The Republican Party Cannot Govern As a resul

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The Republican Party Cannot Govern

As a result, healthcare is that much more affordable for a bit longer.

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By Charles P. Pierce
Mar 24, 2017

WASHINGTON—They cannot govern. The Republican Party as it is presently constituted, from party base to congressional leadership, is competent to do two things: complain and vandalize.

If that wasn't made clear last November, it was made clear this week, when the entire government was turned into the biggest, gooiest, chewiest clusterfck in the history of democratic politics.

It was the base who elected not only president*, but also all the members of Congress who got promoted up through the ranks when a great number of them probably should have been left back in Bug Tussle keeping Them off the golf course at The Club.

The congressional Republican majority doesn't need the president* to help it step on its dick, although his presence does add to the inherent comedy of any situation. This mess in the House Intelligence Committee is almost exclusively an intramural affair.


Chairman Devin Nunes, a former Trump transition team member, has drained every ounce of the committee's credibility as an oversight body. Democratic senior member Adam Schiff—no, not that Adam Schiff—is dead right about this.

Schiff got completely fed up on Friday, when Nunes called an early-morning press conference, at which he contradicted himself and continued to appear as though he was running cover for the White House, and then later announced that he'd canceled a public hearing scheduled for next week at which James Clapper, John Brennan, and defenestrated US Attorney Sally Yates were scheduled to testify.

Curiously, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, and longtime Trump associate Carter Page, both of whom have worked extensively with important figures in the Russian governmental-entrepreneurial kleptocracy, offered to meet with the committee to discuss the suspicions that have been swirling around them.

Nunes hinted that he would allow Manafort and Page to decide whether or not they'll appear in closed session, which is another thing that drove Schiff up the wall. He met with reporters on Friday afternoon.

"We don't welcome cutting off the public access to information when we have witnesses who are willing to testify in an open session," Schiff said. "To take evidence that may or may not be related to an investigation into Trump and his associates to the White House was wholly inappropriate. All of us are essentially in the dark."

Nunes has to go. He's compromised to within an inch of his liver. He's also fathoms over his head in this situation.

(In fact, and maybe this is my years covering Massachusetts politics coming out, were I Paul Ryan, and I thought the White House was going to try and pin the failure of the healthcare bill on my zombie-eyed, granny-starving behind, I might drop word that I was planning to take the Intelligence Committee away from Nunes and hand it to some Republican not necessarily loyal to the administration. Since I don't think Ryan's politician enough to come out of the rain at this point, I doubt this will happen, but it would be fun.)

I still prefer a bloodthirsty young special prosecutor to a gathering of Beltway wise men as an alternative. But one thing I do know: This week of disastrous nonsense was four decades in the making, and the Democratic minority has no responsibility for prying the Republicans' feet off their own dick.

Exhibit B is, of course, the healthcare debacle. Whee! Governmentin' is hard.

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