A television network boss once told me there is no political talk show that will get better ratings than a videotape of any politician tripping and falling.
That’s still true.
American television networks can’t pull their cameras away from the stumbles and the screaming on public view as the result of the GOP’s likely nomination of Donald Trump for a second term as president.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) took a face-first fall on live television two weeks ago when he called a vote to begin impeachment proceedings against President Biden’s secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas. In rushing to please the Trump-extremists in his caucus, he failed to realize that he did not have the votes. On a second try last week, they impeached Mayorkas by a single vote. It was a transparently empty act that said less about the secretary than it did about their own bumbling.
The entire GOP House caucus is now locked in this fall-on-your-butt loop of dysfunction.
Currently, close to two dozen Republicans are making it clear they can’t take more of the sad comedy. They are leaving their broken caucus.
This month’s surprise announcement of the departure of Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) adds to a pattern of evidence that the generation of center-right, George W. Bush era conservatives is coming to an end.
Next came the retirement announcement from House Homeland Security Chair Mark........