The Bullies vs The Geeks. A Political Parable.

Let’s just say I’m a bully. And for the last couple of weeks I’ve been having a helluva time making life miserable for the skinny kids with the taped together glasses and the pocket protector. The thing I didn’t know was that the geeks big brother was the captain of the high school football team. Then one day I started chasing the wimp, and the entire football team charged out of the gym and stomped me into poi. 

And when I got up the next morning, groaning and whimpering and looked in the mirror, I was as pissed as hell at the geek for getting my ass whipped. And what do I do six months later? What else? I start torturing his kid brother.

I swear, it must suck to be a member of the Freedom caucus right now, because that’s who I’m talking about. First they make the wimpy nerd Cave-in McCarthy go through 15 rounds of wedgies and noogies before finally letting him be the hall monitor when the moderate GOP football team comes charging out of the locker room and stomps their sorry asses. At least they thought that having the nerd as hall monitor meant that they could take over the halls.

Sadly for them, they failed to realize that their whipped dog hall monitor didn’t actually control the halls. The Democratic Senate are the school resource officers that oversee the hall monitors, and President Joe Biden is the Principal that oversees the school resource officers.

And when the wimp couldn’t get them into the halls, they fired him, and instead looked for somebody whose left nut had dropped, and would turn them loose in the halls. What followed was two weeks far more humiliating to the bullies than anything the bullies put the wimp through.

After two embarrassing weeks, the bullies finally go to the wimp’s kid brother, and ask him to be the hall monitor. The reason is simple. After two weeks, none of their own hand picked stooges could get enough votes to become hall monitor.

The problem is that the new hall monitor doesn’t have any more control than the old one, but at least he still has his big brother’s football team behind him, and so once again the Freedom caucus is gearing up for another righteous Wookie stomp.

At its simplest the Freedom caucus is about 30 3rd rate performance artist grifters who just happened to choose the well of the House as their particular Summer in the Park Theater Group. They think that just because they can muck up anything that anybody actually wants to do, eventually everybody else will shut up and give them whatever they want, if they can ever actually figure out what they want. One small problem. The football team is some 400 members large, and the school resource officers are patrolling the halls.

Believe it or not, this little political parable isn’t that far from political reality, and it’s a lot more fun to read. After assuring themselves of McCarthy’s whipped dog compliance, they gave him a simple chore. Shut down the government, and if necessary go flying over the fiscal cliff like the last scene in Thelma and Louise if the Democrats didn’t send the social safety net crashing to the ground like The Hindenburg. And to ensure compliance, they threatened to take away his shiny orange hall monitor belt.

Turns out that McCarthy actually liked being the hall monitor. So he went to the school resource officers and the Principal and told them what was going on. They made Cave-In an offer he couldn’t refuse. They’d give McCarthy a continuing resolution that would forestall fiscal Armageddon, in return for McCarthy telling his big brother that a major beatdown was in order. The football team came through, other kids who hated the bullies piled on, and the day was saved. But the hall monitor still had to go.

And here we go again. While the Hollywood writers strike may be over, we’re about to go into congressional reruns. This time it’s the geek’s kid brother, MAGA Mike Johnson. And while his House majority is even smaller than the one that McCarthy had, his marching orders are the same. Burn down the whole government if everybody else doesn’t give us what we want.

But this time it’s even worse for the bullies. Because the first time around, McCarthy was desperate to be Speaker, and would do anything the bullies wanted, that is until the moment where he personally and professionally could become responsible for a fiscal Armageddon. At which time his left nut dropped, and he started acting like an adult, to the shock and dismay of the bullies.

Here’s why it’s worse this time. Unlike McCarthy, Johnson never wanted to be the Speaker. They came to him, and like Paul Ryan before him, he took one for the team. And here’s the difference you need to know. Even though his nickname is MAGA Mike, he was able to get the moderate football team votes where the MAGA flamethrowers like Scalise and Jordan couldn’t. He’s not batsh*t crazy.

And it’s obvious already that his left nut has dropped as well. After a couple of weeks during the break spouting off Freedom caucus flapdoodle, on the last weekend it was announced that Johnson, Jefferies, McConnell and Schumer had reached a top line budget number agreement. Great, but What the hell is that?!

Simple, Mon Cher. It’s the critical first budgetary step, and here’s how it works. Let’s say you’re a family working out your budget for the month. The first thing you do it to total up all of your income. Your check, your spouses, any other income such as stock dividends, structured settlements and trusts. That’s your top line budget base number. The rest is simple, it’s just a matter of decided what goes where to pay all the bills. And that’s what they announced.

And already the Freedom caucus is wailing like a bunch of banshees. The top line number is far too high to effectively cripple the social safety net. Mental midgets like Chip Roy, Lauren Boebert, and Machine Gun Marjie are already swearing dread revenge, and swearing not to vote for the eventual budget. But you know what that is? It’s nothing more than crybaby bitching. Here’s why. The one thing that none of them are threatening to do is to force a vote to vacate the Chair. They need this deal. And later they’ll need a sacrificial lamb for it.

Now the next step will be for the GOP controlled Ways and Means Committee for them to actually allocate that $1.59 trillion to all of the various departments. And if I’m reading the constitutional fine print correctly, always a dicey thing, the GOP Ways and Means committee is basically neutered from making much mischief here. According to the rules, if the money is allocated, then it must be disbursed, it can’t just be held back like a cudgel or after dinner treat. And every department has their own budget baseline set the previous budget, which is supposed to be the minimum that the department can receive in the next budget.

It’s easy to see why the Freedom caucus are screaming and throwing sh*t balls like a bunch of howler monkeys. The top base line number is close enough to the last budget to be a Democratic victory, which is fitting, since Biden has actually reduced the deficit every year. Worse yet, the victorious Democrats only gave Johnson a couple of puny fig leaves for them to use to cover those asses hanging in the wind. But the Freedom caucus is stuck with it.

Marry in haste, repent in leisure. The Freedom caucus settled on Mike Johnson to stop the bleeding. And they set themselves up for failure. The short term continuing resolution they passed late last year to lick their sore nuts shuts down half of the government on January 19th, and the other half in mid February. If they choose impulsively in a pique of outrage to fire Johnson, then they shut down the government indefinitely, and Happy New Year going into a November general election. The budget deal is a two year deal, and it will pass with heavy Democratic support.

And once that happens, Who gives a sh*t what they do? It’s a two year budget, and the debt ceiling deal doesn’t expire until early 2025, after a new administration, or the same one with stronger majorities takes over. Let ’em oust Johnson and settle into an entire spring and summer of feckless futility. There’s nothing on the honey do calendar until September when some mandatory budget rollovers have to be done. Let voters sick and tired of logjam and obstruction in Washington sit back and watch the GOP basically shut the chamber down cuz they can’t get their heads out of their asses. Any way you slice it, the Democrats in or challenging for House seats won’t want for campaign material.

Look, we all knew that this GOP run House, especially with their slim margin would be a nightmare. What nobody could foresee was that it would turn out to be a Freddie Krueger movie that was directed by Mel Brooks. The best part is that there’s still nine months until election day. Maybe Mel Brooks will have time for a sequel.

I thank you for the privilege of your time.