It was probably former Wyoming Republican Senator Alan Simpson who first said that the Republicans are the “Stupid Party.” He may not have invented it, but he said it often enough.
These few House Republicans need to understand what is in our national interest and what is not.
American humorist P.J. O’Rourke once said, “The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.”
Both of those statements seem a lot less funny than they should these days. Some House Republicans — Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Bob Good and others — are working very hard to prove both Simpson and O’Rourke were right.
The stupidity of Greene goes back at least to 2021 when she said that the enemies of Christmas were taking their enmity against the holiday to a whole new level, warning against a conspiracy to use “state-of-the-art Jewish space lasers” to shoot down Santa Claus. She added that the Rothschild banking family was behind the plot against Christmas saying, ““The Rothschilds have already celebrated their own holiday with their little Rothschildren. They call it the Festival of Lasers.”
She’s not just anti-Semitic: she’s really stupid.
Gaetz, of course, was one of the ringleaders of the gang that toppled California Republican Kevin McCarthy from the speakership.
Let’s remember that it took the Republican conference fifteen votes to choose McCarthy as speaker. His leadership was no one’s first choice.
When the Gaetz Gang threw McCarthy out of the speakership, they were objecting to Ukraine aid and calling for “regular order” on spending bills.
“Regular order” means that Congress should pass the dozen annual appropriations bills through committee and have the ability to amend them. Since the 1980s, Congress has been too lazy to actually do all that and has relied on “continuing resolutions” to fund the government at the prior fiscal year’s levels, which always end up being increased. Gaetz’s Gang was trying to commit an act of conservatism, by reducing government spending. They failed resoundingly.
Now, Greene, Gaetz, and the others would rather fight among themselves than tackle any of the Democrats’ and Biden’s agendas.
The Republicans have a razor-thin two-vote majority in the House. Speaker Mike Johnson needs to get every one of their votes to pass anything which people such as Greene, Gaetz, and Good are making impossible. Johnson’s only alternative is to rely on Democrats’ votes to pass House bills he believes important.
Greene has filed a motion to vacate the chair which may cost Johnson the speakership. She may call for a vote on her motion this week.
It’s easy to understand Republicans’ frustration. But it’s impossible to understand why these few malcontents are blocking Johnson from getting anything that’s actually conservative done. And let’s not confuse aid to Ukraine with any conservative idea or principle.
Greene and Co. are trying to throw Speaker Johnson out because he broke Ukraine aid, aid to Israel and Taiwan, and some border control into separate bills. His major sin, which came to a vote on Saturday, was aid to Ukraine without any border control.
The Ukraine aid bill contains some funds to protect Ukraine’s border. This does, and should, rankle conservatives everywhere. But Greene, Gaetz, and the others should be raising hell about Biden’s utter refusal to improve our border security, not take it out on Johnson.
The Republican opposition to Ukraine aid is not conservative: it’s isolationist. As I wrote in December 2021, isolationists aren’t conservatives.
Conservatives aren’t “neocons,” those who haven’t seen a war in which they didn’t want to intervene. We are also inalterably opposed to turning U.S. foreign policy over to the UN’s gaggle of despots, dictators, rogues and terrorists.
What that boils down to is what Henry Nau wrote in his great book, Conservative Internationalism. As Nau wrote, conservatives aren’t — and shouldn’t be — chary about interfering in the affairs of other nations when it is in America’s interest to do so.
Nau wrote that “Conservative Internationalism” recognizes the necessity to be involved in other nations’ affairs when they can affect us. As he explains, we don’t believe that our nation’s foreign policy should be suborned by appeasement, isolationism, or by submitting American foreign policy to multinational groups such as the UN.
This column has further defined Nau’s ideas by saying that we should only intervene militarily in wars where our vital national security interests are at stake, i.e., when our freedoms are threatened. America must always defend the rights preserved for us in the Constitution. More than that, we must have freedom of the skies, the oceans, space, and the cyber world. All of those things — and nothing else — is worth spending American lives to protect.
Part of that boils down to aggressive diplomacy in our national interests backed by the threat of military power: what used to be called the “mailed fist in the velvet glove.” And when that fails in a way that threatens our essential freedoms, then — and only then — should we go to war.
That means we can, and must, support nations that were captives of the former Soviet Union.
Ronald Reagan did it in many ways but most memorably by supporting Polish union leader Lech Walesa who fought and won against Soviet tyranny. Reagan did so with words and the aggressive diplomacy we were then capable of.
We aren’t capable of that sort of diplomacy now because Biden lacks credibility around the world.
With regard to Ukraine, we only have a derivative national security interest, not a vital one. Thus, we should never send American troops to defend Ukraine. We should, and must, instead send arms and financial aid to Ukraine.
It is obviously in our national interest to thwart Vladimir Putin’s war to conquer Ukraine. We have done so — certainly the only thing Biden has done correctly since becoming president — but now some House Republicans are blocking further aid to Ukraine, including Greene, Gaetz, Good, and a few others. As I wrote a few weeks ago, Reagan would be ashamed of them.
Johnson passed bills, with Democrat support, to give $60.8 billion in aid to Ukraine which includes $23 billion to replenish U.S. weapons stocks that have been depleted dangerously at Biden’s insistence. It also includes $10 billion in financial aid to Ukraine which is repayable but almost certainly won’t be repaid.
Johnson also passed a separate bill with $26.3 billion in aid to Israel six months after the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. He also passed a measure for aid to Taiwan.
Johnson tried to pass a border security measure, much like HR-2, which would have compelled construction of the Trump border wall. That bill failed to pass the House because Democrats — and a few Republicans — voted against it.
The question now is whether Green, Gaetz, Good and the other Republicans will succeed in throwing Johnson out of the speakership. If they succeed, Republicans will look foolish, weak and incapable of governing just like they did when McCarthy was thrown out of the speakership. They should fail because Johnson is doing what Reagan would have done.
Republicans can no longer afford to be the Stupid Party. These few House Republicans need to understand what is in our national interest and what is not. Mike Johnson should keep the Speakership.
