The clown show

The hardest part of writing one column per week is picking one topic to discuss in a world where so many are available.

This week’s potential topics ranged from the governor’s, anything-but-an-emergency “emergency” edict about government IDs and gender, to a far more important proposed ballot initiative strengthening government transparency, to why the Grateful Dead matters in American culture.

The problem is, I’ve got rubbernecking disease. I simply can’t look away from the train wreck . . . clown show . . . zoo that in another era we would call the United States Congress.

Let’s just say it. Arkansans can consider ourselves lucky, blessed, fortunate (choose your own term) that we’re represented by a congressional delegation that can’t be considered monkeys in that zoo.

All four representatives hold leadership positions in varying degrees of importance and seem intent on trying to move up the ladder. Whatever your politics, that’s good for Arkansas. It seems clear their motivation for serving in Congress is clearly not to burn it down. Kudos to them.

It’s hard to see it, based on watching the news, but most Americans can say this about their particular member of Congress—yet not all Americans.

What’s truly amazing is that even sitting members of Congress are more and more fed up, not with the institution, but the people running it. Some have had all they can take and have decided to exit the clown show. Unfortunately, they’re usually the ones who could do the country some good by staying. But who can blame them?

Friday was Colorado Republican Ken Buck’s last day in office. The ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus member disagrees with the president on almost every issue. He also disagrees with his party’s efforts to impeach the president. He’s leaving for the same reason that many Americans have suspected for months: The whole effort is built on a fiction provided to the FBI by Alexander Smirnov, who destroyed what little credibility he had by recently admitting everything related to the Burisma/Biden connection was a fairy tale.

Also Friday, relatively moderate Republican rising star Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin announced his last day would be April 19 for many of the same reasons.

These losses squeeze an already slim majority into a narrower margin-for-error similar to walking a tightrope from War Memorial to Razorback Stadium without falling off.

At this point, with 435 seats reduced to 431 by vacancies, 216 are needed to pass legislation on a party-line vote. Republicans have 218 seats. The margin is incredibly tight, and less than a handful of Republicans are needed for Democrats to win on any issue.

Depending on your perspective and/or the issue, you may see this as a positive, but when a handful of members can torpedo a bill that determines whether aid gets to Ukraine or the Gaza Strip or funding is provided for roads and bridges, both sides of the aisle need to work together.

I’m no fan of Speaker Mike Johnson, but it’s respectable that he compromised with Democrats in recognition that his right-wing political beliefs are not shared by all Americans. He seems to understand that every American depends on the federal government, whether they want to believe it or not—not to mention that it costs more to restart the government than it does to keep it open.

This respect for compromise is among the top three items on the list of 8,000 things I don’t like about Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG). Not only does she spew ridiculous conspiracy theories, but she places so little value on compromise that she’s willing to take extreme measures to punish colleagues who don’t agree with her, even if they’re on her side of the aisle.

On Friday she filed a grievance against Johnson, the first step in the process of removing the Speaker from the post. His sin was the same as his predecessor Kevin McCarthy’s: He worked with Democrats to keep the government open.

Whether she’ll actually call for a vote remains to be seen, but it’s an undeniable fact that this marks the second time in less than six months such action has been taken against a Speaker of the House by members of his own party.

It would be unfair to say every Republican is on board with this. A large majority are against it, but what MTG knows is that as long as Republicans nominate election-deniers for Speaker, exactly zero votes can be expected from the left side of the aisle.

MTG and about 20-25 others are responsible for nearly all the dysfunction in the House right now, and it doesn’t seem to matter to them. At least in the case of MTG, her district is drawn in a way that a raccoon could be elected as long as it calls itself a Republican.

However, it was probably best said by Fox News host Emily Campagno: “I feel we are seeing yet another tantrum by a tiny faction of that conference that is disrupting the entire machine … I am sick and tired of it as a Republican, as an American citizen.”

I’m not a Republican, but I am an American. So, me too.