Let’s kick this one off this way: Regardless of what one thinks about the House vote on Tuesday to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speakership, the Washington Post’s claim that the vote shows that “democracy is in trouble” in America is unadulterated, hyperbolic garbage.
On that note, if we could focus in the comment section on the silly “threat to democracy” notion, vs. McCarthy‘s ouster, that would be great. I have no expectations that that will actually happen, of course — just sayin’.
Anyway, WaPo’s headline told us all we need to know: “Vote to oust McCarthy is a warning sign for democracy, scholars say.”
The first three paragraphs of the article were even “better”:
When the House of Representatives voted to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker on Tuesday, it was the first such removal in American history, a vivid rebuke of his leadership and an escalation of the civil strife within the Republican Party.
But historians and political scientists say it is something more: a warning sign for the health of American democracy.
“If you want to know what it looks like when democracy is in trouble, this is what it looks like,” said Daniel Ziblatt, professor of government at Harvard University. “It should set off alarm bells that something is not right.”
Needless to say, a couple of thoughts come to mind.
While only a fool would deny that the current state of the Republican Party is a circular firing squad, WaPo’s reference to “civil strife” was absurd.
Moreover, the left’s wont to use terms like “scholars,” “historians,” and “political scientists” — the majority of whom are far left — as if these folks are somehow the final arbiters of reality is downright laughable. Hell, one needs only to think back to the COVID “science” or the Hunter Biden laptop scandal to laugh out loud at the predisposed political opinions of the left’s “experts.”
While the ouster of McCarthy was successfully carried out by eight hard-right Republicans and the Democrat Party, referring to the ouster as proof that democracy is in trouble is tantamount to the Democrats’ calling the January 6 Capitol riot an “insurrection.” Incidentally, one should not confuse “hard-right” with “conservative.”
One of WaPo’s “scholarly” sources was Laura Blessing, a senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University, who offered the following.
We are watching a very small number of folks from the House Republican conference have an outsize role in promoting a lot of congressional dysfunction and fiscal dysfunction.
This is a move for volatility and not a move to pass legislation. They do not have the votes [for their own policy proposals], and they know that.
Maybe I missed it — and I’m not a fan of whataboutism — but Blessing said zero about hard-left Democrats like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), and Cori Bush (Mo.), and how they’ve successfully dragged the Democrat Party ever further to the left.
Alex Keyssar, a professor of history and social policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, another WaPo “proof source,” called the ouster “an unruly crisis in the House.”
If American democracy is already suffering and weak from various maladies, this unruly crisis in the House is just going to kick it a little further in that direction. You are taking a set of institutions and you are weakening them and then pointing to their weakness.
Uh-huh. Do you suppose the good professor has made the same observations about Democrat calls to pack the Supreme Court, or eliminate the Electoral College? Me, neither.
The Bottom Line
In a perfect world, politics and political opinion would be better served if politicians, the media, political pundits, and social media keyboard jockeys employed the “shoe on the other foot” test before they opened their mouths, or typed that first word on the computer.
The operative words were “perfect world.”
Meanwhile, the band plays on.
Just WaPoo gum flapping again.