reflectivepundit

Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Risk of Returning Trump to the White House

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Last week, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote that the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris team should not run again in 2024 listing his age and her inability to gain traction in the American public, not even among fellow Democrats. If Biden and Harris “campaign together in 2024, I think Biden risks undoing his greatest achievement — which was stopping Trump.” Ignatius warned.

As I read the thoughtful column, I agreed with the notion that the Democrats need a changing of the guards on the very top. President Biden’s approval ratings are low, Vice President Harris’s are lower. A series of recent campaign polls had Biden and Trump in dead heats with some showing Trump a few points ahead.

Not surprisingly, voters express their concerns about the presumed top contenders’ age in next year’s election, when asked by pollsters. Joe Biden will be short of 82 years old on Election Day 2024 and Donald Trump 78. The sitting president appears more aged as we see him walking and talking on the screen than his predecessor.

And in today’s world, whether true or false, appearances become reality.

That reality overshadows, in the mind of too many people, President Biden’s good qualities—his commitment to uphold democracy, his sound judgement on policies designed to help the American people, his accomplishment in foreign policy, and his never-ending efforts to reach out for bipartisanship.

For whatever reason, during the Biden presidency Kamala Harris did not get the same opportunities to show leadership qualities as Joe Biden did during the Obama presidency. Also, she has not gotten a fraction of the news coverage that Congresswomen Majorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and similar lightweights receive regularly.

Contrary to many pundits who claim that there are no strong alternatives to the Biden/Harris team among Democrats, I believe there are good choice. On top of my list are Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer as presidential candidate and Maryland Governor Wes Moore as second on the ticket—a woman and a Black man both exceptional leaders.

However, as of now, the Biden/Harris team will run for reelection. With Trump on top of the GOP ticket (or someone like Ron DeSantis), perhaps enough Americans will again vote in favor of democracy and Joe Biden.

I will.  

Does the Constitution Prohibit Trump from Being President Again?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Two renown experts on the U.S. Constitution, liberal Harvard law professor Laurence H. Tribe and conservative former judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit J. Michael Luttig, wrote earlier this month in The Atlantic that the Constitution disqualifies former president Donald J. Trump from becoming U.S. president again. Similarly, two conservative law professors, both members of the Federalist Society, William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of St. Thomas University, concluded in their not yet published law review article according to the New York Times, “Donald Trump cannot be president — cannot run for president, cannot become president, cannot hold office — unless two-thirds of Congress decides to grant him amnesty for his conduct on Jan. 6.”

While this should be a good reason to rejoice for everyone who opposes Trump’s reelection to the highest office in the land next year, the four experts’ views have not exactly dominated the news. Obviously, most of the leading media organizations do not take the argument serious enough to give it “breaking news” prominence.

All four constitutional scholars point to the 14^th Amendment’s Section 3 that deserves to be fully cited here:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House remove such disability.

Clearly, as an officer of the United States Trump took an oath to support the Constitution of the United States. And clearly, the indictments filed by special council Jack Smith in the District of Columbia and by District Attorney Fani Willis in Georgia charge in detail Trump’s involvement in efforts to violate the constitutional change of power process after Biden won the 2020 election.

But the former president has not had his days in either of the two courts. He has not been convicted. The clause in the 14^th Amendment does not spell out, whether charges or convictions trigger the exclusion from holding the mentioned public offices.

Luttig and Tribe have no doubt that the charges are sufficient to ban Trump from returning to the White House. They write, “The disqualification clause operates independently of any such criminal proceedings and, indeed, also independently of impeachment proceedings and of congressional legislation. The clause was designed to operate directly and immediately upon those who betray their oaths to the Constitution, whether by taking up arms to overturn our government or by waging war on our government by attempting to overturn a presidential election through a bloodless coup.”

The Jan. 6 Indictment of Donald J. Trump: Less Shock Value Than New Normalcy—and What Now?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

After eight years of Donald Trump’s reality show performances on the political stage, his demagogic hate speech, lies, authoritarian tendencies, corruption, and a violent coup attempt to overturn the 2020 election results--nothing can shock the American public and political class with respect to the former president and current presidential candidate.

Thus, Tuesday’s four count conspiracy and obstruction Jan. 6 indictment did not result in a public shock wave but rather in a business-as-usual perception. It was simply the same as the reaction to Trump’s earlier indictments in the classified documents, hush money illegalities, and sexual assault cases.

To be sure, there was a burst of breaking news coverage in the hours following the release of the Jan. 6 indictment the other day. Talking heads spoke about the first time a former U.S. president was charged with unlawful conspiracies and obstruction to falsify election results to stay in office. What the 45-page indictment describes eloquently were not the actions of a president who respects the Constitution and the traditional democratic rules and values but of a rogue leader and long-time admirer of past and present authoritarian strongmen.

Worse yet, although Trump faces prison, if found guilty, he is the dominant candidate for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination. His best bet for beating one or more criminal convictions is a victory in next year’s election and his return to the White House.

The most recent opinion polls show that Trump and President Joe Biden are in a tied race. Of course, these numbers can change in the 15 months to next year’s election day.

But in the first hours after the latest indictment a multitude of Republicans in Washington and around the country attacked the “Biden DOJ” for charging their “innocent” leader. While Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and Asa Hutchinson spoke of the serious charges against Trump, the more Far-Right candidates Ron DeSantis blamed the “weaponized [Biden] government and Vivec Ramaswamy called the indictment “un-American.”  Nothing changed.

In the past, political observers wondered why a man like Donald Trump was able to win the 2016 election. I do not want to rehash in detail that Hillary Clinton won the total number of national vote but fell short in the electoral college that is a vestige of the undemocratic features of the US Constitution. One way or the other, some 70 million Americans voted Trump into the White House seven years ago.

Yes, Trump lost in 2020 both in the electoral college and in the nationwide total of votes. But it was not a landslide for Biden but a slim victory.

Today, the support for Trump in his MAGA movement and the Republican Party seems solid and goes up with every new set of criminal charges against him. As the campaign and the various trials approach and begin, Trump will certainly go the mass rally route again and stir his followers hate of “the other side.” Last month, Trump told his supporters already, “I’m being indicted for you!” And he promises that only he can save the country from the evil liberals, socialists, globalists, and the likes.

I think that in today’s America we should no longer focus solely on Trumpism and its threat to democracy but rather on the many Americans who believe in the values of liberal democracy, the mutual agreement on the legitimacy of majority and minority parties, the peaceful transition of power from one party and one leader to the others, and so forth…

Why is it that we do not see a potent pro-democracy movement here? This question occurs to me every time I look at the images of protesting Israelis who try to prevent their state’s fall into illiberal democracy or theocracy. There are a multitude of former Republicans, anti-Trumpers, and PACs that support them; there are the usual groups supporting the campaigns of Democrats. 

We have not seen any efforts to mobilize Americans by organizing pro-democracy rallies and perhaps even a from-below movement.  

Typically, it takes politically skilled leaders to organize grass roots political actions over longer time periods or even social movements. But the story of an Israeli woman, a particle physicist, mother of five daughters, with no political past or ambitions, who became one of the several  organizers for the pro-democracy protests in her country, is inspiring.

Why not similar initiatives in defense of democracy right here and now—before it is too late?

MAGA Attack Dogs in the House Are Ideological Brethren of Violent Far-Right Extremists

By Brigitte L. Nacos

In 1978, the founder of the Hitler-worshipping, neo-Nazi organization “National Alliance” William Pierce self-published book titled “The Turner Diaries” under the pseudonym Andrew MacDonald. For the last fifty years, the book has been the most influential how-to-do guide for violent far-right extremists. The poorly written diary of a fictious White supremacist named Earl Turner describes how members of the revolutionary “Organization” attack and eventually defeat the hostile U.S. government or what they call the “System.”   

The revolutionaries’ first major target is the F.B.I. headquarters building in Washington, D.C. in order to weaken the System’s law enforcement muscle. One of Turner’s comrades drives a fertilizer truck bomb into the building. According to the diary, “approximately 700 persons were killed in the blast or subsequently died in the wreckage…” He justifies the mass killing by blaming the failure of the “System” to “preserve a White America. Before long, Earl Turner becomes a member of “The Order,” the System’s elite unit.

A few years after the “Turner Diaries” were published, Robert Matthews called his break-away group from the neo-Nazi “Aryan Nations” organization “The Order” signaling his plan to bring Earl Turner’s narrative into the real world. There were several shoot-outs between Matthew’s group and F.B.I. agents. In the early 1980s, Matthews along with Louis Beam, an Aryan Nations leader, and several other White supremacists planned the bombings of F.B.I. field offices in several cities, among them Denver, Kansas City, New Orleans, Minneapolis, and St. Louis. The F.B.I. arrested them, before they could strike.

Ten years later, Timothy McVeigh was inspired by the “Turner Diaries” to detonate a fertilizer truck bomb near the Federal Building in Oklahoma City that housed an F.B.I. field office and other federal agencies. 168 persons were killed, hundreds injured. McVeigh left no doubt that his number one target was the F.B.I. office.

For Earl Turner’s Organization, Robert Matthew’s The Order, McVeigh’s leaderless two-person cell with militia connections, and contemporary violent far-right extremists, the common denominator is propaganda to delegitimate and violence to weaken the federal government and especially the F.B.I.  

This anti-government ideology was for many decades limited to fringe groups—from the Ku Klux Klan to the Patriot and Militia movements and the contemporary White nationalists.

But during the Trump presidency and thereafter the MAGA devotees in the Congress have embraced the dangerous anti-government ideology of violent far-right groups and QAnon conspiracy theorists.

During Wednesday’s hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, the Republican members led by committee chair Jim Jordan, showed this mindset, when they altered a testimony session with F.B.I. director Christopher Wray into an ugly inquisition. Wray, a life-long Republican, was appointed by then ex-president Donald Trump. As the New York Times reported, “Even though Mr. Wray sat alone at the witness table, his Republican interlocutors made it clear the entire bureau, and its 38,000 employees, was in effect on trial.”

Representative Chip Roy (R-Tex.) called the FBI “tyrannical” and Jordan cited in his opening statement a recent Louisiana Court ruling that states ludicrously, “The United States government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian Ministry of Truth” and singled out the F.B.I.  

While the bomb throwing in the contentious hearing was rhetorical, it signaled a more dangerous threat than actual terrorist bombs: The extreme right MAGA faction in the GOP, among them elected members of the U.S. Congress, and presidential candidates for 2024, consider the FBI an enemy and talk about defunding the agency. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is reportedly considering the impeachment of Attorney General Merrick Garland.

These are serious threats to democracy which needs law enforcement agencies and an overall judiciary system independent of partisan manipulation.  

Hate Rhetoric Becomes More Combative after Trump’s Federal Indictment

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Before and after his federal indictment last week, former president Donald J. Trump used the terms socialist, communist, and fascist interchangeably, when attacking his domestic enemies whom he described as greater threat to the United States than outside enemies. In his attack speeches in Georgia and North Caroline last weekend, he depicted the fight against the Left as a final, existential battle for America. Never mind that he is an admirer of the Communist strongman Vladimir Putin. Speaking of his domestic enemies, supposedly Democrats, Liberals, and the so-called Deep State he said, “Either the Communists win and destroy America, or we destroy the Communists.” GOP officials and the MAGA crowd responded with enthusiastic “U.S.A.! U.S.A! U.S.A.” screams.

His loyal supporters did not need his cues at public appearances. In response to the news of his indictment that his former Attorney General William Barr called “very damning,” they joined and repeated his immediate combative statement on his Truth Social platform. “We have now reached a war phase. Eye for an eye,” Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona tweeted.

The war metaphor was repeated in many variations on many social media platforms and in public statements in the days before Trump’s arraignment in Miami.

Speaking to a GOP crowd in Georgia the 2020 election denier Kari Lake issued an outright threat. “If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me,” she said, “And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.”

Was that an invitation to resort to handguns in order to fight for the twice impeached and twice criminally indicted leader who may have more indictments coming to him? Her words were posted on several social media platforms and favorably commented on.

While the law enforcement communities prepared to keep the area in and around the Miami court building safe, rank and file Trump supporters were tireless in expressing their absolute loyalty and devotion to their leader. They asked God to protect and help the “best president the country ever had,” posted Trump with a protective Jesus figure, and asked others to pray for him. As a caravan of Trump supporters drove on Sunday from Miami to Palm Beach, one woman posted on his social media platform, “There’s no better way to spend a Sunday than for God, President Trump, your Country, and Family.”

Some expressed their disgust with the pure reliance on combative words without matching deeds and their own readiness to change this. There were many posters who seemed to think of January 6, 2021 and the many violent protesters ending up in prison. They told their brethren to wear masks when protesting in Miami or elsewhere for Trump in order hide their identities.

The admiration of and devotion to Trump among MAGA/GOP followers seems absolute. The latest public opinion shows that about 4 of 5 Republicans continue to support their leader after last week’s indictment. Many social media posts I read lately reject and often condemn Trump’s challengers in the battle for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination. That is particularly true for Ron DeSantis who, like Trump, promises to destroy “leftism” and “woke ideology.” Hardcore Trump supporters consider him a threat to Trumpism just like Democrats.

Trump is the rare leader who is in control of both a political movement and a political party. While social movements tend to attack elites inside and outside of governments, political parties are important parts of governments. With Trump’s complete grip on both, his MAGA movement and the Republican Party, his power over followers in both entities is greater than that of mere movement or mere party leaders.

That’s why there is little doubt that Trump will be the GOP nominee next year.

The Republican Party has become an appendix of the Trumpian MAGA movement after being earlier pushed towards the Far-Right by Tea Party hardliners.

Trump’s recent apocalyptic messages that call for the final battle between the righteous “us” against the evil “them” transcends the nature of legitimate political movements and moves the MAGA movement and the GOP and their leader further into fascist territory. January 6, 2021 may have been merely the beginning.

As Madeleine Albright wrote in her book on fascism, “What makes a movement Fascist is not ideology but the willingness to do whatever is necessary—including the use of force and trampling the rights of others—to achieve victory and command obedience.”

CNN Offers Donald Trump Once Again Free Propaganda Time

Brigitte L. Nacos

CNN has offered and Donald Trump accepted the cable network’s invitation to a May 10^th townhall meeting in New Hampshire 18 months before the 2024 presidential elections and more than 9 months before the start of the primary season. The rationale for the deal is clear: With ratings down, CNN expects from Trump’s performance a huge audience and great media interest, while Trump wants to show Fox News that he has alternative means to spread his propaganda.

Free mainstream media.

Although there are two other declared contenders for the GOP presidential nomination, Trump will be the only one in the 60-minute show that will be moderated by CNN morning show co-host, Kaitlan Collins. Some Republican and Independent audience members will get an opportunity to ask Trump questions.  

In 2015 and 2016, CNN was instrumental in over-covering Donald Trump’s toxic campaign performances and bringing the outrageous and scandalous news about the TV reality star turned presidential candidate to American and global audiences. The payoff came in form of  high ratings, high commercial rates, and healthy profits.

It seems that the CNN bosses have forgotten the frequent attacks on the network, its star correspondents and moderators by first-time candidate and later president Trump. They also must have forgotten that Donald Trump plotted with others to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory and incited the breach of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 by his supporters.

For years, Trump called the mainstream media “the enemy of the American people” and news organizations and individual journalists “liars.” That is an old trick of autocratic strongmen who violate the laws and conventions of liberal democracy. Not for the common interest but their own corrupt interests.

CNN’s bosses should know better. After all, the network was high up on Trump’s hate-the-press list that encouraged MAGA fanatics to threaten journalists covering Trump’s rallies.

Again and unfortunately profit imperatives matter more than the journalistic ethics rules of a free press. 

Nikki Haley’s “Softer” Touch: Posing with an Attack Gun

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, UN Ambassador during part of the Trump presidency, and now declared candidate for the GOP’s presidential nomination, runs as member of “a new generation to lead us into the future.” In the early stages of her candidacy, she appealed particularly for the support of female Republicans in Iowa and elsewhere. Yet, if anyone hoped that a woman as alternative to candidate Trump and potential male competitors would take a softer approach to her party’s outrage politics, she already dashed those hopes. For once, Trump may be right in calling her “overly ambitious.”

Like her onetime boss and now fellow-candidate, she wants to please the core of extremist Republican primary voters, many of them part of America’s deadly gun culture. In the midst of a mass shooting crisis in this country and nearly daily incidents in which children and adults are killed in public places and their own homes, Haley tweeted a photo showing her with an attack weapon with her finger on the trigger and the caption, “Making sure our military has the equipment they need to keep us safe is a priority…” Under the guise of supporting the

military candidate Haley promoted the very attack guns that can be bought and carried in most blue states. She also thanked the manufacturer of the gun she held and a gun-rights organization. At a campaign stop in New Hampshire shortly after the mass shooting in a school of Nashville, Tennessee, Haley rejected any gun-control measures. Instead, she assured fellow-Republicans, “Everybody wants to talk about gun control. My thing is, I don't want to take away your ability to protect yourself until they do those things that protect those kids." She said it is okay to have metal detectors in schools.

To emphasize the generational gap between herself (she is 51 years old) and the two heavy weights for 2024, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Haley called for mandatory mental competency tests for politicians 75-years old. But although Trump will be 77-years old in June, Haley exempts the former president from her “old age” campaign attacks on Joe Biden, who is four years older than Trump and will be 81-years old in November.

Many voters, Democrats and Republicans, are uncomfortable with the advanced age of both Biden and Trump along with the old guard in the Congress. Thus, it is quite legitimate to discuss the age of candidates for the highest offices in the land.

The question is, how to frame such discussions. And Haley has not come up with right answer. Instead, her public statement that it is unlikely for the Biden to live until he is 86 years old and that therefore a vote for Biden in 2024 will be a vote for Kamala Harris is as shameful as her mandatory pro-gun photo on Twitter.

But as the great Irish writer Finton O’Toole wrote in the New York Review of Books on Trump’s current legal problems and by extension the political culture the former president created, “the shameless cannot be shamed.”

Anti-Gun-Control Hardliners are Accomplices in Gun Violence

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Gun violence in the United States is as American as apple pie. The same is true for mass shootings in schools and other public places. As the growing number of mass shootings in elementary and secondary schools attests to, young children and teenagers are increasingly victims of this sort of violence. According to the Gun Violence Archive, so far this year 59 children (up to 11-years old) and 344 teenagers (12- to 17-years old) were killed in such incidents this year; the number of injured was 130 for children and 827 for teenagers. The latest mass shooting in an elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, was merely another of the frequent mass shootings across the country.

In the Nashville case, the shooter was a 28-year-old woman armed with an AR-15-style rifle, an AR-style pistol and another handgun. The military style assault weapons could have killed far more children and adults in record time, if law enforcement officers had not responded as quickly as they did.

The fact that anyone in this country can acquire weapons designed for soldiers fighting in wars is scandalous and only possible in the United States. Leaving all other gun-control issues aside, those politicians in Congress and in Republican-controlled state governments who refuse to outlaw military style assault weapons are in my book accomplices in all incidents in which Americans are killed by assault weapons in the hands of perpetrators.

Even when the victims are their neighbors, these Second Amendment fanatics in the political class will not vote for life-saving measures that a strong majority of the American public approves.

Last year, after the mass shootings in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-Tennessee) noted,  

To be clear: using this horror to infringe upon the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens—before we even know what might have prevented this tragedy—and accusing anyone who disagrees of being complicit in this abhorrent crime is not a solution that will make us safer.

Senator Marsha Blackburn (R. Tennessee) said at the same time,

Schools should have secured, limited entry points, and increased funding for school resource officers. School officials with prior military or law enforcement experience should be allowed to carry firearms. Finally, mental health must be taken seriously.

Well, the Nashville perpetrator shot the glass out of doors and climbed easily through a seemingly secure entrance.

 Senator Blackburn reacted with a tweet: “Chuck & I are heartbroken to hear about the shooting at Covenant School in Nashville…” Her colleague Senator Hagerty wrote, “Devastated and heartbroken about the tragic news at Covenant School

Always the same, unhelpful phrases.

                                                                       

Congressman Andy Ogles (R-Tennessee), who represents the district that includes Nashville and the Covenant School, posted last year a Christmas card on Facebook depicting his family posing with guns. That’s how deeply ingrained the gun culture is in the United States of America and why it still seems impossible to defeat it.  

The Different Meanings of “We the People…”

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Violent and peaceful protesters at the right and left often use the slogan “We the People” to link their demands to their understanding of the U.S. Constitution’s promise. Both sides refer to the U.S. Constitution which was written and signed by the Founding Fathers in 1787 and begins with the words “We the People of the United State, in Order to form a more perfect Union….”

On January 6, 2021, many in the violent MAGA crowd considered themselves “We the People” fighting to keep Donald Trump in the White House. “We The People need to be in that building,” screamed a preacher from Ohio into the direction of Capitol police officer who stood behind metal barricades.

Four years earlier, anti-Trump activists organized a “We the People” protest on January 20, 2017, when Donald Trump was sworn in as U.S. President. A poster for the event, created by Shephard Fairey, showed the images of African-American, Latina, und Muslim Women as “a pointed reference to people who have felt attacked” by the president-elect as the artist explained.

While Conservatives tend to insist on the original words and meanings of the Constitution, Liberals tend to insist on interpreting the living Constitution in the context of the more than 200 years since the document was framed.  

So, what did “We the People” mean for the Founding Fathers? Whom did they consider the citizens of the republican form of government?

Since the framers were all White male elitists or, as the political scientist James MacGregor Burns put it, “the well-bred, the well-fed, the well-read, and the well-wed,” they restricted “We the People” to their own kind. Excluded from citizenship with voting rights were

• Slaves,
• Indentured slaves,
• Males without property,

No wonder that contemporary Americans, who resent the multicultural nature of modern America’s population and call for “taking our country back” consider the Framers’ meaning of “We the People” as justifying White Supremacy. And, yes, some of the Far-Right extremists would also like to repeal the voting rights for women. While they embrace and misinterpret the Bill of Rights (especially the First and Second Amendments) that the first U.S. Congress adopted, they reject the bulk of later Amendments that expand the franchise and other rights for formerly excluded groups.

In contrast, Liberals appeal to an inclusionary “We the People” concept achieved by the progress made in the 19^th and 20^th centuries for the benefit of groups excluded by the Framer’s view on citizenship.  

Now, in the 21^st century, hard fought-for rights of women and minorities are under attack from constitutional originalists—among them the majority of Supreme Court Justices.

To be sure, the Founding Fathers did not mention abortion rights in the document they framed. Thus, a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court overturned last year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization the Roe v. Wade decision that established the constitutional right to abortion.

Among the major cases to be heard by the highest court during the current session are others with issues not mentioned by the Framers and thus other opportunities for reactionary rulings.   

On the Second Anniversary of January 6th: GOP Anarchists at the Gate

By Brigitte L. Nacos

This day, to years ago, a violent crowd of organized terrorist groups and fanatic MAGA and QAnon supporters of Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s clear and fair election victory. Among those who sympathize to this day with the violent mob and the White House cabal behind the failed coup to keep Trump in office are many of the current GOP Representatives-elect—those who refuse to vote for Kevin McCarthy to become Speaker of the House and others who support McCarthy.

While most mainstream media reporters and commentators call the anti-McCarthy GOPers “conservative” or “hard-line” Republicans, the truth is that they along with others in the pro-McCarthy crowd are anarchists or, as former GOP Speaker John Boehner once called them, “legislative terrorists.”

Indeed, like all terrorists, these nihilistic anarchists want to destroy the existing order—not improve or reform the political, economic, and social systems.

They do not want sit at the legitimate table of decision-makers. They want to destroy the table without an idea of how to build a better future for the vast majority of the people they claim to represent.

Interestingly, some of the most extreme congressional GOPers who share the disruptive ideas and actions of their anti-McCarthy colleagues chose another path to realize their power-hungry objectives: They opted to support McCarthy in exchange for influential positions in the GOP House majority in form of their desired committee assignments and influence on the leadership strata.

The most visible examples are Jim Jordan, Ohio, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia, who have been close to Kevin McCarthy since he has struggled to become Speaker.

Jordan, a founding member and first chair of the far-right congressional Freedom Caucus, has been for long a rhetorical bomb thrower and was, according to the Jan. 6^th select committee, a supporter of the coup attempt.

Last year, Taylor Greene was stripped of her committee seats because of her toxic rhetorical attacks and endorsement of violence against Democrats. More recently, she claimed that under her leadership the January 6^th attackers would have won and been armed. But whenever the new congress has a speaker, she will get the committee assignments of her choice.

Add to this McCarthy’s surrender to his GOP opponents by agreeing to all their demands that limits his power drastically and you see that the script for the next two years is written:

Whether the 21 or so members of the anti-McCarthy gang will prevail or not, the anarchist wing of the GOP will hold the balance of power for the next two years in the U.S. House of Representatives and inflict great harm to the legislative imperatives of the lower chamber.

The forces that drove the events before, during, and after January 6, 2021 are still at work and, yes, at the gate of congressional decision-making.