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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?
Those who hated the Tea Party also hate Gaetz. These are the people who thought a decade ago that McCain, Boehner, and McConnell, and for that matter Obama, Holder and Lerner were right to "crush" the Tea Party, and they have no use for Gaetz. He's everything they don't want in a Republican Party. But they probably haven't read this far, so back to the "you" I'm really talking to.
Matt Gaetz is whom we have to thank for this conservative Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Others helped, but Gaetz led, and Boy! did he deliver. It was Gaetz at the beginning over a year ago, but I'd say that he only really surfaced in the January Speakership wrestling match. Gaetz forced a debate, set the terms, and accepted Boehner's -- I mean McCarthy's -- pledge. And then Gaetz held McCarthy accountable when he backslid, which brings us up to date.
I'm not saying that Representatin' is easy, and McCarthy was in a bind, true. But much of that bind was arranged, like so much in Congress, like when the EPA arranges to be sued by its lunatic friends, so that a court commands the EPA to assume powers and take actions repugnant to the Constitution, neither intended nor spelled out in any law. Win-win for the bad guys, and so it goes with much of the Congressional log-rolling, the sort of stuff that Mitch McConnell and John Boehner promised was OVER when they said "the era of business-as-usual IS OVER." And then they went right back to business as usual, and vowed to "crush the Tea Party," so that's how that relationship went.
If you were Tea Party back in the day, please recall what we wanted -- not to form another actual party. Recall that the title "Tea Party" is of course a reference to the Boston Tea Party, and describes an energetic rejection of abuses by a self-selecting group of people, not the formation of a formal political faction. We never (most of us) wanted to form a new party, but to take over the existing Republican Party by holding it accountable. Is this not now being done?
Matt Gaetz is the leader who stepped into that void, seemingly while we weren't looking, and has brought order and results from chaos and a pattern of defeat.
Remember this speech in 2027. Something tells me you will be reminded.
h/t @bobthompson for spotting this speech linked in an article at the Conservative Treehouse.
I'm also working on a post describing the "post road" I took to Matt Gaetz. Keep your eyes peeled.
Discussion (96)
Because the teevee told me not to.
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Dang. Exactly the focus of my next post (teased already in this one). Drew is awake today.
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Hell of a speech. Great points, good laugh lines. Fine delivery. Frankly, I'm a bit surprised.
EDIT: The RNC is clearly desperate.
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I think some of the Lawfare people tried to eliminate Gaetz early when they saw he was trouble. Same tactics they have ongoing with President Trumph except in the President's case they are using fake or mal-interpretation of law. Sundance has some very good commenters on his blog (along with some not so good) but I like this description of the purpose behind the Lawfare strategy from a couple of commenters.
The commenter goes by Battleship Wisconsin:
"In a comment posted to that other article, Mike Robinson made this reply to my remarks:
“Fake news. Even if Biden did “reclassify,” a former President retains the highest level of security clearance forever. And he has special rights concerning his own materials. The National Archives are exactly that: “Archivists.” They do not make the rules.
The ones who broke the law were the FBI agents who pawed through material they had no right to see, then carried it out the door of the secure facility and loaded it into unsecured trucks.”
My response to Mike’s remarks was this:
A better understanding of how lawfare tactics operate is required here. The objective of this particular form of lawfare attack on President Trump is to keep him and his staff tied up in defending themselves against criminal charges.
What special rights President Trump either has, or does not actually have, as a former president have been placed into legal question as a direct consequence of the Mar-a-Lago raid. From a lawfare tactics perspective, that was the purpose of the raid.
As a lawfare tactic, the raid itself was the process means of automatically establishing a legal doubt that these presidential rights actually exist; and if they do actually exist, under what conditions and circumstances those rights exist. In other words, the DOJ has ignored the true legal merits of the raid in order to automatically establish a long and expensive lawfare process for examining the legal questions.
The fact that the courts have accepted the Mar-a-Lago indictment and has initiated criminal process hearings is evidence that the DOJ’s lawfare approach has been relatively successful so far. And so one cannot dismiss the Mar-a-Lago raid and its aftermath as having no consequences for the 2024 election cycle.
IMHO, President Trump is certain to be convicted of some number of bogus criminal charges in one or more venues before the 2024 election cycle is out. The larger question remains, will any of these bogus criminal convictions have any impact on his march to become our 47th president?"
The new House Speaker along with President Trump on the campaign trail may be the only major "bully pulpit" type resources available in the coming year so we need to get everything we can from them.
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Gets tiresome, huh?
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