It’s official: The chimps are running the zoo.
Once upon a time, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-SomewhereorotherLewisCounty, was considered an oddball, even by the exacting standards of his own party. And, it should be noted, the Wonder Boy over the years has provided fellow Republicans, and all other sentient beings for that matter, with ample evidence to draw that conclusion.
Compiling a list of what might charitably be called Massie’s curious deeds would rival Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” in length and breadth. He has sought to give the heave-ho to not one but two House Speakers from his own party for failing to embrace his political concepts, which seem to harken back to czarist Russia. He dispatched a Christmas greeting via Twitter showing his family displaying a sufficient number of firearms to equip Patton’s Third Army with a message asking Santa to bring more ammo – this in wake of a headline-grabbing mass shooting.
He opposed any number of bills that would dispatch federal funds to build a desperately needed bridge across the Ohio River connecting Cincinnati and Covington – a city in his own congressional district. The Whiz Kid with a high-falutin degree from MIT opposed a resolution expressing “the United States stands fervently with the Ukrainian people” as it battles Russian invaders. He opposed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act of 2022, which made lynching a federal hate crime. Last year, the House adopted a resolution directing the federal government to do everything within its purview to protect Jewish people and organizations, to combat denials and distortions about the Holocaust and to defend the rights of all Americans to practice their faith without fear of violence.
It passed 420-1.
Guess the identity of the lone holdout.
Now, we’ve played this guess-what-the-crackpot-did-this-time game with Massie before. It’s downright exhausting and there’s plenty more to be said. We’ll leave the last word with the capo de tutti capo of all cranks, former President Donald J. Trump, who once expressed his desire to “throw Massie out of Republican Party” for working to ix-nay a $2 trillion COVID relief package the then-president championed.
Massie, Trump said on Twitter, was a “third rate Grandstander,” adding, “he just wants the publicity.”
When Trump says you’re playing too deep out in rightfield, you might want to draw in a bit. Of course, old Pumpkin Skin later reverted to the mean and endorsed Massie’s successful re-election effort last year, perhaps looking to take credit for the victory.
Now, after years spending political capitol to convince everyone he is a kook, the Third-Rate Grandstander has suddenly emerged as the poster boy for the Republican mainstream.
The GOP gained a slim majority as a result of the November elections and Massie has transitioned into a go-to guy for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, D-CA, right up there with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GA, who hasn’t even been required to renounce her overt bigotry to gain a seat at the table.
Massie has been assigned to a seat on the House Rules Committee, a panel that regularly has the word “powerful” placed before it. Generally speaking, Rules determines when a measure passed by a House committee is considered on the floor. It also sets the rules, hence the name, for what amendments can be considered and the extent of debate. The committee can, for instance, adopt what is called a closed rule, meaning no amendments can even be considered.
Spots on the Rules Committee usually go only to the most loyal lap dogs to assure that the Speaker and the majority leader, Steve Scalise, of Louisiana, don’t get double-crossed when they want to get a deal done. So now, wonder of wonders, Republican poohbahs in the House consider our boy Massie, the Whiz Kid, the infernal contrarian, a team player.
That should be your first hint on how whacko congressional Republicans have become.
That’s not all.
Republicans have created what it calls the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Others are calling it the Tin Foil Hat Committee. It does not concern providing firearms to federal employees, as the title might infer. Basically, this panel, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Neanderthal (or Ohio if you prefer) is established to ferret out efforts by the so-called “deep state” to somehow thwart conservatives.
Poor babies.
Massie has gladly accepted a seat on this joke. He had this to say on Twitter:
DOJ, FBI, IRS, DOEdu, CDC, BLM, OSHA, ATF, EPA… These agencies are either mildly or aggressively weaponized against conservatives depending on which party wins the elections. It’s a fallacy that they can be staffed by 75-90% liberals and serve all Americans impartially.
Before proceeding further, can we pose a simple question: Does anyone truly believe that up to 95 percent of Federal Bureau of Investigation consists of Bolsheviks? Just asking.
Anyway, so what’s all the hoo-ha about? We have an expert to explain:
“The new House Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is a rare chance to expose the breathtaking corruption of the security state, the media and the Washington swamp…Who orchestrated the FBI’s repeated operations to interfere in domestic politics in the final weeks of multiple U.S. elections seasons? And specifically, and most importantly, in the presidential election of 2020, what the FBI did was suppress anything bad about (President) Biden and go all out, put it all out there, if there was anything at all, about Trump and if there wasn’t anything bad we’ll make it up. What that was was a rigged election just by itself.”
That, as you may have guessed, is your former president, Donald J. Trump, who is the true instigator of this ridiculous confection. Conservatives insist Trump’s treatment by the various agencies, the probe into his 2016 campaign’s ties with Russia and the current brouhaha over classified documents he’s not supposed to retain post-White House, resulting in a subpoena being served to search his Mar-a-Lago estate, are examples of how conservatives get a raw deal. Throw in Hunter Biden’s laptop and the Biden campaign’s ’s effort to convince Twitter to keep certain information about the president’s woebegone son off the social media site, and you somehow conclude the whole kit-and-kaboodle is being run by Che Guevara.
Baloney. The Russia probe was legit. A special counsel report showed that there were numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign in 2016 despite Trump’s claim of “no collusion” and the fact that no indictments resulted. Trump further refused to return the classified material he possessed, resulting in an FBI search. Twitter is a private firm and can pretty much do as it pleases, for better or worse.
The whole thing reeks so it should come as no surprise that Massie is positioned in the middle of it. It raises the specter of the old House Un-American Activities Committee back in the fifties, which nearly destroyed civil liberties by trying to unearth Communism in every conceivable corner, destroying lives during a sad period in the nation’s history.
HUAC has been rightfully condemned, disparaged and damned. Now Tommy and his pals are going to shine a light on liberals.
History tells us this won’t end well.
