Complaints by Republicans about NOT getting things done by the Congress…
The top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Saturday pushed back against his party’s blockade of President Joe Biden’s picks to top diplomatic posts.
With more than 50 foreign-policy nominations stalling on the Senate floor, Idaho Sen. Jim Risch said he has been “as energetic as I can about getting these [nominations] through” the upper chamber.
But Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) have moved to slow-walk the confirmation of Biden’s nominees as a protest of his administration’s national-security decisions, frustrating lawmakers from both parties.
“I have been a critic of this since I started on the Foreign Relations Committee,” Risch said during a discussion at the Halifax International Security Forum. “I was a governor. I understand you have to have a team in place in order to govern.”…
Complaints against those in their party that WANT to get things done in Congress….
The continuing turmoil in the House GOP conference over how and whether to punish members who back anything supported by Democrats shows how an emboldened group of far-right House members is gaining influence over the Republican Party in Congress. These representatives are positioning themselves to further purify the House GOP conference as a branch of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
This MAGA squad consists largely of a handful of recently elected members and others who lack the traditional trappings of power such as committee chairmanships or leadership posts. But they have rocketed to fame — especially on the political right — with massive social media followings, frequent appearances on pro-Trump media and growing fundraising networks that get a boost with every provocative tweet or TV hit…
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The Trump loyalists’ influence reflects the nature of today’s Republican Party, which treats the MAGA squad as celebrities — not the fringe they may have represented in the party of Reagan, the Bushes or McCain.
For House Republicans, this means that members who have associated with white supremacists, used violent political rhetoric, spread Trump’s false claims about the election and compared pandemic public health restrictions to the Nazis’ treatment of Jews are becoming a bigger part of the party’s public face — a role that may only grow if Trump continues to embrace and publicly boost them….
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Some House Republicans pushed back against the idea that Greene, Boebert and their cohorts hold outsize influence, noting that none of the 13 members who voted for the infrastructure bill have been punished by the party in any way, even if their offices have been on the receiving end of threatening and vulgar messages from voters…
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But McCarthy’s soft touch toward the boisterous Trump loyalists hasn’t won him their affection, and some have said they may not vote for him as speaker if Republicans retake the chamber next year….
Schumer and McConnell have stopped throwing down at each other…
They will have deal with Biden’s Social package , Debt Ceiling, The Defense Budget and General Budget ….
The last three will need 60 votes to get done…..
Temperatures appeared to have cooled between the two since then, with both being careful to not draw hard lines during recent back-to-back press conferences.
“We cannot let the full faith and credit of the United States lapse, and we are focusing on getting this done in a bipartisan way,” Schumer told reporters.
Asked about Democrats wanting the debt ceiling to be bipartisan, McConnell sidestepped, instead predicting that “we’ll figure out how to avoid default. We always do.”
The two had a rare in-person meeting — a day after two sources told The Hillthat they were talking — with McConnell saying afterward that they had a “good conversation.”
“We agreed to kind of keep talking, working together to try to get somewhere,” McConnell added.
Trying to come up with a path forward on the debt ceiling has payoffs for both: Schumer is facing a packed year-end schedule that would be complicated by a protracted debt fight, with funding the government, a massive defense policy bill, and President Biden’s climate and social spending plan also on the to-do list….
Note…
Despite the noise from ‘the Group’?
Some Republicans in the House ARE voting with Democrats and working with them ….
Meanwhile there’s Virginia’s new Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears..When asked her vaccination status …
“…we understand this thing about slippery slopes.The minute that I start telling you about my vaccine status,we’re going to be down the bottom of the mountain trying to figure out how we got there,because now you want to know what’s in my DNAand…”
Can anyone say “kook.”
Congratulations Virginia!
Sounds like she implied that the vaccine changes ones DNA?
Republicans are like James. They just say what they want you to believe even if there is NO justification for their belief.
She has NOTHING of me….
Sununu Suggests House GOP Is ‘Ruining America’
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) said the Republican party’s vilification of members of Congress who have criticized Donald Trump or supported bipartisan legislation is “ruining America,” The Guardian reports.
Said Sununu: “That’s kind of that social media mob mentality that’s built up in this country where we don’t agree with one issue so we’re going to attack them, we’re going to vilify one person or one individual. We’ve got to get beyond that, because culturally, it’s really, really ruining America.”
He also specifically noted that House Republicans “have their priorities screwed up.”
It’s Not Polarization, It’s Republican Radicalization
Jennifer Rubin: “While it’s true that the country is more deeply divided along partisan lines than it has been in the past, it is wrong to suggest a symmetrical devolution into irrational hatred. The polarization argument too often treats both sides as equally worthy of blame, characterizing the problem as a sort of free-floating affliction (e.g., ‘lack of trust’).”
“This blurs the distinction between a Democratic Party that is marginally more progressive in policy positions than it was a decade ago, and a Republican Party that routinely lies, courts violence and seeks to define America as a White Christian nation.”