The House Ouster: Today, We Are All MAGA Republicans
Editors’ Note: Enjoy the first two paragraphs of satire introducing the events in the House of Representatives last week with the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The essay below is penned by Conlan Salgado, The Prickly Pear’s newest contributor. Mr. Salgado is a college junior, astute political observer and highly informed conservative. His essay deserves serious reading.
Anyone deeply read into ‘revised’ history will be aware of the Republicans’ long list of atrocities: slavery, the holocaust (I’m not sure about that one, but Trump is compared to Hitler frequently, so. . . .), Pearl Harbor, 9/11 and January 6th. This record, however, did not deter Rep. Matt Gaetz from trying to overthrow the United States Government. Early reports suggested that Mr. Gaetz shouted something about “peacefully and patriotically” making our Speaker give up the gavel, then proceeded to follow a rowdy and armed group of MAGA-hat-wearing hicks through the halls of the Capitol before seeing that Kevin McCarthy was publicly executed for high crimes and stabbing Trump in the back.
Later reports confirmed that this was mostly the truth, since McCarthy had been removed from Speaker position and since the Democrats’ exaggerated version of January 6th is truly terrible. Also, these two situations, though differing radically in certain respects, both fall under the category of “uncharted territory”—and according to the Media, this is definitely uncharted territory. Some Republicans concurred. Newt Gingrich, who hasn’t been speaker of the house for over 20 years but was mysteriously present in Washington, jumped on Mitt Romney’s back upon hearing the gavel of excommunication thumped, and rode him down Capitol Hill declaiming in loud and angry editorial prose (OK, actually he just published an op-ed dissing Gaetz, but. . . .).
Washington is in an uproar, and that means two things: something really good just happened for the country, and we should all donate money to Matt Gaetz. Of course, as soon as McCarthy was ousted from Speaker, the Media were doing the work of their Washington overlords, smearing Gaetz and blubbering about how Congress just couldn’t get anything done without a Speaker. HELLO! This is Congress: “can’t get anything done” is our middle name.
The Washington Post, The Guardian, Aljazeera, and Time, among other outlets, all wrote pieces singling McCarthy’s opponents out as “far-right Republicans”. This is how Gaetz and his gutsy colleagues were referred to in the press. Why? Because the American electorate has been dumbed down to such an extent, that, like dogs listening for their masters, the people are expected to display a conditioned response to certain words or phrases now. For instance, every good democrat knows that when you hear “Trump”, you sit back on your haunches and growl (Do not doubt me, I have seen Leftists bark at their television when pictures of Trump appear). When you hear Democracy, you lie down and wag your tail. When you hear “far-right” you bare your teeth and start barking.
Nowhere, in any of the distressed pieces penned about this overthrow, could one find even a sentence addressing the central point, as least insofar as Gaetz is concerned (and how he rationalized his actions). That is to say, was Gaetz right? Was McCarthy a bad Speaker? Did he undercut the interests of the American people? Was he a creature of the swamp? Did McCarthy work to continue the irresponsible amount of funding to Ukraine while American communities fall into ruin? Was McCarthy instrumental in spending millions of dollars to defeat specifically MAGA Republicans in primaries nationwide in the 2022 midterms? Has Congress, under McCarthy’s leadership, ceased passing omnibus bills which are gift packages to foreign interests and lobbyists? And if the answer is yes to the first six, and no to the seventh question, then how can it possibly be a bad thing, for the American people, that McCarthy is no longer leading the House?
Well, there’s the hitch, Conlan, you might say: you’re talking about it being a bad thing for the people. But we’re not talking about the people, are we? We’re talking about the Washington crowd. See, from the perspective of a pro politician, Matt Gaetz did a very dangerous thing recently: he revived arcane notions of being accountable to the people. He suggested that if a politician’s leadership were marked by failure to deliver on promises (to the people), he ought to be removed from leadership. He hinted at the incredibly damaging and aneurysm-causing concept that politicians are in offices of public service, not private power and profit. And then, to top it all off, he acted on these principles. HE ACTED! HE ACTED ON PRINCIPLE. Politicians lost that ability through thousands of years of evolution, and in one day, Matt Gaetz brought it back.
Do you know where this sort of pro populo, MAGA, we-don’t-care-about-Washington thinking leads? January 6th. It leads to people believing they should have free and fair elections, that their politicians should expect to be voted out if they don’t deliver, that the people should be able to elect their own president, that a country’s government should do its best not to instigate and fund foreign war, that Congress ought not to be too eager and too open about its ambitions to bankrupt the average taxpayer, and a whole host of very democratic, very anti-Washington, very dangerous propositions.
Despite the truth of the above, this action, this victory, in the great scheme of things, may not seem as anything at all—a small, spiteful smirk in the midst of our pain in losing this country. But perhaps, that is the point. The fact that Gaetz and his colleagues forced McCarthy out, the fact that Washington lost its sanity over it: these two pieces of reality—these two shards of shrapnel in the heart of Washington—they are proof that not only is the uniparty’s control not totalitarian yet (in the sense of total), even within Congress, but that there is only one way to fight back against them: “uncharted territory”. That is to say, reverse the formula of the past 60 years: oust speakers, impeach Bidens, force government shutdowns until the tiniest whisper of fiscal conscience can once again make itself heard. If Washington has done it one way, do it the other.
The Democrats scream about etiquette, rules, customs, and precedents, even while they pull down their pants and take a Ukraine-funding-sized sh*t all over the rule of law and the Constitution. So now it is the time. Do not worry about consequences, do not worry about prosecutions, do not worry about men in suits and and thugs with sticks. Decide that this is the moment: this is the point at which you fight back. This is the moment where you will not vote for another non-MAGA republican. This is the moment when you will not stay silent when those around you abuse your history, defile your traditions, tell lies about your president. This is the moment where you force an ouster; this is the moment when you become the most hated man in Washington. This is the moment when you expel every vestige of McCarthy and McCarthyism (the more dangerous kind—the Kevin kind) from your life.
It is the experts who are currently trying to get their bearings in their ‘uncharted territory’. We The People have always been comfortable in ‘uncharted territory’; it’s another name for freedom.
