Knives Out, Republican Style

Mitch McConnell and Rick Scott discussing over who should be Senate Minority Leader.

     It's almost a tradition in American politics that right after an election, Republicans and Democrats put down their weapons and have a drink together at their favorite watering hole. It's kind of like the Brooks Brothers equivalent of adversaries calling a truce after a stalemate on the battlefield.

     This week, it's been different. Not only have Republicans refused to put down their shivs, they're going after each other. Considering how laughably out of the realm of reality the "red wave" was, it's not surprising that they're fighting over the scraps the Democrats had left them after the midterms on the 8th.

     That's where Rick Scott and Mitch McConnell come in, among others. 

     A week after the election, Rick Scott sent a letter to his fellow Senate Republicans expressing how disappointed he was in the outcome and claiming to not point the finger of blame in the direction of anyone before pointing in Mitch McConnell's general direction. Apparently, he thinks the blame for how things shook out in the Senate races, while it's no one person's fault, should squarely be laid out at the feet of the Minority Leader.

     It was the latest escalation in the war brewing between Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and Mitch McConnell, both of whom were responsible for allocating the necessary campaign funds for Republican Senate campaigns. Earlier in the year, McConnell griped about the quality of several of those candidates. Also, when Scott unveiled his nightmarish five year sunset program that would've destroyed the social safety net, McConnell immediately countered that, as Minority Leader, he would guarantee it would never get an up and down vote in the Senate.

     Now, surprise, surprise, the freshman senator who was at the center of the largest Medicare fraud in American history wants to be the Minority Leader. Scott really, really wants to be Minority Leader so he can get that shambling nightmare up for a vote while saying he doesn't want to cut Social Security or Medicad or Medicare because we all know how friendly Republicans have historically been toward programs they keep calling "entitlements" despite the American labor force funding them through payroll taxes.

     But when it became clear a few days after the election that the fascists weren't going to dominate the upper chamber as they'd arrogantly predicted (even though McConnell did tell Republicans to manage their expectations), that's when the knives started flashing and not all of them were aimed at Donald Trump.

     Yes, the turtle and the alien are squaring off in some quasi-corporate version of the knife fight scene in West Side Story. This is how Josh Hawley described it for CNN:

      "Senator Scott disagrees with the approach that Mitch has taken in this election and for the last couple of years, and he made that clear, and Senator McConnell criticized Senator Scott's management of the NRSC."

     Which is all true but that's the polite version. Here's how it's really shaking out in the Republican jungle:

     "The two engaged in a tense discussion during a private three-hour Senate GOP meeting, according to several senators. Following the meeting, Scott was disinvited from speaking at the party's weekly leadership press conference, according to Scott spokesman McKinley Lewis."

     Then there was this:

     "Tensions between the two Republicans and their aides started simmering leading up to the elections. McConnell was cut out of NRSC strategy discussions, his aides blamed Scott for releasing a policy plan that suggested changing Social Security and a source close to Scott blamed McConnell for allowing Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to propose a national abortion ban, The Washington Post reported."

      And that's just in the Senate. Meanwhile, at the kiddie table:

      "House Republicans nominated Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) to be Speaker in a closed-door conference meeting on Tuesday after he faced a last-minute protest challenge from Rep. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), a former chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. McCarthy won easily, 188 to 31, in the internal conference meeting..."

     That's right. Even before the neo-Nazis officially get that crucial 218th seat to win the majority, they're already play-acting with sham votes that prove nothing except that Republicans live in a fantasy land in which stuffed animals are as good as Cabinet Secretaries and popularity elections actually mean the same thing as honest-to-God elections that determine the leadership structure of half of Congress.

     But it also proves the mindset of the MAGA caucus, which, for now, is partially backing McCarthy (as long as he gives MTG her committee assignments back). In other words, as with Trump, every relationship is transactional.

     As I've been saying for years, it's in their nature to eat each other. We saw it at the end of the Third Reich, with Donitz, Himmler and Goering vying for what few scraps of power were left after Hitler ate a bullet in the bunker. The Nazi clown show in both chambers of Congress are going to be enormously amusing to see and the biggest danger I see is us running out of popcorn.