As If The GOP Didn’t Already Have Enough Problems Heading Into 2024

Brother, can you spare a dime?   Depression era plea

If you know anybody who has insomnia, do your good deed for the year, Hell, it’s already October, and tell them to tune into MSNBC at 9 AM EDT tomorrow. because once the House is gaveled in, the GOP is going to hold a floor vote for Speaker. With eight freakin’ names on it. And when nobody gets 217 votes, they’ll drop the bottom name and do it all over again. With any luck, your friend should sleep straight through Thursday.

Which brings us to the current GOP self engineered debacle. Twenty one days since Matt Gaetz oversaw the start of the self immolation of the Freedom caucus, even Kevin McCarthy, the former caretaker of this particular monkey island is being rather blunt. This is a disgrace, McCarthy said today, It’s a disgrace to the party. It must be nice for Cave-In to be able to lob rocks at the bully, knowing he’s got the varsity football team standing right behind him. All of which has a much more serious political impact fot the GOP than just the media humiliation.

Because in a normal world in normal times, the position of Speaker of the House is a pretty big deal. Second in line to the Presidency, and with the entire House of Representatives under his control, the Speaker normally has a much heavier schedule than walking around taking a ration of sh*t from political imbeciles like Matt Gaetz. They have heavy responsibilities.

And one of those political heavy lifts is fundraising. Obviously the two best fundraisers for a political party are the President and Vice President, when the party is lucky enough to have them. And after that, who has the highest visibility? The Speaker of the House, The House Minority Leader, The Senate Majority Leader, and the Senate Minority Leader. They get the most national attention and face time, so they should have the most bang-for-the-buck in fundraising.

They’re normally split up. The President and Vice President fundraise for the national party. The Senate and House leaders are normally fundraising for their specific chamber reelection campaign committees. The object is for them to make their committees self sufficient enough so that the national parties can spend their loot where it will do the most good.

And it’s a pain in the ass. While the House and Senate may only work every other week, the same can’t be said for leadership. They spend almost as much time on the road fundraising as Taylor Swift on tour. I’m sure one of the things that Nancy Pelosi misses least about being Speaker is the fundraising, although I’m pretty sure she keeps her hand in. And even without Trump, one of the most often cited reasons that former Speaker Paul Ryan gave for retiring from the House was the fact that he had two teenage sons, and he was sick of all of the travel fundraising. It wears on you after a while.

But let’s just go back for a moment to the priginal construct here. Why are the Speaker, House Minority Leader, and the Senate Majority and Minority Leaders so badly in demand for national fundraising? Having the highest national name recognition, and the most power, they will draw the largest fundraising crowds and pluck out the most money. After all, who draws better right now, Three Dog Night or Beyonce? 

Pop Quiz! Who is the current Speaker of the United States House? Trick question of course, there is no current Speaker, less than 13 months before the 2024 general election. Nobody to go running around the country chasing all that lovely long green for the next cycle. And none in the immediate future either.

And because it’s the GOP, and the Freedom Caucus, of course it gets worse. Have you seen the roster of ballot mice sniffing around to run for the least wanted job in Washington? I defy any of you to show me one pf these losers who has even statewide name recognition, much less national name recognition. What big spender wants to show up at a big gucks fundraiser and be bored silly by a guy who looks like the dude behind the butcher’s counter at your local grocery store at his daughter’s first communion?

The odds are going to be stacked against whomever it turns out to be right from the start. Even Mitch McConnell is having trouble fundraising for the RSCC. It has been widely reported that most deep pocket donors are sitting on their wallets for the RNC, RSCC and RCCC as long as Trump is involved. Instead they’re planning on making targeted donations directly to candidates so Traitor Tot can’t siphon them off for his own personal use. And this is a guy who’s been in Washington since Noah took up shipbuilding.

What chance does Joe Willy Beauregard from Possums Cove, North Carolina have? Especially since McConnell is at least representing and mooching coin on behalf of a caucus that’s part of a functional body? While the Freedom Caucus’s nitwit voters may not be paying attention to this debacle, or think it’s rockin’!, the guys with more money at their fingertips than some third world countries actually pay. attention to this sh*t. If they buy a congressman, they epect a quid pro quo at the other end of the process. And what’s all they’ve seen for the last 10 months now? A day care class with their teacher in the bathroom. Any parent knows you don’t give more money to the daycare operator, you find a daycare center where the teacher wears Depends.

And here’s the beer chaser for that shot. It isn’t just the new Speaker, if we ever get one, who’s going to be venturing into the lion’s den. The biggest difference between the current iteration of the two parties is that the GOP still depends on deep pocket donors, even at the congressional district level, while the Democrats fund raise their asses off with grassroots donations. But those GOP incumbents are going to have to go crawling to their sugar daddies for funding at some point. And what do they have to sell? For the last 10 months, and especially the last six weeks, all their donors have seen is a room full of howler monkeys flinging sh*t balls at each other. Where’s their return on investment from that?

Because rhe GOP House meltdown has been so spectacular and messy, it’s easy to fixate on that. But when you zoom to 24,000 feet, it’s still a small part of a larger picture. And the big picture is that less than 13 months from election day, a cash starved GOP and RNC is hell bent for leather to have to file for bankruptcy before election day, which a few GOP state parties are already on the brink of doing. Money, if nothing else, gets your message out, and the GOP, especially GOP states with Trombie state parties are rapidly approaching tap city. This should be fun, don’t touch that dial.