I take my pleasures where I can find them, and I think I now better understand why Mel Brooks and whoever came up with Hogan’s Heroes got such a kick out of making Nazis seem silly and ridiculous rather than sinister and evil. I speak of course, of the spectacle that unfolded on Tuesday, February 6, 2024 under the Capitol Dome in Washington, DC. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson of Louisiana brought a resolution to the floor to impeach Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security, for high crimes and misdemeanors.
Sec. Mayorkas had done nothing discernible wrong. He wasn’t guilty of treason or bribery or any high crime whatsoever, and he didn’t stand accused of any known misdemeanors. In fact, the broad public had no idea what Mayorkas was supposed to have done to deserve this kind of public humiliation and professional rebuke. Truthfully, in the lead-up the case was so weak and incomprehensible that the upcoming impeachment vote was only the third or fourth biggest story on the various news channels. And the news channels couldn’t explain any rationale beyond blind rage and spite. Considering this was only the second impeachment of a cabinet officer in the history of the country, and the first since 1876, the lack of news interest was itself somehow newsworthy.
Because it was clear that the U.S. Senate would immediately flush a impeachment referral based on nothing more than policy disputes down the nearest drain hole after the most truncated trial they could devise, the coverage emphasized the odd juxtaposition of the House Republicans turning down a tough bipartisan Senate immigration bill while accusing the Homeland Security secretary of criminal laxity on the border.
But galactic hypocrisy wasn’t the most savory item on Tuesday’s menu. As you might imagine, it took some doing to convince all the members of the House Republican caucus to vote in favor of impeaching a man for nothing, and there were two members who flat-out refused to go along with the plan. But that seemed manageable when the Republicans learned that Democratic lawmaker Al Green of Houston, Texas was in the hospital after undergoing emergency abdominal surgery. This meant the Republicans could afford to lose three votes from their own caucus and still pass the impeachment resolution.
But two things happened that Speaker Mike Johnson hadn’t considered. The first was that Republican congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin revealed himself as a third ‘no’ vote, later explaining that impeaching Mayorkas would “set a dangerous new precedent that will be weaponized against future Republican administrations.” That reduced their cushion to zero. Then the second thing happened:
With the final minutes for the vote dwindling, the House watched intently on Tuesday night to see whether any more Republicans would defect on the resolution to impeach Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary…
…Then, like a scene out of a political thriller, Representative Al Green, Democrat of Texas, appeared at the last moment to cast a surprise ballot — from a wheelchair, wearing blue hospital clothing and tan socks. He voted no.
Mr. Green’s vote was decisive. It tied up the measure, 215 to 215, and handed a stunning defeat to Speaker Mike Johnson.
In a procedural move that allows the House Republican leadership to bring the resolution up again in the future, Rep. Blake D. Moore of Utah, the vice chairman of the GOP conference, changed his yes vote to no making the final tally 214-216. As a result, the resolution failed and Speaker Johnson was forced to make the announcement himself.
You can use whatever analogy you want, e.g. Keystone Cops, but this was an absolutely comical pratfall of incompetence and comeuppance for the House Republicans. It’s so slapstick that it risks humanizing their behavior in the same way the essentially decent Colonel Klink and Sgt. Schultz of Hogan’s Heroes risked trivializing the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes. But sometimes you just have to laugh at fascists in order to keep your sanity.
This is one of those times.
Good health and, done correctly, good politics. Alinsky put it this way: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”
It really is hard to overstate just how cartoonish the GOP has become. It truly should be viewed through a reality TV lens, if the stakes weren’t so high and actual human lives weren’t in danger. People are dying because of this clusterfuck caucus. The fact that no actual governance is happening is really the point with those who are controlling the circus. The dysfunction is at a level never seen in modern times. And this is going to continue in this fashion as long as they have any level of power at their disposal.
Now the $64,000 question is, does ANY of this register with the average, low information voter who is simply going about their daily lives, going to work, dealing with kids, shopping for groceries, and struggling with their finances? Do they understand, on even a subconscious level, that this dysfunction is trickling down and negatively affecting things which actually make their lives more challenging? Or is all of this just keeping the politically engaged and informed all knotted up because we are up to our eyeballs in these conflicts every day?
Ultimately, I don’t know the answer to that question, but my anecdotal take on this is not overwhelmingly positive. It seems the GOP has somewhat succeeded in convincing people, by the years of their sheer drumbeating of incompetence, that this is just the way that politics are. They’ve succeeded in portraying their antics as nothing more than the flip side of what Democrats do when they are in charge. Through their own right-wing wurlitzer media networks, along with years of knee jerk water-carrying by a not insignificant part of the mainstream media, it seems that many people are pretty locked into the “both sides” point of view. That narrative is something that Democrats need to start hammering on, day after day, every opportunity they get. The GOP has willingly handed them a banquet table full of easy to understand consequences of the Republican’s incompetence, and the usual nuanced and complicated explanations that Democrats always love to embrace are not necessary here. Democrats need to belly up to that banquet table of GOP incompetence, fill their plates, and feed it to the masses. The fact that ingrained narratives change at the rate of a turning aircraft carrier means that Democrats need to get their shit together quickly and take advantage of a position of offense on this. If Democrats don’t get ahead of this and they once again allow the Republicans to control the airwaves due to their inability to quickly and effectively coordinate their message, then they will have missed one of the greatest opportunities to get a leg up on the creeping American fascism that’s standing at our door. I’m tired of watching this continually happen.