Can I Hear Me Now?

​I understand that most elected Republicans in Congress today are so hell-bent on trying to slam Democrats about…well, pretty much everything – and while that’s hyperbole, it’s not by much, since their list of outrage against Democrats includes Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head, the Muppets in general, and Big Bird in specific, and more – so much so that it appears as if their only challenge is being able to just get all the words spewed out, to the point that they often don’t appear to even hear what they’re saying.

This was at its most clear yesterday when Ronna McDaniel – head of the Republican National Committee (let me repeat that:  she is head of the Republican National Committee) and niece of Sen. Mitt Romney – tweeted the following –

​Honest.  She really wrote that.  You can see it yourself.

I read that and was taken aback by its near-total cluelessness.  Here was the head of the Republican National Committee so twisted in knots trying as hard as she could to follow the GOP memo and damn the Democratic President of the United States by (this time) shouting that we need to have great border security (!!), implying how gallingly lax it supposedly is – right after telling us that border security was so excellent that it confiscated “204 MILLION” doses of a “lethal” drug.

Does she not read what she writes?  Does she not hear what she’s saying?  Does she not understand what she’s saying?  Truly, I have no idea, because this isn’t the first time she’s done something like this.  And also, it’s such a blatant, glaring thing to miss.

I mean…I mean…I mean, she wasn’t telling us that Border Patrol missed the smuggling operation and so all the “lethal” drugs got through.  She was telling us that Border Patrol did its job.  Did it wonderfully.  And stopped a massive shipment of “lethal” drugs from entering the United States.

And to be clear, this isn’t about Ronna McDaniel – head of the Republican National Committee – even if she doesn’t this often  So many GOP officials do this, regularly.  So overcome with their virulent fascism that they feel they have to attack Democrats like other people breathe, whether her, or Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Madison Cawthorn, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, Devin Nunes, Mitch McConnell, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham – I won’t go through the entire list, it’s near endless, and includes state and local officials, starting with poster boy governors Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott and the even-worse Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.

Yesterday, too, there was former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows dragging out the old chestnut, suggesting Republicans might make Trump the Speaker of the House if they won control.  And he didn’t say this because he thought it was a good idea, but purely as revenge against Democrats.  But don’t take my word for it, take his –

"I would love to see the gavel go from Nancy Pelosi to Donald Trump," Meadows said on a podcast (to make things worse, it was actually the just-indicted Steve Bannon's).  "People would go crazy.  As you know you don't have to be an elected member of Congress to be the speaker. She would go from tearing up a speech to having to give the gavel to Donald Trump.  Oh, she would go crazy."

And then this morning, he was seconded by Matt Gaetz, because apparently when you're under FBI investigation for child sex trafficking, you want your patron saint on your side.

Never mind that this will never happen, for a great many reasons as I wrote here not only ago.  But what Meadows is missing is that, in his angst-twisted need to damn the Democrats, he’s given them the best talking point for the mid-terms that they should push LOUDLY as why to vote Democratic.  Even though it won’t ever happen, just the mere fact that Republicans are saying (and don’t seem to understand the impact of what they’re saying on a public that seems to really want to move on past Trump being in charge) it is enough to campaign against. 

And then yesterday, too, there was Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) in one of the most disgraceful displays I’ve seen in the Senate attacking a presidential nominee, which is saying a lot, most especially these days.  In questioning the long-admired Saule Omarova (who previously had served as a special advisor for George W. Bush in the Treasury Department and who teaches at Cornell Law School), nominated by Joe Biden to be Comptroller of the Currency – hardly the high-profile of positions in the Administration – Mr. Kennedy went full Joe McCarthy on her, just missing out on using the exact words of “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party,” though coming close enough to be singed and get a second-degree burn.  "I mean no disrespect,” he said to Ms. Omarova, “but I don't know whether to call you 'professor' or 'comrade.'"

What Kennedy was trying to smarmily refer to is that Saule Omarova was born in Kazakhstan under the Soviet regime and so was forced like every child to be a member of a Communist Youth group.  And he kept trying to smear her on where she was born and forced to do – even to the point of asking if she’d ever sent in a resignation letter or would do so now.  As politely as she could, she explained that when you reached a certain age, you were no longer a “youth” and no longer a member of that group, so there was nothing to resign from.  Never mind that the Soviet Union doesn’t exist anymore.  Never mind, too, that – as she said eloquently – her family lived under tremendous oppression of the Stalin regime, that there is family history she doesn’t even know because of that, and that she suffered greatly under the Soviets and was an American citizen and proud to be.  Kennedy’s continued questioning of her was like out of another dystopian era -- and the video of it was far more cringing that what I’m explaining here.  Thankfully when it was Elizabeth Warren’s turn to speak, she knew all about Ms. Omarova’s distinguished career very well, treated her with great respect, and then pretty much wiped the floor with Kennedy

Like Mr. Kennedy, though, there are things I don’t know.  And what I don't know is if Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) is totally reprehensible or doesn't, in fact, know the meaning of the word "disrespect." Because he was covered with it and drenched.  And as he spoke, with each Joe McCarthyesque word he uttered, I couldn’t tell if he knew how the words dripping out of his mouth – as he tried to damn President Biden by damning this accomplished woman (who had worked for George W. Bush, not that that should even matter) – made him look as out of touch with reality, decency and democracy as they did.

And to be clear, all three of these tales were just from yesterday.  This is Standard Operating Procedure for today's Republican Party.

But then all of this is today’s Republican Party.  Trying to undermine all centers of opposing authority.  And if you don’t understand the words out of your mouth as you do so, if you don’t hear your own words, that’s okay, because your only point is trying to demean those others, whether it's true or not, and all your followers will love every syllable. It's one of the core tenets of fascism.

Yet not hearing your own words has a downside – because when you don’t understand what you're saying, and others do, you end up making the case against yourself.

"You've done enough," attorney Joseph Welch said wearily to Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-WI), while the nation watched on television in 1954 as McCarthy cruelly, unnecessarily destroyed an innocent man. "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

"I know this hurts you, Mr. Welch," McCarthy interjected in his push to demean all liberals, all Democrats, all other centers of authority as communists, an effort which brought the actual usage of “witch hunt” to American politics, a lesson Trump learned well from his mentor Roy Cohn who had sat with McCarthy as his chief counsel.  An effort loud enough so that 67 years later McCarthy’s other spiritual ancestors Kennedy, McDaniel and Meadows, Greene and Cawthorn, Cruz, Gosar, Jordan and Hawley and others in the same Republican Party would hear him.  

"I'll say it hurts!," Welch replied, and added a moment later -- "Senator, I think it hurts you, too, sir."

History shows very clearly that it did. 

​And does.

That’s who the Republican Party is, and has been.  The same – in McCarthy’s own words aimed at others, but like Trump decades later, projecting themselves – “jackal pack.”