans are “pretty f — ing stupid.”
Just another day in the Republican congressional funny farm. It is so delicious watching the Republicans scratch each other’s eyes out in the battle for Speaker of the House. PT Barnum himself couldn’t put on a better show.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has fared shamefully as he has failed to muster enough votes in seven bids to take the speaker’s chair. McCarthy, however, must assume that if he moves his stuff into the office of the speaker, then he must be speaker. Not so fast, said Rep. Matt “Chuckie” Gaetz, R-Fla., who called McCarthy a “squatter” for having his congressional files moved prematurely into the speaker’s office.
“If you want to drain the swamp, you cannot put the biggest alligator in charge of the exercise,” Gaetz said of McCarthy. “I’m a Florida man and I know of what I speak.” Yes, you are, Rep. Gaetz, you who who is under federal investigation for sex trafficking.
On their first day back in majority in the House, Republicans removed metal detectors that were placed in House chambers after the Capitol riot by trump supporters. Gun-toting, Christian nationalist, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., said she has been “waiting for this day for a long time” but wouldn’t say if she’ll be packing a concealed Glock the next time she comes to Congress.
It is nothing short of gobsmacking that the power is in the tiny hands of the far right members of congress, a small minority of the craziest legislators, including the likes of Gaetz, Boebert, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., or is it Marjorie Taylor, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., and Rep. Robert Good, R-Va., among others. But these potato heads have enough votes to hold sway over whether the next speaker will be McCarthy or if Gaetz has his way, it would put trump in the speaker’s chair, two heartbeats from the presidency.
A review by the N.Y. Times found that more than half of the lawmakers who voted against McCarthy explicitly denied the results of the 2020 election. That includes Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., who said, “President Trump won that election.” Nearly half of the lawmakers who opposed McCarthy represent districts in three states: Texas, Arizona and Florida.
“In the short run, the objective is to get a better speaker than Kevin McCarthy,” said Good, a leader of the anti-McCarthy push. “In the long run, it’s to deal a blow against a Republican system that’s hostile to conservatives, that has contempt for the Republican base of voters that send us to Washington.”
The Republican system is hostile to conservatives? Only if you spell conservative “Christian Nationalist,” “White Supremacist,” “Anti-Semitic.”
So who is Good, certainly not Good. He is a born-again Christian who condemned the U.S. Supreme Court decision recognizing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage; he supports declaring his Virginia county a “Second Amendment sanctuary”; and he wants to restrict transgender bathroom use. And then there’s his belief that the Democrats created the “phony” COVID-19 crisis to steal the election.
Crenshaw, something of a moderate Republican, relatively speaking, said the right wing Republicans have “calculated that people will see them as these noble freedom fighters fighting for a cause. They can’t seem to say what the cause is. That makes them look pretty f — -ing stupid. And they are pretty f — -ing stupid.”
Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., another relatively reasonable Republican, meaning she isn’t a raving lunatic, said the members of the House have a choice to make: “Are we going to be the party of the radical 2%? Because that’s what it comes down to. Kevin McCarthy will be the speaker of the House — and I don’t care if it’s the first ballot or the 97th ballot.”
In the wild and wacky world of Republican politicians, McCarthy has been painted by supporters as some kind of voice of reason who can bring the party together. It’s all relative, like saying that Stalin was a voice of reason, compared with Hitler.
McCarthy, in his eighth term in Congress, has been a consistent defender of trump and supported trump’s lies about voter fraud. McCarthy supported Rep. Taylor or is it Rep. Greene, in her 2020 bid for a House seat. Others distanced themselves from Greene, who has made racist, anti-Semitic comments and has promoted QAnon conspiracy theories. But McCarthy kept close to Taylor or is it Greene.
McCarthy did not accept the results of the 2020 presidential election and refused to confront trump for his role in precipitating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. In November 2020, after the election, McCarthy insisted on Laura Ingraham’s Fox television show that “President Trump won this election.”
In December 2020, McCarthy was one of 126 Republican members of the House to sign an amicus brief in support of Texas v. Pennsylvania, a lawsuit filed at the U.S. Supreme Court contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election. On Jan. 6, 2021, hours after the attack on the Capitol, McCarthy voted against certifying Biden’s win in two states. McCarthy finally recognized Biden as president-elect on Jan. 8, more than two months after the election.
In July 2021, the delta variant of the coronavirus prompted the Attending Physician of the United States Congress to reimpose a mask requirement in the House chamber. McCarthy called it “a decision conjured up by liberal government officials who want to continue to live in a perpetual pandemic state.”
On May 12, 2022, the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, subpoenaed McCarthy and four Republican colleagues. In December, the committee referred McCarthy and others to the House Ethics Committee for disobeying the subpoenas.
McCarthy and other House Republicans investigated Hillary Clinton for years over the 2012 Benghazi attack. In 2015, McCarthy said that the investigation, which cost millions and found no evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton, had hurt poll numbers.
And McCarthy does not believe the scientific consensus about the causes of climate change.
A conservative thoughtful voice? Not.
About those Bibles. Trump jr. has been grifting something called “We The People” bibles which are being promoted by Mark “Oz” Geist, a Colorado native who was a security contractor during the 2021 attacks by Islamic radicals on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, resulting in the deaths of four Americans and wounding of three others. A lengthy, costly investigation by the House found that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had not acted improperly. Geist, however, has written a book, “13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi.”
In a video, trump Jr. is identified as “Executive Vice President, The Trump Organization.” He promotes the bibles which he said are made, printed and assembled in the United States.
“With American Judeo-Christian values under attack, there could be no better time than to re-up our commitment to America and to the Christian values that this country was founded on,” trump said. “Faith is being targeted and our country’s founding beliefs are being targeted. The ‘We The People Bible’ is restoring what there is an attempt to remove. Preservation of Faith, preservation of America.”
The website says the King James Version of the Bible also includes copies of the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Pledge of Allegiance. And it’s all for just $69.99.
Or you can get the “Patriot Bundle” for $89.99 which includes a Bible, Challenge Coin, bookmark and an American Flag lapel pin. For just $109.99, the bundle also includes a T-shirt. And for the truly religious and truly patriotic, there’s a “WE THE PEOPLE BIBLE: BIBLE STUDY 10 BUNDLE” for just $699.90.
Twitter responses to news of the bibles was generally negative.
“The Trump empire needs money, so anything goes for a buck…” posted Carlos A. Muniz.
Nita Martin tweeted that “a line of coke is included on each Bible.”
And D-Web ua, wryly tweeted, “I’m amazed he didn’t say the book was also written in America.”
Another tweeted, “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”