Erick-Woods Erickson
I will not be surprised if, by this afternoon, Rep. Nancy Mace has out a fundraising appeal that she told Hunter Biden to his face that he has no balls. The GOP has a problem. This morning’s hearing about Biden turned into a clown show. I bet a lot of you loved it. But a lot of Democrats loved it too. Both sides get to rile up their base and fundraise. Democrats can say that the GOP could have asked Biden questions, but chose to yell at each other instead. Republicans already are saying Biden got scared and left — but he left after the Democrats said they’d vote to ask him questions and Nancy Mace instead chose to scream about letting women speak.
Meanwhile, the border grows in urgency and we are headed towards another government shutdown. Many of the Republicans in Washington will be able to fundraise off you all whether they are in the majority or minority. They do not care. They’ll get your checks. Progressives like AOC, however, know they have to be in the majority to enact their agenda. The GOP really has none.
Right now, Speaker Johnson has a spending plan to get passed to fund the government. It is a bad plan with minimal cuts, but it is also the best plan Johnson can structure that will actually pass. Conservatives are considering shutting down Congress. But, and pay attention to this, there are 45 retiring members of Congress, about half of whom are Republican. In 2010, Obamacare passed because retiring Democrats who no longer feared their base, could vote for it knowing they’d never stand for election again. Now, if the conservatives shut down the House or try to oust the Speaker this close to the election, you can be damn sure the House Republican moderates who are retiring will cut a worse deal with the Democrats.
While we are all focused on the clown show and the crack head, conservatives are getting outmaneuvered. And they’re getting outmaneuvered in large part because we lack the numbers. Conservative voters chose a lot of unviable candidates in 2022’s primaries and they lost to the Democrats. We have to build our numbers with credible, competent conservatives who can put points on the board and not just fundraise off soundbites. In the mean time, the conservatives in Congress need to decide — do they shut down the government and risk the retiring moderates structuring a worse deal with the Democrats, or do they take Mike Johnson’s deal that doesn’t cut much, but does claw back the money to the IRS.
Y’all, here’s the thing — moderates agreed with the conservatives last year to rally around a massive cut in government. Instead, a handful of House populists rejected those cuts and ousted Speaker McCarthy. While you may think that’s a good thing, Speaker Johnson is unable to do better, has a smaller House Republican Conference now, and many of those moderates who agreed to the massive cuts have had enough. They’re retiring and seething and perfectly willing to screw the populists who rejected the prior cuts. This is the ultimate outcome of short term gain without thinking of the long term consequences and, for those of us who actually care about the size of government and the national debt, we’re in a worse negotiating position now.
