Dysfunctional GOP is unable to govern, undeserving of power

Sixteen months ago, incoming House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-LA., was riding high. Despite the lack of an anticipated “red wave,” Republicans had successfully taken control of the U.S. House of Representatives, breaking the Democratic legislative trifecta.

Scalise promised an “ambitious” agenda that included 11 “ready-to-go” bills that would pass the House within the first two weeks of the new session.

Instead, House Republicans spent the first week of the session bickering over who would be their own leader.

Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-mont., described the fight for the speakership as “chaotic.” Zinke would know: As Donald Trump’s secretary of the interior, Zinke was an agent of chaos. He rode a horse down the streets of Washington, D.C. his first day of work, demanded a special flag be flown above the Interior Department when he was present and blamed wildfires on “environmental terrorist groups.” If Zinke thought the process was chaotic, we can’t imagine what was going on behind closed doors.

After 15 floor votes, newly elected Speaker Kevin Mccarthy promised to get to work governing the nation.

We all know what happened next. During its first year in power, one of the only accomplishments House Republicans could claim was ousting Mccarthy and spending another three weeks bickering over who their next leader would be.

Most its other accomplishments were the product of Democrats, who negotiated bipartisan compromises that kept the government from shutting down or defaulting on our debt despite the Republicans’ enthusiastic efforts to demolish the American economy.

This year hasn’t shown any signs of significant progress, as Speaker Mike Johnson has yet to quell the dysfunction, putting the 118th Congress on track to be the least productive since the Great Depression.

America — well, its red states at least — gave the House majority to a party that has no idea how to govern and never learned how to do it on the job.

Personal feuds, profound ideological differences and the presence of far-right extremists who don’t believe in governance have eliminated the GOP’S ability to accomplish anything without the help and support of Democrats.

The chaos, dysfunction and open fear of the threats of violence of a large faction of conservative voters have grown to such proportions that long-time GOP lawmakers are calling it quits and retiring early.

Following the forced resignation of scandal-ridden Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., and the early retirement of seven other Republican lawmakers, the GOP will soon have only a two-vote majority.

Moreover, 21 current Republican congressmen have announced that they won’t seek reelection this year. According to reporting by The Washington Post, several more House Republicans have seriously considered retiring but decided to remain in office to prevent far-right extremists from gaining additional seats or power.

Among those leaving are four committee chairs and eight subcommittee chairs, including Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-wis., a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who serves as chairman of the House Select Committee on Competition with the Chinese Communist Party.

In short, even far-right Republican lawmakers admit there is no hope for an America run by today’s Republican Party.

Upon announcing his retirement, former Rep. Ken Buck, R-colo., a radical in his own right but not radical enough for today’s party, condemned members of his party for their unwillingness to govern seriously in the interests of the American people and “obsessively fixating on retribution and vengeance for contrived injustices of the past.”

Buck isn’t exactly a RINO, or “Republican in name only.” His conservative credentials date back to the Koch-funded tea party movement, which was known for, among other shocking things, having followers who formed a gauntlet yelling racial slurs and spitting on Black congressmen on their way to the Capitol. It is telling that Buck thinks his party has sunk even lower from that gutter behavior. Recently he told The Washington Post that he believes the GOP is now focused exclusively on defending Trump and scoring political points.

“Now, we’re impeaching people like it’s some kind of carnival,” Buck said, “and the Constitution is just a thing of the past to the very same people who were tea party patriots 10 to 12 years ago.”

He said it was “ironic” that he “got a lot more good work done with the Democrats in charge” of the House than with his fellow Republicans leading. Unlike the MAGA extremists who now control the Republican Party, Democrats still believe in working for Americans and in institutions of government that compromise to pass laws in the interests of the nation as a whole.

MAGA Republicans, on the other hand, refused to pass a Republican immigration bill because it might hurt Donald Trump’s chances of being elected.

Rep. Troy Nehls, R-texas, admitted it by saying he wouldn’t vote for the bill because “I’m not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating.”

Take note: Nehls didn’t say the bill was poorly written or unnecessary or contained bad policy, he said he wouldn’t vote for it because it might help Biden’s approval rating — America be damned.

Instead, House Republicans impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for failing to take action to address the crisis at the border. Pot, meet kettle.

The damage the MAGA wing of the GOP is doing is lasting and not just on the border. Their refusal to provide aide to Ukraine is handing the country to Russia.

If all of that weren’t enough, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GA. — recently and accurately dubbed “Moscow Marge” for carrying Vladimir Putin’s water — now wants to bring us back to where it all began, by removing Johnson as speaker and wasting even more time selecting yet another replacement.

Listen up, America. MAGA Republicans are telling us, straight to our face, that they don’t have any constructive ideas for America and aren’t interested in governance. Even if they were, their longtime Republican colleagues are telling us the MAGA wing of the party is incapable of anything more than vengeance politics and culture wars. They aren’t serious people, they’re just angry people who lack a vision for an American future.

We must not give them power in November. Not in the House, not in the Senate and certainly not in the White House.