"No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size." -- Ronald Reagan
After a rancorous debate, the GOP, which fumbled the mid-term election and only won a thin majority in the House, elected a leader. California Republican Kevin McCarthy succeeds House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
In her emotional farewell speech, Pelosi recounted her youth when she spent summers on a farm. My guess is it was Boone's Farm. Now she must face her biggest fear: flying commercial.
Kevin McCarthy lost 15 votes in a row before finally winning the speaker post. He lost so many close votes that he should have won that they seem a foreshadowing of McCarthy and the Atlanta Falcons vying for the number-one NFL draft choice next year.
The Dems and their media loved the many contentious votes. At least Republicans have dissent and debate within their ranks, instigated by libertarian and other dissenting voices. That's healthy; it's what Congress is supposed to do. Democrats have no such debate. They just do what their party leaders -- Pelosi and Schumer -- tell them to do.
The GOP has social conservatives, hawks, doves, fiscal conservatives, libertarians, the religious right, Trumpians, neocons, pro-choice, pro-life, RINOs and various other constituencies who like to battle it out in the marketplace of ideas. Getting them together is like gift wrapping an octopus. And that is how it should be. You never get to good outcomes by just "going along to get along."
Democrats should be embarrassed. They never debate and never advance creative ideas. They are lemmings, told what to do, and they fecklessly comply. Who, then, are the real thinkers and mavericks of modern political thought? Certainly not modern Democrats.
To paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke, it is not how Washington works that should concern us; it is how to make it stop. Getting big-government, high-taxing Democrats out of office in November was a good start. Divided government is a good idea. It can do us less harm that way.
The only thing Dems have done while in power, other than wreck the economy and create inflation, is use their law enforcement goons to go after their enemies. It will be interesting to see how they play the game now that classified documents were found at the Penn Biden Center. Expect crickets, not 30 FBI agents with machine guns on a pre-dawn raid.
The real battle was not the election; rather it will be the upcoming budget, a budget put together by lame-duck Democrats. It will be a field day for lobbyists and special interests. Pelosi will tell us what is in the bill after they pass the bill.
Democrats put forth disingenuous spending bills called things like "The Inflation Reduction Act," full of pork, which have zero provisions that reduce inflation. Quite to the contrary: They push the country the other way.
As we found out with Pelosi and the guy who entered through the back door of her San Francisco home, the speaker of the House does not have security when not in Washington, D.C. But then he won't have help from Capitol Police in D.C. either, since they could not stop the combined casts of "Duck Dynasty" and "Braveheart" from storming the Capitol on Jan. 6. That's what happens when you COVID-cancel Burning Man.
Between the retribution-obsessed Democrats who hate Kevin McCarthy, and the 20-or-so hard-right Republican congressmen who did not vote for him, I could totally see them reaching across the aisle and releasing a joint statement saying, "We hope no one takes retaliatory actions against Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who will be speaking at the Bakersfield Days Inn Friday at 6 p.m., since they always leave the back door of the hotel open and the security cameras do not work."
Contact Ron Hart, a syndicated op-ed satirist, author and TV/radio commentator, at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.