The “Secret Nugget” In the Bannon Criminal Contempt Vote

Battle lines are being drawn. Nobody’s right, when everybody’s wrong   Buffalo Springfield   The way things are

As Rachel likes to say, Stick a pin in this one. On Thursday, the US House of Representatives voted to hold Steve Two Shirts Bannon in criminal contempt of congress. The vote was largely along partisan lines, but 9 GOP House members crossed the aisle to vote with the Democrats, which was about 4-5 more than I had expected.

But in the results, it isn’t so much a matter of how many, but who? Of course Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney voted Aye, but it was the other seven. And the names don’t matter, all of them were rock ribbed conservatives. What matters is the location.

The representatives came from Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Washington state. And they all share one thing in common. All of them come from highly competitive suburban heavy districts that the GOP is desperately trying to hold onto in 2022. And they all made a rationed, political choice.

Look, nobody picks a fight for the fun of it. Kreepy Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise whipped votes hard in the House against referring Bannon to the DOJ for criminal prosecution. Their votes not only put them in direct opposition with their own leadership, it means that they’ve put a target on their own backs for Traitor Tot and the evil undead.

The only explanation that makes sense to me is that they had internal polling in their districts. White suburban women, and at least some of their hubbies, are still incredibly pissed at His Lowness. Hell, several of these members got elected in 2020, when white suburban women came back to the party down ballot, and either voted for Biden, or didn’t vote at the top of the ticket. Their fear of retaliation at the hands of their voters is worse than their fear of a Trumper tantrum, or even a Trombie primary.

Get ready for this to play out all over the country. Trumpenstein has a long list of the impure that he is preparing to support far right challengers for in the primaries. But a lot of these are districts that the GOP flipped back in 2020 despite Trump losing their districts. And these are the very people that Trump wants to primary in 2022, when any sane Republican would be pushing to give them all the support they need.

Everybody knows that the Democrats are rowing upstream in 2020, the odds are against them. But normally, going into a midterm election in a first term, the opposition is united in pointing out the glaring weaknesses of the ruling party. But The Cheeto Prophet has mandated that 2020 be endlessly relitigated, And he is going to primary exactly the people that the GOP needs to hold onto those seats in 2022 if they have any prayer of regaining power in the House.

The snake is eating it’s tail. If Biden can get the reconciliation bill through (possibly next week), and the bipartisan infrastructure bill with it, he has a one-two punch to take into the primaries. The nice thing about the reconciliation bill is that, unlike the ACA, it is front loaded, and the benefits will start being felt immediately. As the vaccination rates go up, and deaths go down, the Biden administration can claim credit for having arrested the coronavirus. And when the economy picks up from the infrastructure and Build Back Better bills, they can claim credit for turning the economy back around again. Get those done, and things are nowhere near as bad as they seem.

Follow me on Twitter at @RealMurfster35