Some Republicans like to play stupid games in which they sabotage the party in order to claim to GOP voters that they are “fighting the establishment.” None is more shameless, or thinks less of GOP voters’ intelligence, than Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL).
Gaetz has spent the last week setting up his latest imagined fight with the establishment — because, apparently, it has been too long since he was the focus of media attention for shooting the GOP in the foot. Gaetz has been angling for a government shutdown to the point that he helped a handful of House Republicans tank a 30-day continuing resolution that included funding cuts for federal programs and added funding for border security.
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House Republicans then agreed to a 45-day continuing resolution that did not include those provisions, and Gaetz said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was on thin ice for reaching an agreement with the Democrats. To be clear, Gaetz and the other Republican holdouts on the initial resolution that included funding cuts for federal programs and provisions for border security tanked it with the help of the Democrats, but his logic says that working with the Democrats then was good. McCarthy working with the Democrats afterward to get something passed and avoid a shutdown that would be blamed on the Republicans is then supposedly bad.
If McCarthy relies on D votes to pass a CR, his speakership is over. But if the rebels can secure power with D votes, that’s cool. https://t.co/l17xL0sv5z
— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) September 29, 2023
Democrats can send a gift basket to Matt Gaetz for this.
— AG (@AGHamilton29) September 30, 2023
Republicans wanted a 30-day CR that had big spending cuts and money for border security, but Gaetz & the clown crew were more interested in winning attention on social media than substantive gains so we ended up w a… pic.twitter.com/ljCG6uOi73
So what did Gaetz do next? He began shopping around the possibility of removing McCarthy as the speaker to Democrats, whom Gaetz would be relying on to vote with him again. So, to recap, Gaetz worked with the Democrats to kill GOP spending priorities so he could attack McCarthy for working with the Democrats to clean up Gaetz’s mess, and now Gaetz is going to work with the Democrats to try and remove McCarthy.
In fact, to make things even more clear, Gaetz already has Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on board to fight McCarthy. Again, that is all over McCarthy working with Democrats after Gaetz worked with Democrats to sabotage the initial resolution.
It’s all a stupid game that relies on GOP voters being dumb enough to believe Gaetz’s contradictory words and actions. It relies on GOP voters both ignoring that Gaetz is actively working with the Democrats in order to claim that McCarthy is working with the Democrats and on the fact that Gaetz hasn’t accomplished much of anything other than getting himself on television claiming that he is the only real conservative fighting the GOP establishment. It’s all an act, and the only people who benefit are Democrats and Gaetz’s ego.