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The House Republican circus is in plain view as chaos and dysfunction continues to be the name of the game for the most “do-nothingest [Congress] since 1859-1861.”
A new column from the Washington Post notes that even House Republicans know how much of an unmitigated disaster their majority has been:
“Our Republican House majority has failed completely,” Greene has said.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), stood on the House floor and demanded: “One thing. I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing — one — that I can go campaign on and say we did.”
Read more below about how much of a circus the House GOP has become, enabled by some of their most vulnerable freshman members:
Washington Post: The House GOP is a circus. The chaos has one source.
Dana Milbank | September 18, 2024
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In 11 months as speaker, Johnson has led the House Republicans not to the promised land but into deeper water, where they have been thrashing, splashing and dog paddling without end. Johnson inherited a dysfunctional House GOP majority from Speaker Kevin McCarthy — the first in history to be ousted midterm — and managed to make it even worse by catering to the whims of former president Donald Trump even more than his predecessor had.
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In the first 18 months of this Congress, only 70 laws were enacted. Calculations by political scientist Tobin Grant, who tracks congressional output over time, put this Congress on course to be the do-nothingest since 1859-1861 — when the Union was dissolving.
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With each election since Trump became a political force a decade ago, the House GOP caucus has swelled with ever-more-exotic hooligans, saboteurs and conspiracy theorists in the MAGA mold.
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In the House GOP class of 2022 alone:
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Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, propelled to stardom by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and MyPillow’s Mike Lindell, was found to have embellished many aspects of her life story, including a “home invasion” she suffered and her upbringing as a “Messianic Jew.” In Congress, she has been known primarily for introducing bills to expel, fine or censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) because he led the first impeachment of Trump, and for legislation calling on the House “Sergeant-at-Arms to take into custody the body of Attorney General [Merrick] Garland wherever found.”
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Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin, who was at the Capitol on the day of the insurrection, made a name for himself in Congress by yelling and cursing at high school students serving as Senate pages because they were taking photos from the floor of the Rotunda (it was their last week on the job). The representative called them “lazy sh—” and told them to “get the f— up,” reported Punchbowl News.
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Ryan Zinke of Montana returned to Congress after serving as Trump’s interior secretary, during which time he rode a horse to work on his first day and ordered the department to fly a special “secretarial flag” from the building’s roof whenever he was in residence. He resigned under pressure in 2018 in the face of multiple probes into his real estate dealings, and the Interior Department’s inspector general found that Zinke repeatedly violated federal ethics rules while in office. After being sworn in as a new member of Congress, Zinke went to the House floor to say that “the Deep State runs secret messaging campaigns with one goal in mind: to increase its power to censor and persuade the American people.” Claiming that “shell organizations” funded by foreign investors “repeatedly attempt to destroy the American West,” the lawmaker said, “they want to wipe out the American cowboy completely.”
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