THE GOP DISCONNECT FROM WE THE PEOPLE IS REAL

Every day brings America the escalating reality of Republicans’ failure and inability to govern. The Senate did manage to adopt a toothless resolution yesterday. It provided that there should be no pardon, commutation, or any other form of clemency for Ghislaine Maxwell. Spoiler. The resolution is non-binding, and doesn’t actually prevent a pardon. Senators have, have had, far more tangible ways to express their disgust with Jeffrey Epstein. But they have consistently chosen not to take them. They also had to cancel the vote on moving Todd Blanche’s AG nomination forward…the votes aren’t there. Not there even though Blanche met with Epstein survivors to earn Senator Tillis’s vote. That doesn’t seem to be the holdup. Tillis seems to have been mollified by that perfunctory meeting Blanche held. Even though Epstein survivors characterized the meeting as “condescending,” “deflective,” and a “check-the-box” exercise. In a follow-up letter to Tillis they wrote, “Todd Blanche showed no remorse for the horrific release of materials that exposed survivors' identities and images.” But that doesn’t seem to have mattered. Just like the performative but meaningless vote that rejected the idea of a pardon, but doesn’t prevent an actual pardon for Maxwell, both the request for a meeting and the meeting itself were purely performative. Instead the holdup seems to be the lack of commitment by the Trump administration to fully walk away from the collusive settlement to the lawsuit Trump filed against the IRS earlier this year. Remember that one? Where Trump was going to reward 1/6 participants with our money while also throwing into the mix an agreement to have the IRS put a cloaking device over any past, current, and future financial oversight? It seems Texas Senator John Cornyn wanted to see a written agreement that the administration would limit those provisions before voting for Blanche. Blanche was instrumental in permitting Trump to obtain this deal. But the administration never delivered such an agreement to Cornyn. As legal observers have noted it would have been easy-peasy to put this to bed and move on. The Judge in the case gave the administration the chance to. All they were required to do was to say in court, or at least tell Congress in writing, that the slush fund is off. And that the IRS settlement agreement is withdrawn. This effort is too little too late on the part of senators. It’s probably just more of the standard kabuki they go through before falling back into line. Ultimately they get to go home. But will leave the country with whatever decision they come to. Then we have the war, where the Trump administration is caught in a loop (or noose) of their own making. Summarized like this by one observer…”Orbiting hopelessly around two demonstrably failed positions: If we bomb the hell out of them, they’ll give us what we want. If we stop bombing them, they’ll give us what we want.” We seem to running out of munitions to actually be able to bomb them into oblivion. We seem to be having our troops picked off randomly with no progress being shown. We seem to be more intent on making a deal, any deal, rather than achieving actual peace. Meanwhile, Iranian negotiators have made their demands quite clear: sanctions removed, troops out, no more discussion of nuclear weapons, and Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz. What’s y’all’s plan since you seem to vote down every motion to actually involve Congress in this mess? Oh. That’s right. You’re still looking for someone to blame for Covid. So moving over to another empty fiasco… Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH) yelling at Dr. Fauci about closings during the pandemic, blustering: “Who the f*ck do you think you were?” Have you forgotten? He was the guy trying to save American lives while the president told us Covid was not that bad, it was going to go away shortly and here’s some bleach and Ivervectin in the meantime. And fiddled while a million Americans died on his watch. Don’t we think Senator Moreno’s time would be better spent on the headline his daughter’s ex-husband, Representative Max Miller (R-OH), has been credibly charged with the violent abuse of her and their 2-year-old daughter? GOP crickets on this one. Let’s face the reality. Because they obviously cannot. The only reason a few GOP Congress members are displaying any disingenuous resistance is because Trump has thrown them out of his club. We’ll believe anything else when we see it.