Wednesday, May 17, 2023

Everyone?


Phones can't ring off the hook.. The receiver can't jump off the hook on its own and if it did, someone would have to be there to put it back on promptly so that another call can come in, prompting the receiver to ring off the hook again. Also (unlike mine) most households no longer have a landline, hence have no hook to ring off of. "Here, let me get up and change the channel on the television" which, too, has gone by the wayside.

Of course, that's not Greene's point, which is far more significant than it appears to be. At first glance, this appears crazy to want "everyone" impeachment. At second glance, it appears way beyond the pale, even for the Republican Party.

But it's neither, and it's not only the Bidens (video below), anymore

.   

In 1988, right-wing activist Grover Norquist challenged both Bob Dole and George W Bush a Taxpayer Protection Pledge in which the signee agreed never to agree to any tax increases..  Bush signed it, Dole did not, Bush was nominated and elected, and lost re-election partly because he broke his foolish "no new taxes" pledge. Thirteen years later, Norquist quipped  "I'm not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." 

Presumably, "the not in favor of abolishing the government" was accompanied by a nod and a sink and now, virtually every GOP candidate for an elected position in the federal government signs the pledge.

Never voting for a tax increase, no matter the need or decrease in the value of money, would go a long way toward Norquist's goal, which he clarified in 2015 as

to reduce the size of government by half over 25 years, and then to do that again in 24 years, and eventually get it small enough that if you wanted you could drown it in the tub. That's doable over time. It's a long-term goal.

Norquist is getting support recently most significantly, and in the immediate, by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who has implied that he will agree to raise the debt limit if spending for social services is significantly cut.  His preference, unstated but likely, is to send the USA into default but if it's avoided with spending decreases, he becomes  a hero to the right, anyway.

Nonetheless, shrinking government sufficiently to drown it in a bathtub requires something additional. Elimination of government officials would come in handy. That could be accomplished by impeachment of high-ranking officials, such as the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, Christopher Wray and Matthew Graves, respectively.

Marjorie Taylor Greene's dream won't reach fruition. However, her extremist or hateful tweets at least move the Overton Window, wherein right-wingers don't appear so radical.  They're the same "moderates" who will rarely question Marjorie Taylor Greene or Donald Trump or their fellow travelers.



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