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The Road to Gaetz
Early on, I was initially off-put by Gaetz, and I had bought into the mainstream reporting about this “unhinged used car salesman” disrupting our one and only House of Representatives. And then an interview by Michael Knowles with Lauren Boebert set me straight. I wrote of this process right here at Ricochet, and I’ll excerpt a bunch of these posts for context. This is a laundry list of just some of the posts I’ve written since the $1.7 trillion damned dollar Democrat omnibus funding bill was hurriedly passed by the Senate, in what I think was another Rick Santelli moment.
Please bear with me — I want remind you just why I’m so happy with Gaetz. Please recall that I began by thinking of him as yet another slick, untrustworthy Congresscritter grifting conservatives in the time-honored style. Nope — we are blessed with some great people RIGHT NOW, and Matt Gaetz is one of them. He is arguably the leader of a new Tea Party, actually accomplishing things. So here’s that story, told in flashbacks to things I’ve written here:
December 17, 2022:
Listening to Mark Levin from yesterday. Tell me where I’m wrong:
- The RFMA just passed, which we could have prevented, and without the Lee Amendment.
- We’re about to give another omnibus bill to the Democrats, removing the new Republican House’s leverage before they even sit.
- Another amnesty is coming fast.
All this and more, and not a filibuster in sight. Did Mitch forget about taking our guns, or will that happen next? Because that would just about round out the anti-conservative agenda.
December 20, 2022:
[…] this is the crunchy part of the House GOP telling the Senate that if they cave on the omnibus bill to disenfranchise the GOP in the next session, those Senators doing the Democrats’ bidding may expect targeted opposition from the House.
December 22, 2022:
I feel like writing a post about how the GOP just signed us up for two more trillion dollars to see us through to the next budget, and McConnell & Co. say that they got everything they want, with no pesky border security — not for this country, anyway. But others have written it, and besides, haven’t we been posting about this for years? What more could there possibly be to say?
Republicans bizarrely came out in support of the anti-religion, marriage-destroying, perversely-named “Respect for Marriage Act,” when they could have killed it dead. People have written about that too, before and after. The GOP offered up the Lee Amendment, which was pretty good, as a band-aid, but alas, the Lee Amendment did not pass.
December 23, 2022:
This is about the 1.7 TRILLION dollar spending bill, but it might as well be the title [“The Republicans Who Voted to Lose — Again”] of a weekly column.
The Democrats shoved a four THOUSAND page bill under the pen of Mitch McConnell while they were in a lame-duck House session. All the Republicans had to do was threaten (or force) a shutdown and resolve it with yet another CR, a Continuing Resolution to bridge the operation of government until the next session, in which the Republicans control the House by a slim majority. If I recall correctly, all bills not signed before the next session become moot. This would force the production of a new bill in a House controlled by the GOP, and since this is revenue, it’s the House’s job.
[…]. The incoming House majority is a slim one indeed, which weakens the GOP. It, therefore, strengthens the crunchy-cons who want the GOP to straighten up and act like something other than Democrats. Whatever the GOP wants in the House, it can be threatened by a kingmaking minority. And the GOP’s response will as usual be to partner up with Democrats to defeat conservatives. They did this to “crush the Tea Party” and they did it when Trump was President.
https://ricochet.com/1366121/the-republicans-who-voted-to-lose-again/
December 27, 2022:
As noted elsewhere, this miserable omnibus bill that neutered the incoming GOP House majority was voted for by 18 Senate Republicans. That’s nearly half.
I see more people here on Ricochet and on Twitter who are furious about this, and I am not talking about the usual Damn-the-RINOs brigade. McConnell […] is seen as one major reason why there is no incoming GOP Senate majority, and now he’s practically dancing on the grave of opposition to Democrats.
This omnibus debacle is “radicalizing” Republicans to oppose the business-as-usual leadership and loser deals that have been the GOP rule for decades.
https://ricochet.com/1367244/1-7-trillion-reasons-to-leave-the-gop/
January 4, 2023:
Why doesn’t McCarthy reject the endorsement by Junta Commander Trump of Los Insurrectos?
https://ricochet.com/1370155/shots-fired-trump-endorses-mccarthy/
Same day:
Hang in there HFC! I do want you to get a deal, but please make sure it’s a deal worth getting. Of course, getting somebody better than McCarthy would be spectacular. I’m grateful to you all for exercising your option at a point when we have time and leverage.
https://ricochet.com/1370407/hang-in-there-hfc-re-convenes-at-2000-eastern/
January 5, 2023:
Since (very) late last night, there have been rumors that a deal has been reached, and that McCarthy has accepted sufficient demands that the HFC will give him sufficient votes. A big phone conference this morning is supposedly ironing out details — if it works. […]
If McCarthy accepts the conditions laid out by the HFC and gains the votes, that is a WIN for the HFC. Why? Because without their stand, none of it would have happened and McCarthy would have been ensconced anyway. And if McCarthy is forced to step aside, this will also be an HFC victory. Somebody else will pop up and gain large numbers, and may even get right with the HFC. All they have to do is meet the conditions. […]
Here’s the point — if McCarthy blinks and the HFC wins, it will be framed as a defeat for the HFC in all the usual propaganda outlets. Please help ‘splain it to them.
Same day, and this post is really one of the tentpoles of my appreciation for Gaetz et al; the comments to this post are fantastic, and really heartening:
This interview of Rep. Lauren Boebert (below) is the most cogent explanation I have heard for the anti-McCarthy position. I’ll spoil a bit of it for you: last summer [2022], McCarthy thought there would be far more Republicans, and that he would have enough squish votes to run over the conservatives, so he ignored their concerns.
On Monday, the House Freedom Caucus (HFC) whipped votes all day […] Boebert and Co. approached McCarthy with a list of 218 YES votes for him, provided that he assent to a list of initiatives. These were mostly promises to hold a series of votes on specific issues.
This list was less ambitious than Gingrich’s wildly successful Contract With America. […]
There’s more — watch the whole thing, as it’s only 13 minutes long. Yes, this is the pro-regular order, anti-McCarthy side of the story. Heaven knows we are all hearing the pro-McCarthy argument on every channel. [emphasis added]
https://ricochet.com/1370853/knowles-intv-boebert-context-history-of-this-speaker-fight/
Same day:
One of the things gained in the recent Speaker battle was a commitment from McCarthy to empanel “A second ‘Church’ committee to look into the weaponization of agencies like the FBI against Americans.”
This alone is worth it. I’ll take half a loaf with a file in it.
January 7, 2023 — This is where the bomb really hit for me. It was one thing to see the Michael Knowles interview which was eye-opening. Then I saw this hit-piece by the execrable Sean Hannity, which is tryng as hard as possible to be eye-closing. This is the wounded Deep State lashing out through its Uniparty mouthpiece — again, wonderful comments at the linked post:
Please do watch the Hannity hatchet job, and as you do so, ask yourself, “Why is he so angry? Why does he push so hard for an answer that he knows can not be given? If he were trying to shut her up while making her look stupid, what would he do differently?” […]
Word is getting out that the Hannity interview was so over the top, so jump-the-shark, that it’s blowing up in his face. Good. […]
In this interview, you can see her struggle to make some of the points much better presented in this friendly interview by Michael Knowles, which I covered here yesterday. It’s a fascinating contrast. [… the Hannity interview is] dishonest and abusive.
https://ricochet.com/1371008/hannity-abuses-boebert-in-uniparty-propaganda-video/
January 8, 2023:
Meanwhile… Where are the sandwich-boarded, ‘end-is-nigh’ers shouting REPENT! at passing conservatives, threatening them with hellfire and damnation if they don’t change their votes to McCarthy right now? Remember, less than a week ago, this was the end of our representative form of government, embarrassing on the world stage, giving the whole House to the Democrats, assuring Speaker Jeffries and President Pelosi or whatever was supposed to happen. Hannity lamely tried to yuk it up with Boebert after trashing her — but then she and Gaetz won, and suddenly he was all shucks and gee, ‘Remember when we had that lively debate a couple of days ago? That we great, huh?’
October 5, 2023 –Fast forward, and McCarthy gets ejected. Once again, MATT GAETZ leads the charge. Cue the media’s flying monkeys at Fox:
Here’s Fox News tool Brian Kilmeade doing his best Hannity impersonation all over Representative Tim Burchette. I’d provide some facts, but I don’t think those matter much in this context. […]
Newt Gingrich and Mark Levin are very down on Gaetz, et al., for “doing the Democrats’ work for them” in ousting McCarthy. […] I won’t call Levin names just because I disagree with his take on this — I know the man has a business to run. Still,[…] all I hear is the tarpit Uniparty bellowing in rage after being wounded. […]
Well, I hope this works out for the better. […]The danger of working with fire is the likelihood of getting burned. But only with fire may we heat our homes, light our nights, cook our food, and keep the evil at bay.
https://ricochet.com/1499148/feral-kilmeade-interview-with-rep-tim-burchette/
October 26, 2023 — Conservative Mike Johnson (R – LA) is the new Speaker! MATT GAETZ in an interview on Steve Bannon’s WAR ROOM podcast lays bare the business-as-usual:
So, guess what — the Gaetz maneuver worked perfectly. He tipped the ball and after several bumps, somebody absolutely spiked it off the opposition’s head, DOINK. […]
I confess to a tiny bit of schadenfreude, but mostly I hope to hear grace and constructive brainstorming for the future from people have been shouting about how the stupid, treacherous, no-plan-having, Worse-than-Worthless Eight have screwed us –screwed! they said — for all eternity and so forth.
Peace? All is forgiven, for the low, low price of climbing down a bit and admitting that Gaetz got it right. Not that it was a slam-dunk, but it was a risk run for great reward, and it worked — the bogeyman lefty Republicans did not after all vote Democrat, and we got a Speaker whom the Democrats loathe, because he doesn’t take their guff. That means that we the people don’t take their guff. Win-win!
November 5, 2023 — Victory lap. Matt Gaetz has every right to take a victory lap, in what I see as his “Time for Choosing” speech; that is, the one that we will look back to for context as he kicks off his Presidential run, maybe in 2028. Not that he’s saying that. I’m saying that.
Matt Gaetz in Florida yesterday, flying low, throws sonic booms into the crowd and across the nation with this awesome speech capping a remarkable year of accomplishment (so far) for one young Representative. The points he makes are the points you want made, the goals he seeks are the goals you want achieved, and he delivers! So why don’t you approve of him?
https://ricochet.com/1510246/fire-breathing-matt-gaetz-burns-down-half-of-florida/
I am going to no-kidding bookmark this post in my browser, and refer to it when people ask me about Gaetz, and how I could possibly be conned by such a slick used car salesman.
If any used car salesman delivered like Gaetz, we would all be driving new Cadillacs for used Toyota prices. And no, they wouldn’t be stolen. Have you seen the price of a used Toyota these days?
There are plenty of good-to-great people in Congress today, and Matt Gaetz is LEADING them. He’s doing the work that back-bencher Newt Gingrich did before becoming Speaker — defining a platform and building coalitions. You know, that stuff that a Speaker is supposed to do, and that Speaker McCarthy seems to have utterly neglected other than throwing around some McConnell money.
Newt Gingrich in the 2000’s impressed me greatly calling for a limitation on campaign finance for Congress — Congresscritters should be restricted to organic fundraising from the district they’re running in — that’s it. Gingrich also said that “Real Change requires Real Change.” Gingrich should be cheerleading for Gaetz instead of calling him names. Perhaps soon he will get on board.
Matt Gaetz is the only Republican in either house of Congress who refuses all donations from federal lobbyists and political action committees. He works solely for the people of his district in Florida, which has somehow translated into a national leadership string of successes. “Somehow.”
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It’s all the namecalling and invective in the MSM, from Republicans in the media, and on Ricochet, that kept me from wanting to throw Gaetz overboard. I’m not crazy about his stance on funding for Ukraine. In fact, I’m against him on that. But there has been so much namecalling using words like clownshow, chaos, etc., and so much namecalling unaccompanied by substance. He must be doing something right.
I really started to feel vindicated in my early support of Gaetz when I began examining what was going on in those secret ballots of the Republican Conference followed by who voted no on Scalise and then on Jordan. It was fun to observe and especially with the outcome getting Mike Johnson as Speaker.
Gaetz has had hardly anything to say about policy other than pushing for a return to regular order, a need for some control over spending, and his preference for elected representatives to do what they told voters they would if elected. I knows little about his politics but I like his understanding of how the process of governing should be carried out. There is definitely a difference between responding to the voting public and responding to the corporate payoffs.
The clincher for me was learning that behind the scenes, McCarthy was sabotaging every possible successor as he plotted his return to Speakership. But when they stopped holding all the secret votes, Johnson won unanimously. At that point, whatever small amount of sympathy I might have held for McCarthy — and it was microscopic at that point — disappeared completely.
Yup. That’s linked in the 26 October post above. That Bannon interview really solidified my previous fence-sitting about Gaetz.
Gaetz family has F.U. money, which gives him freedom. Most people in Congress are financially secure and should act like the have financial freedom, but most act like they are trying to improve their standing. Good for Gaetz.
That there wasn’t any refutation of that interview from the McCarthy or other GOP leadership solidified its accuracy for me. The silence was deafening and damning.
Yes, I waited to hear if anyone was going to try to refute what Gaetz said. Crickets.
I was disappointed most of all by the conservative commentariat. Hearing so many of them just fall back on the party narrative instead of providing real analysis of the situation was a painful reminder of how much we lost when Rush passed away.
True that. But conservative is a philosophy while party is a governing strategy. Party will always win when the issue is gaining or losing power. And, if it isn’t, you lose. Sad truth.
It seems to me that for quite some time, the Republican Party has NOT been a “governing strategy,” but rather a grifting strategy. It has focused on being the minority party, claiming goals can’t be achieved unless voters pony up more cash, and give them control of all 3 elected branches of government, then putting forth no efforts to accomplish their flagship policy promises when voters did just that. They paint anyone who attempts to hold them to their stated agenda as a lunatic idealist.
Holding the party leadership to the promises it made, when it is within their power to deliver and they haven’t even made a serious effort before throwing their hands up and saying they need to compromise with the Democrats is not the sign of idealistic purism, it’s a sign of NOT being a grifter.
Thanks for extended explanation. Why do so few people understand the weakness brought about by extreme indebtedness? It seems so obvious.
I watched his speech yesterday. I have to say that I found him pretty compelling which surprised me. I do have the same bit of skepticism about whether what he says will actually translate into action, much as I feel about Ramaswami. Talk is cheap, actual action not so much. No question, he did explain why he went after McCarthy, and that did make sense. I will withhold further judgment and watch him. He does seem a bit Elmer Gantry-ish to me, but we’ll see.
This is especially true in the Senate. The majority party generally needs 5-8 votes from the minority party for cloture. The Minority Leader provides those votes to the majority for a price. Thus the Minority Leader gets a payoff, but is not responsible for anything that passes.
The GOP leadership (before last week) seemed to prefer power (grift) without responsibility for governing. They want to give more power to the Executive branch, while collecting cash from lobbyists. Shameful.
What Gaetz et al. have proven is that a minority can still accomplish something if they have an effective political strategy. I’m more certain than ever that the GOP leadership during Obama’s term had no intentions of rolling back anything if they actually got the house, senate, and presidency.
And we are in Obama’s third term.
You can be 100% certain, because we gave them the trifecta, and what was rolled back?
I respectfully dissent from all this lovefest talk about, as one commenter alluded to, our current Elmer Gantry, and I do so from a very different perspective: I happen to be one of this so-called “Representative”‘s constituents and I personally regard him as one of the greatest frauds to come down the pike since Barack Hussein Obama. Here’s why.
For those who have seen my comments about my “Representative” you will please pardon my repeating what I have said before and you will also know why I put that word in quotation marks.
I had the misfortune of being naive enough- a genuine embarrassment at my age- to believe that one’s representative in the National Legislature should, well, represent his or her constituents and to do that it seemed to me rather elementary that he should listen to what his constituents had to say. On one of my many calls to his office, I was informed by one of his staff members the following, and I am making a good-faith effort to relate the words as exactly as I can:
Having received the message that I was dealing with someone who had so little interest in his constituents’ concerns that he would limit them to an “audience” (sound famiar?) that was my last attempt to communicate with my “Representative.” However, I should emphasize that this was one in a long string of attempts to communicate with him, in writing and by phone call. In the latter category, I quickly learned that if one was not a booker for one of the Fox (then) or Newsmax (now) shows, one is wasting one’s precious moments in life trying to actually talk to this [ ] in person, as Representatives once did with their voters. In the former category, I was involved in attempts to get the person many are now even talking about as Presidential material, again I respectfully but forcefully dissent, to help us as we fought the woke powers-that-be in our city in their ultimately successful attempt to remove a Confederate Soldier monument which had stood prominently in a square since 1898 but had to be removed as it apparently frightened three people. In response to those emails, I received the exact same form letter about how proud he was to “represent” our District, etc., etc., etc. ad nauseam.
In saying all of this, I also note that I understand that he can be a very persuasive speaker. So was Barack Hussein Obama, who was often referred to as ” a real good talker” – he wound up being one of the most destructive Presidents in American history.
Before you ask whether I actually watched the “big speech”- No.
What do you think of the result we got from his recent action @jimgeorge?
I know that this is a bit off topic, but it did tweak a pet peeve of mine. I have long been an reader of books and other forms of literature about the American Civil War. Having read hundreds of books about the subject, including memoirs of soldiers of both sides, I have always found it difficult to blame anyone for fighting no matter the side. Both sides, all American, displayed a level of courage that has rarely been seen in history. They died, on both sides, in numbers that were incredibly devastating. I cannot be convince by anyone that the soldiers on the southern side were fighting to preserve slavery. They were, like their predecessors in 1776, fighting for what they saw as their freedom and the freedom of their individual states to make the choices they wanted to make as to how they ran their states. Their statues, particularly that of R.E Lee for whom I have enormous respect, do not represent an attempt to preserve slavery or, really, any goal that does not conform to The Constitution. In their minds they were simply saying that they wanted all of those things the Constitution guaranteed them and that the federal government was denying them. To them it was the second revolutionary war. They were wrong, but calling them traitors is a despicable calumny. Removing their statuary and comemorative monuments is completely unacceptable in my eyes. They were Americans and heroes no matter the side they chose.
So, you only support politicians that personally return every call that comes to their office? That is going to be a pool of zero people.
I was very glad to see McCarthy removed as I saw him as a charlatan a long time ago, as did many here. It was an unfortunate by-product that to get to that goal Gaetz needed over 200 Democrats.
None of that, however, was the subject of my comment. I just thought some might see some value in hearing from one of his constituents as opposed to his TV audience.
Judging by the comment by @dong, I see that what I thought might be a valuable addition to the dialogue might, on Ricochet of all places, be welcomed by legitimate counter arguments, not snark. Perhaps it’s not to be. Too bad.
Every? Where do you get that?
Fine people on both sides?
What kind of help did you expect from him on the issue of the statue? Moral support and publicity?
@jimgeorge, thank you for the perspective from ground zero. I think you would admit that you did start off with some snark in your testimony. That aside, it’s good to know that there are specific, concrete criticisms rather than vague hand-wavey “I don’t like him” type stuff. The concrete can be addressed.
I’m not calling him Presidential material — just looking at how a season and speeches like this will position a man in the public eye. I don’t know much about Gaetz. I’m just judging by results from a national perspective, and I gotta say that from here, this is a refreshingly, even shockingly great set of results from a guy who knows how to work inside the system to get what we want actually done.
In the current situation where other Representatives do not actually represent their constituents or even the national interests, it might be necessary to consider that one’s own Representative – in order to oppose that situation – may not be able to be the down-home open-door person we’d all like to have if the country was very different.
Would you be happier if McCarthy was still colluding with Dimocrats, but Gaetz returned your phone calls? And everyone else’s phone calls, all day, every day?
I do recommend watching it. I gotta say THANK YOU to the good people of your district who have put this guy in a position to do these great things.
It’s not likely that Jim is the only constituent who thinks their phone calls should be returned in person.
Gaetz may have very valid reasons for not engaging personally with constituents. one might be the experiences of others who have been duped by impersonators on telephone calls. Another may be exactly what Lawfare tried to pull on him in terms of false criminal allegations related to human trafficking when they realized he might become a real threat, which we have seen play out. And there may be the simple fact that if you engage in very controversial matters the attempts at personal contact will increase.