"Nine months into their reign as the majority party in the House, Republicans have brought the legislative body to a halt and themselves to an inflection point. By ousting Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) as speaker and exposing anew the destructive tendencies of their most extreme members, Republicans now risk being returned to minority status by voters in next year’s election.
Who is Patrick McHenry, Kevin McCarthy’s interim replacement as House speaker?
From the day they were all sworn in this January, their grip on power was tenuous, far more so than almost anyone was predicting a year ago when talk of a red-wave election was in vogue. They did win the majority in the 2022 midterm elections, but by the narrowest of margins in a surprising under-performance. To succeed as legislators, they needed cohesion, discipline and leadership. Instead, they produced chaos under a speaker who was so weakened after getting the job that he could not lead effectively.
One other factor has brought the House Republicans to this point. That is the person and example of Donald Trump, the former president. Trump put governing by chaos on steroids (if one can call what he did governing) and in doing so produced a group of Mini-Mes, symbolized most by the politician who brought down McCarthy on Tuesday, Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.). This is the kind of leadership the party now offers the country.
On Monday night, a photo was posted on X, formerly Twitter, of Gaetz on the steps of the Capitol surrounded by an enormous scrum of reporters and cameras. As someone noted, this was what the Florida Republican always dreamed up, the brightest of spotlights. He embodied the worst of performative politics, which have come to typify this era. The rewards — fame, television time and adulation of the base — now go to those who shout the loudest rather than those who do the most good for the country."
MORE AT:
The Washington Post
McCarthy ouster exposes the Republican Party’s destructive tendencies
By voting to expel Kevin McCarthy as House speaker, Republicans ground the work of Congress to a halt and revealed the danger of governing by chaos
October 4, 2023 at 6:00 am
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''Between boys' suicide rates, dropout rates and homicide rates, and men's self-destructive behaviors generally, we have a real crisis in America,'' said William S. Pollack, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School and co-director of the
Center for Men at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. ''Until recently, the crisis has gone unheralded.’’
MORE AT:
The New York Times
Why Men Don't Last: Self-Destruction as a Way of Life
- Feb. 17, 1999
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