PERFORMATIVE REVENGE

The real Republican plan

Election Day is six weeks from today. If things don’t go well, this is what we can expect to see happen:

People are already paying no attention to the House Republicans’ substance-free “Commitment to America.” Anyone with a brain knows that the actual GOP plan for after the party takes control of the lower chamber in January, is two years of performative revenge.

What is “performative revenge”?

Ginned-up investigations that make Benghazi look like a Sunday walk in the park.

Cruel attacks on the marginalized to make their lives harder.

A concocted impeachment of President Biden.

Refusal to vote to confirm the results of the 2024 election if Trump doesn’t win.

Those are the only things the party agrees on, except fealty to Donald Trump and an all-consuming desire for power.

Even by the standards of political fig leaves, the one page piece of baloney perversely called “The Commitment to America” that Kevin McCarthy (R-Okiefornia), the man who would be speaker, made a big deal of on Friday of releasing is so lacking that anyone who thinks there is anything important in it should be “Commited.” The document does nothing to mask the lack of a Republican plan for governing. It promises “an economy that’s strong” and “a nation that’s safe” and “a future that’s built on freedom” and “a government that’s accountable.” They left out “Mom” and “apple pie,”on grounds they were too specific.

The most concrete pledge made was to undo something that had never been done.

According to Qevin, a House GOP majority would “repeal” the “Democrats’ new army of 87,000 IRS agents” as its first piece of legislation.

The facts are that the Inflation Reduction Act passed in August funds only a few hundred IRS enforcement “agents.” The rest of those hired will be auditors, administrators and clerical personnel needed to rebuild a workforce that has been sorely depleted by attrition and budget cuts that were the product of the last time Qevin’s party was in control. The idea is to get things to the point that when a citizen calls the IRS for information or assistance or to straighten out a problem, they get more than a recording that is never answered because the system is in overwhelm from the moment they open for business every day due to short staffing.

What none of the droolers mention is any plan on how House Republicans would accomplish this “repeal” without 60 votes in the Senate and Biden’s signature?

That’s because they couldn’t. What they actually could, and surely would, do is put on a show of faux-populist anger and resentment.

The show put on by Qevin and Steve “Less baggage than David Duke” Scalise would be to immediately disband the select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection.

The Justice Department would be left on its own to finish writing the definitive story of what happened on that awful day and why. That is if any of the senior leadership of the DOJ had the time to do any of that. They would likely summon Attorney General Merrick Garland to the witness chair early and often, especially after the search and seizure of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. Qevin already tweeted a warning to Garland to “preserve your documents and clear your calendar.”

As The Post reported this month: “House Republicans have so far pledged to investigate President Biden’s son Hunter’s business dealings and art sales, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the Biden administration’s military withdrawal from Afghanistan, the origins of the novel coronavirus, coronavirus-related school closures, and the administration’s deliberations over weapons sales to Ukraine.”

We could also reliably expect legislation to finish Trump’s border wall, for example, or to curtail the rights of asylum seekers. Again, this would be for show, since Biden would veto anything egregious. But immigrant-bashing plays well with the GOP base.

They’ll be going all out to prove their cruelty, since for most of the residents of Flyover Loserville who support them, the cruelty is the point of it all.

On culture-war issues, how far the House would try to go would depend on how vulnerable Qevin feels to the far-right wing of his caucus.

Opinion polls indicate that any attempt to pass the nationwide abortion ban 168 House Republicans have signed on to support would hurt them among independent voters.

But if enough the House mouth-breathers want to barrel down that road, Qevin would go along because an empty suit has no way of opposing anything. It blows in the wind as it hangs from the ceiling.

A House GOP majority with the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert in leading positions, along with pedophile enabler Jim Jordan, would nationalize the Right’s cruelty against transgender Americans, especially trans students and their parents.

They would be following the lead of “reasonable” Republican governors such as Glenn Youngkin, who recently issued a directive requiring schools to restrict students’ use of bathrooms and locker rooms by their “biological sex,” and forbidding the use of new names or pronouns without written parental permission.

One thing the House can do on its own is impeachment. “Reasonable Trumper” Nancy Mace said Sunday on “Meet the Press” that there is “a lot of pressure on Republicans” to vote to impeach Biden. While she gave no hint of what, exactly, he would be impeached for, she did leave it open that she would vote yes.

Would an actual reason even matter?

McCarthy a man of no principles other than his own ambition, will have less control over the political future of his members and thus less power than Trump has. And the narrower his majority, the less control he will have as the K-K-Krazies exercise the power they lust for.

If voters keep the Democrats in control, they’ll do Qevin a kindness. He won’t have any office in the next congress if he blows this election.

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