Back in the day when America was sane, Republican Al D’Amato won three U.S. Senate terms in deep blue New York by delivering on infrastructure, earning himself the nickname Senator Pothole in the process.
Today, Republican lawmakers bringing home the bacon are being tarred and feathered for fixing anything if they help a Democrat in the process. The 13 House Republicans who voted for an infrastructure bill are hiring personal security and awaiting their time-out to be handed down this week by Minority “Leader” and sweaty Trump stooge Kevin McCarthy.
If you want to stay in the good graces of Trump’s Republican party, don’t be seen doing anything to assist Joe Biden. This week at the White House, the president was only half-joking when he said he wouldn’t call out Sen. Rob Portman as one “hell of a guy” for helping infrastructure pass if the Ohio Republican hadn’t already announced he was retiring.
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The furor over the infrastructure bill, Biden’s biggest legislative win to date, is nothing compared to what’s in store with its much bigger sibling, Build Back Better. The GOP has been so successful at framing BBB as a multi-trillion dollar lunge towards socialism and a trigger for inflation that even swing-voters find it hard to focus on the family- and planet-saving aspects of the bill. As gas hits $4 a gallon and milk edges towards $5, angry shoppers paying 5 percent more for Thanksgiving dinner don’t care that the infrastructure bill will someday ease the supply chain bottleneck that’s making cranberries as hard to sniff out as truffles.
And unless the CBO defies expectations and scores the BBB as paying for itself by increasing tax revenues and stretching out the goodies over 10 years, Democrats are going to be left holding the bag with voters. Fury at the cost of living is the best get-out-the-vote program known to man.
Democrats have a hard choice to make: They can cry about the GOP’s cruel calculus here, or face the music and declare victory with what they have in hand—replacing rusty bridges and gridlocked highways and claiming credit for unemployment down to 4.3 percent, a year sooner than promised, with 600,000 more jobs added to the economy than previous reports showed—and then shelve much of the rest of their worthy agenda until they get through 2022.
Otherwise support slipping with every news story broadcast from the parking lot of Walmart, their chances of losing the House and quite possibly the Senate, and with those losses jeopardizing democracy itself, continue to rise. That’s no exaggeration if you believe elections are the bedrock of our experiment in self-government and Republicans are poised to overturn any result that they don’t like.
That sounds dire, but it’s already gone that way in GOP-controlled states. Out with nonpartisan election officials, like Brad Raffensperger, and in with partisans who won’t need the charade of searching for bamboo ballots, or bankrolling bonkers efforts to “prove” voting machines were controlled by China.
Duly elected and appointed GOP officials will announce the results of a recount, and that’s that, no Cyber Ninjas necessary. The next Mike Pence will be teed up to reverse the election if Donald Trump, or the candidate he anoints, doesn’t win in 2028. Any election will be found fraudulent until proven innocent, which will be impossible with partisans in charge. The initial vote count will merely be suggestive of who won.
What’s paid leave compared to giving Republicans the Congress and the machinery to rescind any election they don’t win? If brute force partisans control both houses, there will be a constitutional crisis I wish we couldn’t imagine, but easily can without much of a stretch. Scroll back in time to the vote taken when Congress valiantly reconvened after the Capitol was invaded. Republicans didn’t have enough votes to prevail but they voted overwhelmingly to challenge electors from the states Biden won.
Is continuing to dither over BBB worth that? Democrats may have the winning policy hand on the bill but they aren’t skilled at messaging or lying while Republicans kill at both. Hear them roar: Do you want socialism and inflation? Then vote for Build Back Better. It’s up to you.
And the bill has some easy-to-caricature provisions Republicans tuck into with glee, like a $4.1 billion tax break for people who buy electric bicycles, $2.5 billion for “tree equity,” $2.5 billion to help contingency-fee lawyers recoup their expenses, and a tax break for producers of sound recordings.
Republicans haven’t begun to feast on the fact that Biden’s promise that only those earning more than $400,000 would feel the pinch to pay for the bill was challenged by yesterday’s Joint Committee on Taxation analysis that shows the House version raising taxes on the middle class as early as 2023.
To see what’s in store should Republicans prevail in 2022, take a look at the state of the House GOP. Only two Republicans (Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger) out of 213 voted to reprimand Paul Gosar for posting an anime video showing his avatar slashing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s throat.
The same Republicans who saw no evil there plan to show no mercy to their colleagues who voted for the infrastructure bill, with some members pushing to strip the “traitors” of the committee assignments that make life worth living in the lower chamber.
The infidels include Rep. John Katko, who used to be a favorite of McCarthy, but now is in danger of losing his place as ranking member on Homeland Security. To save himself, Katko reportedly stood up in conference Tuesday in support of Gosar’s death threat directed at a colleague.
This is the majority you’ll get if Democrats keep sinking in the polls, despite being absolutely right on the merits of lifting the working class, saving the planet from flood, fire, and ice, and giving children a leg up from the crib on. Even some in his party are begging Biden not to be FDR, an inapt charge but one that’s caught on.
While it’s unfortunate that a majority of Republicans believe Trump won the election, for now they can’t do anything about it. But just you wait.
Ask yourself this question: What’s a failed coup? Practice. Then ask yourself: What’s a peaceful coup?
It’s what could happen in 2024 if Republicans regain power in 2022. Seniors might get their dentures, but they won’t have a free country.
