Dem
47
GOP
53
In the House, the #1 Republican has already left, and several others might be on the verge of leaving. We don't mean the leadership, mind you (although U.N. Ambassador-designate Elise Stefanik is the #4 Republican in the House). We mean the list of the most outrageous, showboating, don't-care-about-doing-their-jobs members of the chamber. With Matt Gaetz already gone, not to mention Stefanik, there's a vacuum right now. And, as we all know, nature abhors a vacuum.
It actually should not surprise us who became the first person to make a move. This member is, very possibly, the single-biggest show horse in the entire House. True, there's some pretty stiff competition for that title, but this person is famously obsessed with their total number of both local and national TV hits, and keeps careful track of them. They are also known for being the single-most-abusive boss on Capitol Hill, with a turnover rate among staffers that makes her office look like a branch of Subway. We speak, of course, of Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC).
At this point, we would like to remind readers of a prediction we made a grand total of 6 days ago:
As readers probably know by now, the House will have its first transgender member in Representative-elect Sarah McBride (D-DE). The Republican propaganda mill will do everything possible to make her the face of the Democratic Party, just as it has done with The Squad, and with Nancy Pelosi before that. This has nothing to do with party-wide Democratic wokeness, it's how the modern-day GOP works. And, as a sidebar, we really hope the Capitol Police agree to assign McBride a security detail, because she is likely to become an object of obsession for some people who are not mentally well.
This was not a difficult prediction to get right; we're only kicking ourselves that we did not think to specifically include Mace's name in that paragraph.
Yes, that's right. If you had Mace in your "Which will be the first House GOP member to try to score political points at the expense of Sarah McBride" pool, you are a winner. Yesterday, Mace introduced a bill requiring members of Congress to use the bathroom that matches the gender they were assigned at birth. "Sarah McBride doesn't get a say. I mean, this is a biological man," declared Mace, "[and] does not belong in women's spaces, women's bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, period, full stop."
McBride responded thus, on eX-Twitter:
Every day Americans go to work with people who have life journeys different than their own and engage with them respectfully, I hope members of Congress can muster that same kindness.
This is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing. We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars.
She's not wrong.
The problem is that while McBride might take the high road, the Republicans think they have a winner here. Not only is Mace getting some headlines, but House leadership is planning to back her bill. If the Democrats stand up for their new colleague, then they are radical leftist gender-bending pinkos who hate 'murica. If they don't stand up, then a lot of Democrats will be furious at their cowardice. This is an excellent example of what we were talking about in the piece last week, that it's actually the Republicans who are radicals and who are obsessed with gender roles, and that the Democrats' reputation for being overly woke is almost entirely a Republican creation. We stand by that, and still don't care what cranky old man James Carville thinks. (Z)