Barrett Rainey's Second Thoughts

It’s easy to write critically about the angry mess facing us in Congress. Almost too easy.

The 118th such gathering along the banks of the Potomac may pose a significant danger to our way of life. In the House, matters are being led by a fellow with the largest political ego since Napoleon. This bunch, on his watch, could actually do harm to our Republic. Great harm.

Fearing no contradiction here, Kevin McCarthy has to be the most flawed, ignoble and dangerously narcissistic human to ever hold the high office of Speaker of the House. No one in my long memory has shown such utter political depravity in searching for power than the Bakersfield Flash. On CSPAN. In our living rooms, no less.

And for what?

To lead a band of misfits and mental midgets so entangled in intra-party schisms and internecine warfare they couldn’t vote in unison on a motion to adjourn if the chamber was on fire.

To make matters worse, here’s a factoid. Of the 221 Republican House members in the last Congress, 139 voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Sixty-two-percent! It was eight of 51 in the Senate for about 16-percent. Hardly raw material from which anything even approaching positive legislation can be expected.

Kevin McCarthy will not even come close to containing and managing his own GOP caucus in the House. As we saw him scurry about the Chamber, begging for votes, we could only imagine what he was giving away. Chunks of power of the Speaker’s office being proffered for short-term support. Little pieces of power lost to say nothing of his own self-respect. Forget that!

Ask McCarthy to define “service above self” and he’ll immediately say, “No. No, you’ve got that backwards.” “Service above Self,” by the way, is the motto several million people around the world profess as members of Rotary International. Wouldn’t expect Ol’ Kevin to know or even understand that.

McCarthy is kicking good people off committees and replacing them with grossly unqualified faces. Soon we’ll know which of his Party were able to bargain the shrewdest and which he’ll shunt off to House oblivion.

We’ll see cohort-in-crime, Jim Jordan, digging into the political and personal lives of last year’s January 6th Committee. He’s already pointing to Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff as his chief targets and, given Jordan’s past at Ohio State University and in the GOP Caucus, you can expect the lowest-of-the-lowest witch hunts.

The questions that should be in the mind of any right-thinker is who will be “serving the people’s interest” and what those “interests” will be. It’s quite doubtful those will be the subjects of any “orderly” Republican gathering.

Again, the “angry mess” of Congressional Republican politics is a too-easy target for anyone watching our national trauma. We’ve seen the “worst-of-the-worst” play out on flat screens at home and the corner pub. From denouncements of acceptable political discourse to attempted bare-knuckled threats to a theatrically desperate attempt to gain personal political power, it’s been right in our faces.

It goes without much elaboration to say we have a Democrat in the White House and a slim, but working, Democrat majority in the Senate. Those are good things to act as keepers of the flame of democracy and to thwart dangerous legislation.

But, what of the rest of us? We pay for and expect a functioning three-legged stool of Constitutional government. The White House is O.K. for now. SCOTUS, which had been expected to be a showplace of Conservatism because of the nature of the President(s) who appointed the majority, is not always so. The U.S. Senate – one half of the Legislative branch – seems to be “in-check.”

At least for now, it’s just the U.S. House of Representatives we need be wary of. Oh, and McCarthy. And Jordan. And Biggs. And Taylor-Green. And Gaetz. And Rogers. And Boebert. And George Santos. And…players to be named later.

It’s going to be a rocky couple of years. Dangerous, at times, too. The inmates in the House cellblock will be in charge of things.

But, I’m looking down the line at 2024. Will we have people of character – strong character – stepping forward, trying to recapture sanity and decorum in that chamber? Or, will good, right-thinking folks look at the wreckage and say, “No, not me.” Like Katie Porter – one of the best in the House. She’s bailing out already to run for the Senate in California. Will others follow?

The “brain drain” is a real possibility. Unless Democrats and moderate Republicans make a concerted effort. A concerted effort to overcome the craziness, brazen ignorance and vile activities of a bunch of crazies being led by a true political narcissist.

There’s gonna be some tough sledding between now and November, 2024.

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