Fellow Patriot: The voluntary financial generosity of supporters like you keeps our hard-hitting analysis coming. Please support the 2024 Year-End Campaign today. Thank you for your support! —Nate Jackson, Managing Editor

October 9, 2023

In Brief: A Broken Congress

House Republicans have forgotten their mission.

In the wake of toppling House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week, Republicans must be asking a simple question: Now what? Political analyst Daniel Greenfield has some thoughts.

When Democrats are in the majority, they get their way. And when Republicans are in the majority, the Democrats also get their way. Most recently, after the stopgap spending bill was passed, Rep Jamie Raskin took to MSNBC to boast that the Democrats “got the vast majority of what we wanted” from it. And for some Republicans that was the last straw.

Eight House Republicans allied with Democrats on a vote to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy. And for the first time in over a century, a House Speaker was successfully booted from office.

A civil war among Republicans came down to threats from both sides of collaborating with Democrats in a House of Representatives with a narrow majority. And collaborating with Democrats seems to be the only thing that House Republicans know how to do anymore.

After years of cowering over government shutdowns and “meaningless virtue signaling votes,” House Republicans are in utter disarray. And it’s often an image problem, Greenfield says.

Why are Democrats able to effectively wield their House majority while Republicans couldn’t? The Democrats are not afraid of what Republicans think of them. They develop a plan, implement it and dismiss Republican efforts to stop them. Republicans however care a great deal about what Democrats, in the House, in the media and the culture, think of them.

That and the fear of taking responsibility paralyzes Republicans. The solution is as simple as it is profound. It begins with some questions:

What is the purpose of a GOP House majority? What is it there to accomplish? When all the hysterical fundraising emails, texts and carrier pigeons have been sent, what does it do? …

The Gingrich revolution briefly shook things up by giving the House GOP majority an agenda and an identity. And while the results were a long way from perfect, the branding gave the body some sense of purpose. Since then, House GOP majorities have no such mission. The leadership has tightened the screws leading to more resentment and no meaningful results.

The GOP has spent a long time treating its voters as if they were idiots, but they’re far from it. The average small dollar donor may not spend a lot of time delving into the ins and outs of legislative procedure, but understands perfectly well that he keeps investing time, energy and money with little to show for it except more fundraising letters, excuses and drama.

Conservatives are angry. And rightly so. They’ve been funding a revolution and getting a continuing resolution. The mismatch between rhetoric and results can only go on for so long. But the only thing a civil war does is hand more power and leverage to the Democrats.

The House Republican mission is not the business of government, but the business of revolution. The Democrats see that as their mission and it’s time that Republicans did too.

Ultimately, he concludes:

The House GOP doesn’t have a speaker because it doesn’t have a mission. And without a mission, it’s only a matter of time until every session falls apart into self-serving drama. Either the House GOP will find its mission or it will continue to waste time that America doesn’t have.

Either Republicans will find their mission or they will lose.

Read the whole thing here.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.