Speaker's Race: 'System Restore Point'
Pick your metaphor: Republicans are playing with fire, poised for a train wreck, heading for the cliff... and, it won't be pretty...
House Republicans are playing with fire in the gambit for the perfect House Speaker.
And, make no mistake, perfection is the enemy of the good.
To use another metaphor, House Republicans are on track for a huge train wreck called Speaker Hakim Jeffries (R-NY).
And if you think Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was bad, just wait until Speaker Jeffries gavels in. And, if not now, then in January 2025, given the “pathetic” display of Republican “leadership” now in the wake of vacating the Speaker’s Chair on October 3. Yes, “pathetic” is how a retired General, who led many important missions in the Reagan years, characterized it. His wife suggests the eight Republican renegades all be given lollipops!
With Israel going up in flames, the border invasion overwhelming America and no work being done on the budget, to name just a few danger points, it’s time to admit, to use another metaphor, as with a computer that stops functioning, the “system restore point” must be activated. And, now. Oh, yes, and it’s time to refocus on Biden crimes instead of Republican nincompoopery — and the Comer hearings — remember THOSE? — that had just begun five days before the eight renegades had a temper tantrum and vacated the Speaker’s chair.
Like the old guy who sat atop the roof during a hurricane, telling rescue boat after rescue boat, ‘God’s coming to save me,’ only to lose his life, Republicans, to use a fourth metaphor, are about to be swallowed up in a hurricane called Speaker Hakim Jeffries. And, take careful note of where his sympathies lie: His uncle Leonard Jeffries had a “history of inflammatory anti-semetic remarks,” CNN’s John King reported in April, which Jeffries publicly defended as a student at Binghamton University in the campus paper, Vanguard. Admittedly Jeffries was young, but, clearly, his sympathies are not with Black conservatives like Clarence Thomas nor with the Jewish people.
So, now God is offering the eight renegade Republicans, who allied with all the voting Democrats (208) to oust Speaker McCarthy, this lifeline:
“Enough, already!”
“Wake up!”
“The ship is going down!” (yet another metaphor!)
I’m talking to you Representatives Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Ken Buck (R-CO), (who, it’s reported, did not support the Biden impeachment inquiry), Tim Burchette (R-TN), Eli Crane (R-AZ), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Bob Good (R-VA), Nancy Mace (R-SC), and Matt Rosendale (R-MT).
Time for you eight to admit you made a mistake.
Time to go to the “restore point” before the whole system crashes.
Republicans are heading for the cliff, for a final metaphor, just cruising to a Hakim Jeffries speakership.
For that, too, is how the ‘founders designed it.’
Heaven forbid that it takes a Jeffries speakership to wake up the Wackadoodle Caucus,
Time to undo the damage done on October 3 and bring back Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
The sand is running out of the hourglass.
Time to grow up, Republicans.
Time to do the right thing.
Mary Claire Kendall is author of Oasis: Conversion Stories of Hollywood Legends, published in Madrid under the title También Dios pasa por Hollywood. She has completed a biography about Betty Hutton, as well Oasis II, featuring six more legends of Hollywood, and is currently writing a book about the life of Ernest Hemingway viewed through the prism of faith due to be published in late 2024.