Peacocks, Posers, and Punks

Is this the House of Representatives or Junior High?

If you didn’t already know it, the last few days have confirmed that the House of Representatives has the sober-minded maturity of a junior high school cafeteria.

And just like in junior high, the spotlight always shines brightest on the stupidest and most useless of the lot.

Take Matt Gaetz.

Seriously. Take him. Take him to the nearest overpass and drop him into traffic.

Whenever I see Matt Gaetz’s ridiculous mug, I harken back to the nickname Rush Limbaugh gave former North Carolina Senator John Edwards.

The Breck Girl.

With his shiny suits and bouffant hairdo, Matt could easily be mistaken for the owner of a seedy Vegas strip club.

Other than shooting off his mouth on the House floor and rushing to the nearest news cameras, what precisely does Matt Gaetz do in Congress?

Vanderbilt University’s Center for Effective Lawmaking rated Gaetz as one of the least effective lawmakers in the 117th Congress.

During the last term, Gaetz sponsored 20 substantive bills, none of which even made it through a committee, let alone to the House floor for a vote.

Out of the entire Florida caucus – both Democrat and Republican -- Gaetz was way down at the bottom of the list as the second most ineffective lawmaker of the bunch. Only Florida Republican Rep. Daniel Webster had a lower rating than Gaetz.

Any private sector employer would have fired Matt Gaetz years ago. But for some reason, every two years, voters in his Florida district keep sending this useless showboating peacock back to Congress.

Gaetz is using last weekend’s continuing resolution vote as a pretext to call for the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Does Gaetz have a strategy? Does he have the votes to elect a more conservative speaker? And if he does have the votes, does Gaetz even have a conservative candidate in mind?

Something tells me his thought process hasn’t gone beyond, “Me make noise. Me get lots of attention.”

When I got up for work this morning at one, this is one of the first posts I saw on X:

Yup.

After Gaetz introduced his motion to oust McCarthy, radio host Erick Erickson noted:

“The House GOP has 44 days to figure out a new spending plan, but first has to dodge a monkey flinging poo.”

Like most Trumpy blowhards in Congress, Gaetz isn’t trying to accomplish anything that makes life in America better. All that matters to Matt is boosting his social media engagement and landing more interviews on cable news and Trump-aligned podcasts.

Why expend the time and effort needed to move the ball down the field when you can simply run to the nearest sideline camera and do an endzone dance?

The MAGA media establishment loves Republicans like Matt Gaetz because they mimic Donald Trump. Like Trump, Gaetz has mastered the art of saying exactly what Trump voters want to hear. Unfortunately, Gaetz is also like Trump in that he rarely, if ever, follows through.

Gaetz’s defenders will argue, “At least he’s fighting back against the UniParty and the Swamp!!!!!”

Sure, Jan.

As if Matt would ever break a sweat, let alone muss his carefully-styled pompadour, fighting for anyone but himself.

And if and when Gaetz does summon the energy to fight, he attacks Republicans while leaving the Democrats unscathed, or worse, in a far better position.

It’s as if Matt Gaetz is auditioning to replace Liz Cheney as the corporate news media’s go-to Republican Who Attacks Fellow Republicans.

He’s a preening peacock, nothing more.

As long as Gaetz is out there sucking all the oxygen out of the room, the media will happily focus on him to push their usual “Republicans in Disarray” narrative.

Democrats love the guy, especially now that Gaetz’s current attention-seeking effort is drawing attention away from Democrat Congressman Jamaal “What’s a Fire Alarm?” Bowman.

On Saturday, Bowman was caught on surveillance video pulling the fire alarm in the Cannon office building shortly before the House was set to vote on the continuing resolution.

The dipshit socialist from New York insisted he wasn’t trying to delay the vote. Instead, Bowman claimed that in his rush to make the vote, he thought pulling the red box on the wall labeled “FIRE” would open the locked doors leading to the outside.

You’d think a former middle school principal would know what a fire alarm does.

When the brouhaha over his attempt to obstruct an official proceeding refused to die, Bowman’s office sent a memo to the other House Democrats that included a list of “Suggested Talking Points” they could use to defend the lying punk.

According to Punchbowl News reporter Max Cohen, the proposed talking points included this gem:

“I believe Congressman Bowman when he says this was an accident. Republicans need to instead focus their energy on the Nazi members of their party before anything else.”

Unsurprisingly, this hamhanded and defamatory attempt at deflection only added fuel to the fire.

Forced to respond, Bowman dug the hole deeper by tossing his office under the bus.

In a statement on X, Bowman said:

“I just became aware that in our messaging guidance, there was inappropriate use of the term Nazi without my consent. I condemn the use of the term Nazi out of its precise definition. It is important to specify the term Nazi to refer to members of the Nazi party & neo-Nazis.”

Bowman’s statement doesn’t pass the sniff test.

This is the same man who responded to a clip of Daily Wire host Michael Knowles’ March CPAC speech with this:

“Michael Knowles is a Nazi hellbent on keeping only white men alive and in power. We cannot allow him and others to push their evil agenda and we must stand up for the transgender rights. CPAC has made one thing clear this year – they support a future run by Nazis like Knowles.”

Jamaal Bowman should really send Matt Gaetz a gift basket for pulling the spotlight away from him.

I sometimes wish I wasn’t so cynical about American politics. Just once, it would be nice to believe voters have enough sense not to keep sending peacocks, posers, and punks to Congress.

Alas…