The GOP’s Eating Itself — And America
The Rise of Post-Trumpism, and How It’s Holding America Hostage
It’s chaos in the House of Representatives. Until this week, nobody much outside America, nor plenty of those in it, knew the name Kevin McCarthy. This week, six times — six— Kevin McCarthy’s failed to win enough votes from his own side to become Speaker of the House, or, basically, for those from outside America, leader of his own party in Congress. That renders Congress…inoperative. It can’t…do anything, institutionally, from pass legislation to propose it.
America’s the most powerful country in the world, and right about now, it’s being held hostage.
But by whom, precisely, though?
The ludicrous scenario above — the like hasn’t happened for over a century, and nobody, ever, to my knowledge, in American politics, has failed six votes to be leader of their own party — is taking place a for a simple reason, which hides a complex truth. McCarthy’s being shot down time and again by the fanatical, extremist factions of his own party — the hard right wingers.People like Matt Gaetz (who was investigated for…sex trafficking) and Paul Gosar, a dentist and Congressman who was censured for posting an anime video where his “character”…murdered…AOC, aka, a violent death threat against a fellow member of Congress.
These are the kind of figures who are opposing Kevin McCarthy’s bid for leadership. But…why? And what are they? And what does all this mean for America? Let’s take those questions one by one, because they’re interlinked.
This group is the most fanatical wing of the most fanatical bloc in Congress — the half or so of the Freedom Caucus, which itself is so far right that it’s off the charts. The Freedom Caucus is the kind of Orwellian group which wants women to not have the freedom of privacy, expression, association, kids to read books, gay people to be themselves, and you and me to have relationships with any of those people they don’t approve of. Some real freedom, huh?
Now. It’s the half of this “caucus” — which means, for non-Americans, basically, blocs within a side in American politics, so a side like the GOP or the Democrats can have different “caucuses” within it — that’s vehemently opposed to McCarthy’s bid for leadership. But why? That’s the question. After all, it’s not as if the the rest of the GOP supports…rights for women…gay people…investment in anything…kids being able to read books…any form of modernity or progress whatsoever.
So why are they grinding Congress to a halt? Well, because they want power.They’ll say it nakedly and openly.
The rebels in the party have suggested that Mr McCarthy is too closely aligned with a broken system and will do little to change how Washington is governed. “The American people want us to turn a page. They do not want excuses or performance art, they want action and results,” Mr Biggs wrote on Twitter, as he launched a longshot bid for speaker himself. He called for changing the “status quo” by reforming such things as how bills can be amended and how bills are brought to the floor.
Now, I want you to see that that’s unusual. In politics, when one bloc goes against its own party, it’s usually over some substantive disagreement.There’s some kind of disagreement about a policy or agenda or what have you. But this is different. The fanatics want to alter not the substance of democracy, but its processes. They are after raw power, and it’s rare, even in the Janus-faced world of politics, to just come out…and say it.
So what this group has already extracted from McCarthy are concessions. Brutal ones, in fact. He’s agreed that just one member of Congress — just one — can call a snap vote to…oust the speaker. In other words, any one fanatic effectively now has veto power, being able to bring Congress to a halt, over and over again. And that’s hardly all: he’s agreed to place more members of the Freedom Caucus on the innocuous sounding House Rules Committee — which has the power to put legislation before the floor, or stall it. He’s reportedly agreed to concessions on the budget too, giving fanatics the power to force separate votes on everyday funding bills which usually come in packages, again, giving them a kind of veto power, and certainly the power to…
Make governance that much harder, if it’s possible at all. The point of what this group wants is raw power. But of a certain kind: not the constructive kind. They’re not out there saying, hey, we want the power to get things done. They want the power to get things undone. From budgets to rules to votes to legislation itself. In other words, they’re seeking the power to thwart democracy, because in their warped worldview, well, you should always be trying to burn the house of democracy down, and if you don’t succeed today, try again tomorrow.
So what McCarthy’s concessions have already done is something profoundly dangerous, that we almost never see in a modern democracy, precisely because we should never see such a thing. Imagine a Congress or Parliament as a scale. Two parties (or more, if you like), on its sides. The scale tips a little bit in one direction, because there are pebbles on it, and that side with the most pebbles gains the balance of power. But the point of a democracy is that the scale doesn’t tip over and break.
Which is exactly what’s happening here. Because now, some pebbles are way, way bigger than others. The scale topples over, because now democracy doesn’t work at all. What I mean by that should be intuitive, but let me explain it. The pebbles aren’t always the same size in a democracy — some representatives always have more power than others, and we call that “political capital,” which comes in the form of relationships, money, committee seats, tenure, and so on. But still, that doesn’t mean that some pebbles are boulders. Who have more power than everyone else combined. Which is exactly what’s happening here.
McCarthy’s already given the fanatics the power to grind democracy to a halt — forever. By changing the rules of American democracy. Hence, now any single fanatic can waste a day calling a useless vote on leadership, or bogging down a basic budget package, or forcing it never to head to the floor. That should never happen in a democracy. Nobody should have that kind of power, for self-evident reasons, because, well, such a system isn’t about people being kings or emperors.
And yet the pebbles have become boulders — now, the most extreme members of the Freedom Caucus, each one as an individual, is going to have more power than the rest of the Republicans and Democrats combined. Not constructive power — power to get things done, but destructive power, the power to get things undone. All this is profoundly not just undemocratic, but anti-democratic.
You see, democracy’s about consent. But that doesn’t mean that a small group of fanatics withholding their consent should be able to prevent an entire society from making the progress it needs to on prospering — or even just functioning. American pundits call that “minority rule,” and what’s emerging is an extreme form of it. Now, if a lunatic like Paul Gosar, or a creep like Matt Gaetz doesn’t like it, well, guess what — they have the power to turn their lack of consent into a political weapon. But the rest of needing the consent of fanatics, lunatics, bigots, and crackpots emphatically isn’t the point of democracy — it’s them needing ours.
Democracy in that way has turned in on itself — just at the moment America needs it most. Because right about now, as I’ve discussed, America was making a comeback. An historic one. It is beginning to lead the world again, in very real ways. Europe is desperately scrambling to catch up to what Bidenomics’ promise of a new economy, China’s scratching its head trying to understand what it does when America becomes a net exporter again, the world watched and admired as the Jan 6th Committee did the hard work of genuinely defending a democracy from violent assault by authoritarians and fascists.
But now that very comeback is under severe and serious threat. You see, this is the worst case scenario I talked about. The best one was that the Democrats would win the House outright — they didn’t, unfortunately. The next best, the base case, one was that Republicans would be able to rein in their lunatics — hearing the emphatic message of the midterms, that Americans on the whole rejected the fanaticism of the Trump years. That clearly hasn’t come to pass. Instead, the fanatics in the GOP are being given, with every concession they’re given, outsized, extreme, almost absolute power.
So what is all this? This is the birth of Post-Trumpism. You see, poor old Donald Trump is out there calling for his party to unite behind Kevin McCarthy. But the fanatics aren’t listening. That’s funny, and the internet’s delighted by it — to see lunatics turn on each other. Yet there is a deeper point here. This group — the fanatical wing of the Freedom Caucus — were the staunchest Trumpists of yesteryear. They’re the bigots and violent extremists and fascists and authoritarians who represent Brand Trump in its essence — hateful, vulgar, grotesque, committed to destroying democracy. And yet here they are, ignoring the Fuhrer. LOL.
Funny, sure. But also a turning point. Trump no longer has power over even his own lieutenants anymore. First, his magic spell over the base broke — and now, we see that his authority within the upper ranks of his party exists no more.
Hence, this is Post-Trumpism. It’s Trumpism — committed to precisely the same goals, violence, ignorance, hate, bigotry, lunacy, the erasure of rights and their replacement with various forms of repression, like the Supreme Court taking women’s rights away. It’s Trumpism in its authoritarian and fascist essence — it’s not just driven by hate, but openly advocates breaking democracy down to institutionalize hate as the only rule, norm, and goal a society is to be really governed by and for. The difference is that it doesn’t need Trump anymore.
Post-Trumpism is Trumpism that’s outgrown Trump. The monster doesn’t need its master anymore, and now it’s out there, having escaped its cage, drooling for blood. There’s poor old Trump, looking…impotent…as the very lunatics who once worshiped him like a messiah, his very own lieutenants…just ignore him. And go right on destroying and smashing everything in sight, in a fit of screaming, nihilistic rage.
Post-Trumpism’s moment has arrived. This is what the chaos in the House is really about. These figures aren’t vying to be the next Trump yet — that comes a little later. Right now, Trumpism’s a movement that’s outgrowing its demagogue. That doesn’t mean it’s dead, though. It’s trapped in a vicious spiral — as it dwindles into a minority of fanatics, it hardens its attempts to cling to power, in even more extreme forms, all of which is going to alienate the mainstream even more, which will only harden the remaining minority of fanatics into even more extreme attempts to cling to power.
In a way, this is a continuation of Jan 6th. That day was about “stopping the vote.” And it’s not just that most of the holdouts voting against McCarthy believe the “election was stolen” — it’s that, in a deeper way, this is a kind of soft coup. The hard one didn’t work, and neither did the soft ones before that — “voter fraud” lawsuits and so forth. Now, the remaining minority of hardened fanatics is trying to do whatever it can to grind democracy to the barest nub, the smallest fleck, which, makes finishing it off for good that much easier next time around. This time, the fanatics aren’t storming Congress, they’re inside it, and they’re demanding the absolute power they didn’t get in the form of a noose around neck of a VP who wouldn’t stop the counting of votes. This time, the metaphorical noose is around Kevin McCarthy’s neck, and they’re saying to him — give us the power to stop democracy, dead in its tracks, or else. Or else…what? Or else we’ll…stop democracy.
In the time it’s taken to write this article, McCarthy’s lost another two votes, bringing the total failure count to eight. LOL.
See the problem — and the painful irony? Of course, all this’ll poison the GOP for decades to come, as the mainstream turns away in disgust. Still, it’s not good news for America, because now fanatics and lunatics are being given absolute power to bring democracy to a standstill, over and over again — at precisely the moment America was making an historic comeback. So that comeback’s going to slow down, and perhaps, in the worst case, even stall. That’s not just bad for America — it’s bad for the world. Too bad, then, that the lunatics don’t care. There they are, standing in the ashes of Trumpism. And rising it from it yet again, like a phoenix of idiocy, hate, and violence. I guess Americans had better learn the lesson this time around: whatever you do, don’t vote for these fools, because, well, this is what happens.
Umair
January 2023