The Baffling Arrogance of the Republican Party
Even if you want to dismantle our democracy, do you want to look this inept?
It may be too obvious to say, but when Kevin McCarthy was occupying the chair as Speaker of the House wasn’t the seat already vacant?
By all reports, McCarthy got zero support from Democrats in his bid to keep his position because he did nothing to negotiate with them. He had also proved himself many times over to be untrustworthy and unprincipled. He did worse than nothing; his approach to cajole the Democrats into voting to retain him was to be arrogant, perhaps aping Donald Trump’s unsurprising decision to attack the judges hearing his various civil and criminal cases.
Ah, that reliable GOP blend of ignorance and arrogance! MAGA members of the House and Senate keep slipping a pinch of it between cheek and gum for its relaxing, yet heady, effect. This ignarrogance of theirs, a mashup word (fancy-schmancy term, portmanteau) that appropriately made the Urban Dictionary around the George W. Bush era, is like a climate change–sparked wildfire among the extremists in the Republican Party.
As with their reflexive climate change denialism, Republicans would scoff at the idea they suffer from ignarrogance, something that all reasoning human beings must admit to. (None of us knows that much about most anything and are wiser people to admit it.) But, in the face of their nearly utter ineptitude in governing, they preen. Remember how McCarthy said that the vicious infighting and excruciating 15 ballots it took to elevate him to the speakership back in January had taught Republicans how to govern and that they’d be more effective? Beyond being a global embarrassment and yet another ding on the country’s credit rating, how’d that turn out?
MAGA Republicans now strangely seem even more puffed up and sure of their mettle and fitness for office. But if the truth is that they are there mostly to thwart the government (at least in terms of it being active in helping citizens who need assistance), one has to tip a cap and say well done. Still, not even MAGA Congressional cult members like to look so utterly inept.
Here in the real world, various iterations of moderates of all political stripes and liberals of various shades and hues are now doing double duty by also playing the part of the actual conservatives. In these times, we should be referring to “progressive conservatives” and “liberal conservatives” — you know, people who want to conserve the environment, individual rights, the rule of law, and democracy itself.
When you have only one functioning political party, its members must take the reins dropped by the other. So, traditional conservative stances on law and order, appropriately supporting the police and the military, and upholding the Constitution and the basic tenets of democracy have fallen almost entirely to Democrats and a couple of Independents who caucus with them. They live up to their oath of office, which includes defending the Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic [emphasis added] and, it should be noted, giving one’s “true faith and allegiance” to the Constitution, not to, say, talk up the “illiberal democracy” model of a Viktor Orbán or to cheer on a brutal dictator like Vladimir Putin.
So, what happened to the Republicans? It’s complicated, but if I were forced to explain it in one word, I’d say the obvious: greed. If you gave me a paragraph, I’d say that with their main idea of “trickle-down” economics utterly discredited (as at least most adults knew back in the day, George H. W. Bush was correct to call it “voodoo economics” until he was made vice president to shut him up), by the 1990s Republicans had nowhere to go. After the Cold War mindset dissipated with the end of the Soviet Union, they had few ideas or principles to promote, and they loathed the work and compromise required by governance. They admired Rush Limbaugh’s profitable brainwashing formula of heaping praise on non-thinking “ditto-heads” and scorn on libruuuls, so they turned to dehumanizing their political opponents, pushing so-called alternative facts and increasingly hare-brained conspiracies. Their vision for winning the future lies in suppressing the vote, creating ideological schools to educate for obedience, and cozying up to various authoritarians as role models. They didn’t bother to create a new policy platform before the 2020 election and got mighty irritated when prominent members said out loud what the policies should be.
American historian Heather Cox Richardson would likely frame the story of the unhinging of the Republican Party as one of so-called Movement Conservatives fuming about, and plotting to dismantle, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. According to Richardson, Republicans cannot abide government spending on a basic social safety net or on maintaining our infrastructure. (Trump’s “Infrastructure Weeks” were all typical meaningless bluster from “the builder” president.) They think of taxation as a redistribution of wealth, “socialism,” and cannot stand the thought of it, especially if it were to go to people of color or immigrants not from, say, Norway.
They’re still at it, but they don’t like to bring it up because their plans to cut Medicare and Social Security (and generally dismantle the federal government) are highly unpopular with the vast majority of the public. So, they cut taxes to reward their already wealthy donors and hamstring the government. They’re now working around the edges to ensure more people remain desperate, by, say, keeping people in debt all their lives repaying college loans and by allowing pharmaceutical companies to gouge elders and the working class with drug costs not seen anywhere else in the civilized world.
Meanwhile, the Trumpist Party is now being quite clear about its plans to dismantle our democracy, which, as Salon contributor Mike Lofgren notes in his enlightening essay about how conservative pseudo-intellectuals have forever despised the intellectual, creative, and spiritual freedom sparked by the Enlightenment, has been the unspoken plan all along. The Counter-Enlightenment movement is alive and seething in today’s Republican party.
Still, that arrogance in the face of continual blundering is baffling. It’s all MAGA Republicans in the House have left, this empty posturing, these phony investigations. Even if your purpose is to stop the functioning of the government, even if you’re a complete troll it must be soul-crushing to spout off about individual freedom and yet support so many policies that hurt various groups of your fellow citizens. Even for an absolute tool, it must be disconcerting to hear people cheer and laugh when you deride or belittle women, LGBTQ folks, and people of color. For those who consider themselves religious, it must be emotionally deadening to speak of Christian and family values and still support a twice-impeached, multiply-indicted fraudster who was also recently convicted of sexual assault and regularly promotes violence against those who oppose him. What cognitive dissonance must be caused by saluting a man with five draft deferments who repeatedly says awful things about people who have devoted their careers and lives to their country, both in the military and as civil servants.
One wonders how they sleep at night. Someone might well do a study on the sleeping patterns of cult members. I suppose they sleep soundly, gratefully wrapped as they are in cocoons of disinformation. (Perhaps a bad metaphor; what creatures emerge from such cocoons are certainly not lovely butterflies.)
So, what happens next in the House? Representative Jim Jordan, of Ohio, who’s likely still best known for allegations he chose not to investigate serious allegations of sexual abuse while an assistant coach of the wrestling program at Ohio State University and who now, without a sense of irony, eagerly conducts bogus investigations as a member of Congress, wants to be speaker.
As noted by MSNBC’s Alex Wagner, given the history of Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who was convicted of sexually abusing at least four students when he was a high school teacher and wrestling coach, it’s surprising that Jordan is even in the mix. Wagner notes there’s one portrait missing from the wall honoring House Speakers at the Capitol:
“Former Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was essentially wiped from the history books after pleading guilty in a hush-money case that revealed he had serially sexually abused teenagers as a high school wrestling coach. When you hear the words ‘Republican speakers of the House,’ Republicans really do not want you to think about Dennis Hastert. And today House Republicans are trying to determine who their next speaker will be. And you would think that one of the most basic criteria for Republicans here would be that none of their candidates should be accused of any involvement in any wrestling-related sexual misconduct scandals. Right?”
And Jordan has done more than anyone else in Congress to support Trump’s attempted coup and his continued attempts to undermine Americans’ feelings about the legitimacy of voting.
And then there is Steve Scalise, ultra-conservative congressman from Louisiana and current House majority leader, who ensured he’d have even more baggage to carry when he reportedly boasted that he was like “David Duke without the baggage.”
If either Jordan or Scalise (as I write this, Scalise has been nominated) takes the seat, it will remain vacant in terms of statesmanship. Where are the moderates? When can we hope centrist Republicans might start to turn the ship of state toward a calmer shore? No time soon, it seems.
The arrogance of these people is baffling only until you remember that the “con” in con artist is short for “confidence.” The MAGA Republicans in Congress, the many who refused to certify the 2020 election, show vastly undue confidence because that is an essential part of their ruse when they set out to fool people. Petty grifters and cult leaders alike need to show confidence as they probe your peculiar weaknesses to find what will get you to have confidence in them, perhaps to do things you’d rather not admit, even to yourself, you want to be done.
Meanwhile, as others have noted much better than I can, people across the globe need a strong, unified U.S. government to help meet the dire challenges facing us in this actual world, not the made-up one created by today’s Republicans.
Note: A version of this essay later ran in Salon.
