This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit radixjournal.substack.comIn the free sample, Richard explains his sympathy for the House rebellion against presumed Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The GOP thinks it can ride into town on the populist donkey, and then hop off, pretend it never existed, or even slaughter it. MAGA says otherwise. Much else is discussed in the second hour, including th…
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| Yeah, I'm ready to just put the pedal to the metal. | |
| So is MAGA. | |
| I did want to talk about this because I was so down on Trump and rightfully disappointed, certainly even by 2017 disappointed, off the Trump train, voting Biden. | |
| Making fun of MAGA constantly on Twitter. | |
| You know. | |
| The story. | |
| But, you know, there's just something... | |
| I don't know. | |
| Maybe I have this contrarian instinct that when mediocre, boring people start... | |
| When they create a consensus and when they start hating on someone, I'm almost, like, tempted to defend him. | |
| So I have this kind of, like, weird... | |
| Weird fascination again with Trump now that he's a wounded animal. | |
| I almost have a desire to defend him. | |
| I think I also have a self-righteous, you could say, desire to defend him in the sense that the Republican Party, someone like Kevin McCarthy... | |
| John Boehner actually used this term quite explicitly. | |
| He said, effectively, we wrangle the crazies. | |
| So don't worry about the Tea Party. | |
| You know, the adults will lasso them and get them in the right chute. | |
| It's going to all be okay. | |
| And I feel like Kevin McCarthy, first off, he was so obsequious to Trump. | |
| I mean, he denounced J6, and then the moment that... | |
| There was a chance to move forward and honestly assess the situation. | |
| He decides to go into quasi-semi-J6 denial mode. | |
| He supports the revolution the moment it fails, basically. | |
| I don't like the idea of these boring, mediocre people like McCarthy, Pretty much the rest of them. | |
| In some ways, like, drafting off the populist energy and wave. | |
| I mean, and this gets to a theme that's been pretty recurrent with me and Trumpism, which is that the so-called flaws are really its virtues. | |
| Or the bugs are a feature of this thing. | |
| So, someone like Kevin McCarthy... | |
| Couldn't be as successful as he has been, as a national figure, local congressman, of course, but kind of a national figure, if he didn't draft off that energy of the crazies and Trumpism and this deep anxiety that Republican voters feel and that is expressed in all sorts of rather unhealthy and unhelpful ways. | |
| And so when they start to try to tame the beast, I almost instinctively support the beast because these people are being fundamentally dishonest in a way. | |
| They rode the beast into town and then they're now trying to tame the beast or put the beast in a cage or pretend that the beast never existed or maybe even slaughter it. | |
| And I just have a kind of instinctive Sympathy for the beast at this point. | |
| So you can say a lot of things about the speaker's race. | |
| One criticism you could say is that McCarthy has already given in to all of the demands of Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert and company. | |
| He's already... | |
| I mean, there are reports that he agreed to... | |
| Some kind of situation where there could be a no-confidence vote in the Speaker with, like, five votes or something shockingly low, which obviously disempowers the Speaker. | |
| I mean, he was willing to go that far to get the prize, because this is what his adult life is all about, is being Speaker of the House. | |
| So he's willing to do that, almost a suicide act of sorts, because... | |
| If you're going to create a rule like that, someone's going to use it. | |
| He's bent over backwards. | |
| What do these people really want? | |
| Can they express what they want? | |
| Can they express whom they want as an alternative to McCarthy? | |
| And to a very large degree, the answer to those questions is no. | |
| They were now back. | |
| In a mode of the Tea Party or something. | |
| It's this vague anxiety about spending and reining in the government. | |
| And it's, you know, kind of rather abstract in a way. | |
| They're talking, actually, I've heard talk of term limits. | |
| I've heard talk of a few other things. | |
| I actually listened to Matt Gaetz late last night. | |
| On a space that he hopped into. | |
| It was one of these conservative spaces that I'll go into, you know, I don't know, once a week or so. | |
| I'll often talk. | |
| And he was in there kind of explaining these things. | |
| And it really reminded me of the Tea Party era and this kind of, you know, vague desire for tax cuts and spending cuts and the debt is out of control. | |
| I think they've gone backwards in a way. | |
| So these are some kind of bad things you could say. | |
| About this rebellion. | |
| And you certainly could say a lot of bad things about Gates. | |
| You could say a lot of bad things about Lauren Boebert. | |
| She's, you know, just kind of dumb, etc. | |
| But I don't know. | |
| I just... | |
| I just... | |
| I have a certain sympathy for what they're doing. | |
| And I guess because... | |
| The GOP has relied on this populism to get elected. | |
| And absent populism, the GOP's got nothing. | |
| It's just got a bunch of unpopular policies that have been pulled for some time and are clearly unpopular. | |
| And so they need populism. | |
| They need that dark energy. | |
| Clarice Starling has to go visit Hannibal Lecter. | |
| They've kind of got to go there in order to be successful. | |
| But then when they completely deny the basis of their own electoral existence, I move from being opposed to them to just having outright contempt for them. | |
| I mean, that donkey is the thing you rode into town on. | |
| And you guys are nothing. | |
| I mean, I get it. | |
| Trump is a wounded at this point, maybe fatally wounded, but you're nothing without that type of energy. | |
| What you are is Mitt Romney in 2012 or McCain or whatever. | |
| You're just unpopular policies, maybe a decent person at the helm in terms of Romney, but you can't win. | |
| But you can do something. | |
| You can win, first off, and you can... | |
| At least capture imagination and create a grand spectacle if you tap into the dark side. | |
| And that's what these people are tapping into. | |
| And so I just kind of like it on some level. | |
| And the other thing that I noticed is that this whole dynamic is laid out. | |
| Excuse me. | |
| Through Matt Gaetz's nomination of Donald Trump for speaker. | |
| And this is, there was a precedent for this. | |
| They talked about doing this. | |
| Matt Gaetz himself was saying, like, give us a majority in 2022. | |
| You'll have Donald Trump as Speaker of the House. | |
| So it was, you know, that sounded a lot like bold talk. | |
| But it's actually maybe happening. | |
| And I don't know. | |
| I just... | |
| I just have a certain sympathy and fascination and kind of love, for lack of a better word, for the old chaos candidate coming back. | |
| And the other thing about it is that it disarms the opposition to the rebellion, as I wrote on Twitter, in the sense that, you know, even after the midterm loss, Sean Hannity was... | |
| Licking Trump's boots. | |
| You know, maybe a little less saliva on those licks, but they were licks nevertheless. | |
| And six months ago, a year ago, he was bending over backwards for Trump. | |
| And so this rebellion, which is in the name of Trump on some level, even if it's not supported by Trump directly. | |
| Is a kind of disarming maneuver towards the Republican establishment. | |
| Because it's like, we're doing this in the name of MAGA. | |
| You know MAGA, that thing that you said was so great two months ago? | |
| Remember that? | |
| And it kind of, it disarms the opposition, I think, in a very interesting way. | |
| And so, I don't know. | |
| There's just a lot about this whole thing that, you know, look, am I... | |
| Joining in this? | |
| Do I believe in any of their rhetoric, like we're going to cut spending or any of that stuff? | |
| We're going to drain the swamp? | |
| Do I believe any of that? | |
| Of course not. | |
| It's all just nonsense. | |
| And I've heard it a million times in my relatively short life. | |
| This is what the conservative movement was, at least rhetorically speaking, for my entire lifetime. | |
| But now there's something added, there's something extra to it. | |
| There's that specter of chaos or breaking through the antagonism towards the Republican establishment, which was the Trumpian dynamic in 2015 and for at least half of 2016. | |
| There's just something very attractive about it. | |
| Perhaps you could say I've gone into Joker mode. | |
| But I basically think this is wild and crazy and fun and I support it. | |
| And I do find it interesting because it is a powerful political move. | |
| I think actually on Tuesday, I briefly mentioned the whole force the vote movement from two years ago. | |
| And, you know, that thing is associated with... | |
| Jimmy Dore, even Jackson Hinkle, people I generally don't like, to be honest. | |
| And certainly they blew it out of proportion. | |
| But they are actually right in the sense that if you have a truly dedicated minority, you can actually do something. | |
| Now, what that is, at least in the case of this rebellion, remains to be seen. | |
| In 2020, it was about, let's have a four vote for Medicare for All. | |
| And Medicare for All would have failed. | |
| But at the very, almost 100% certain it would have failed. | |
| But you could kind of get Democrats on the record. | |
| And be like, look, you talk a big game about healthcare, but when the rubber hits the road, we saw where you were. | |
| You voted against it and you came up with some song and dance as an excuse and blah, blah, blah. | |
| But you failed us. | |
| We're in the middle of a pandemic and you won't vote for Medicare for all. | |
| So even if it had limited aims, I kind of appreciate the effort. | |
| In this case, the aims are ambiguous or nebulous or non-existent or hokey or whatever. | |
| But I don't know. | |
| I kind of appreciate the effort. |