Apr.22

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GOP 53

The 7 Most Shameless Attention-Seekers in Congress

That is the headline of a piece published this week by Politico. When we saw the headline, we thought we'd come up with our own list of seven before clicking through, then see how our list compared to theirs. As it turns out, there was... not a whole lot of overlap. Here, to start, is a rundown of the Politico list, with brief summaries of their reasoning (note, they did not rank the seven):

• Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT): He's on social media a lot, and aspires to be the leader of "the resistance."
  
  
• Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX): He's got a podcast, and he reminds everyone of that fact every chance he gets.
  
  
• Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX): She says outlandish things at congressional hearings sometimes.
  
  
• Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): Reporters quote him a lot because he's kind of a swingy vote in the GOP conference, and because he says things in a folksy way.
  
  
• Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA): Because he lives much closer to DC than most members, he's at every cocktail party in town, even when Congress is out of session.
  
  
• Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC): He's constantly on cable news.
  
  
• Vice President J.D. Vance: Though no longer a member of Congress, he used to be, and he does everything possible to please the Dear Leader, constantly getting into Trumpy disputes on TV and online.

What an... odd list. This is apparently the "third annual" installment (though we don't remember the first two), and we guess the Politico staff was working hard to be clever, and chose people they could give "witty" awards to, like "The Get Me to the Closest Microphone Award" (Burchett) or "The Most Likely to Mug for the C-SPAN Cameras Award" (Crockett). But still, you've got to be kidding us. Mark Warner? Really? Chris Murphy? C'mon.

And now, our list:

• Cruz: One of two people that appears on both Politico's list, and ours. However, our reason isn't his vanity podcast, it's that he still fancies himself as a future President of the United States, despite the fact that such thinking is delusional. Cruz manages to pull off Richard Nixon's general ambiance, ambitiousness and moral turpitude, and yet manages to have even less charisma while being even more unlikable. Not an easy combination. In any case, because Cruz thinks of himself as a GOP elder/star, he's always available to comment on anything and everything as if he somehow speaks for anyone besides himself.
  
  
• Graham: The other person who appears on both lists. In this case, we basically agree with Politico's reasoning. Like Cruz, Graham is always on TV and on radio and in print speaking like he is a leader of the Republican Party. In truth, he's not, since all he does each morning is stick his finger in the air, judge what direction Donald Trump's wind is blowing, and then adopt that perspective. Put another way, Graham is just a (slightly) more respectable version of CNN's Scott Jennings or Fox's Sean Hannity, and he happens to be a U.S. senator.
  
  
• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA): In what world does Crockett make the list and Greene doesn't? Crockett's entire shtick is copycatting what Greene does (from a lefty direction, of course). And Greene has been doing it much longer, and is much louder about it. This is like making a list of the greatest British rock bands and including the Rutles, but not the Beatles.
  
  
• Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC): As we note above, there's no ranking. But if there were, Mace would surely be battling it out with Greene for first place. Remember, this upwardly mobile member of Congress requires her staff to book no fewer than 10 local TV appearances and 10 national TV appearances every week. And if you don't already know, wait until tomorrow, when you see how many times she tweeted about her Congressional bathroom bill.
  
  
• Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX): Surely, at least one leading Freedom Caucuser has to be on the list. And if anyone talks louder than Roy about how the FC just can't support [BUDGET BILL X] or [DEBT CEILING INCREASE Y], we don't know who that might be (maybe Thomas Massie, R-KY, but we don't think so). Of course, while Roy talks a big game, he almost always surrenders in the end. It's all hat, no cattle.
  
  
• Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT): His motivations are not sleazy, like most or all of the other folks on this list. Still, no member of the Senate, not even Graham or Cruz, understands the concept of earned media better than Sanders does.
  
  
• Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): Has anybody since Joseph McCarthy more flagrantly abused Congress' powers to hold hearings and issue subpoenas?

We recognize that no actual Democrats made the list. If we extended it to, say, 30 people, then there would probably be slots for Crockett; Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Adam Schiff (D-CA); and maybe a Jamie Raskin (D-MD) or an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). But most of these folks would barely crack the Top 30, if they did indeed make the cut, and it would still be an apples and oranges thing—as with Sanders, we think their attention-seeking is primarily about their ideas/agenda, and much less about themselves. With the Republicans on the list, it's almost entirely about "look at me!" and maybe "give me money!" Perhaps we are off our rockers, but it seems to us that this illustrates another substantive cultural difference between the two parties. Performative Mace/Greene style stuff just doesn't play that well with most of the Democratic base. There are no more Jim Traficants.

In any event, we were debating whether or not to even write this item when we got a heads-up from reader J.S. in The Hague, Netherlands, about how Mace and Greene (i.e., show horses 1A and 1B) responded to the death of Pope Francis yesterday. First up, Mace, who got on eX-Twitter yesterday to share this:

No, JD Vance did not kill the Pope.

The Left is absolutely nuts!

Approximately 100.0% of lefties (and plenty of righties) heard that Vance had the last-ever audience with Francis, and that Francis died a few hours later, and thought of (or outright said) things like: "Pope Francis survived a double pneumonia but not a five minutes meeting with JD Vance," or "JD touched a trophy and it broke. Then, he touched the Pope and he broke. I hope he shakes Donald's hand this week...," or "Now I'm not saying that JD Vance killed the Pope, per se. I just think his actions raise some questions, like for example: Did JD Vance kill the Pope?" Also, this picture was all over social media yesterday:

These are, of course, JOKES. We defy you to show us a single person who: (1) really thinks Vance killed the Pope, and (2) does not have a demonstrated history of embracing conspiracy theories. This then raises the question: Is Mace too damn dumb to recognize a joke when she sees one, or is she just so desperate for "own the libs" tweet material she will literally seize anything?

Meanwhile, the always classy Greene had this to say on eX-Twitter:

Today there were major shifts in global leaderships.

Evil is being defeated by the hand of God.

Let us translate for you, in case you do not speak fluent jerk: "I have exactly as much evidence for my beliefs as you have for yours, but nonetheless I am 100% certain I am pure and righteous and you are wicked and will burn." Of course, Greene does not actually appear to have paid any actual attention to the evidence she has been presented, since we are unfamiliar with anything in Christianity that endorses taking pleasure in the death of another, particularly when that other devoted their life to the service of God, as best they understood it.

So, that's the latest reminder of the state of American politics. Sigh. (Z)