The Hunger Games

When I tapped-out this post yesterday it occurred to me that I didn't have to blog about House Republicans still without a speaker.  Whew!  That white smoke you saw floating from the outhouse stovepipe signaled that as of Wednesday we finally have a Speaker of the House.  Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana has won the gavel after three weeks of Republicans eating their own.

I was thinking to myself, Jeez, Tom.  You certainly are living during interesting times.  

The party of Ronald Reagan is done; replaced by the party of possibly the 47th president; Donald Trump.

A world where populism has replaced policy.  Fiscal responsibility is but passing lip service.  Choosing  winners and losers has supplanted free trade.  Pugilists are venerated.  Institutionalists are pariahs.  Chaos over stability.  In ousting Kevin McCarthy the GOP has deposed their most prolific fundraiser in recent memory and Johnson is going to have to pick-up the slack.

It would appear that election denialism looms large in the selection of a House speaker.  It is worth remembering that Johnson is a close ally of former president Trump and was one of the key architects of Donald Trump's failed, false efforts to overturn the 2020 election.  Johnson supported a Texas lawsuit seeking to to invalidate electoral college votes from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Yes, a lawsuit allowing an individual state to invalidate the electoral votes of a different state President-elect Joe Biden won in the 2020 election.  Nuts, eh?

In a win for Federalism the Supreme Court called BS.  This is worth remembering.  Especially the steaming, heaping, Texas-sized longhorn pile of bullshit part of it. 

So, it's time for the House to put on their adult underpants and demonstrate a capacity to govern.  We're about a month away from a government shutdown, there are carrier battle groups steaming into position, hot wars in Ukraine and Israel and bad actors in Russia, Iran, China and North Korea who've been loving every moment of the recent self-inflicted lunacy.

It sure ain't my daddy's Republican Party anymore.  Lately it's been look'n more like the Hunger Games.....