Hey, Here Are The Cool ‘Moderate’ Republicans Who’ll Still Vote To Impeach Hunter Biden’s Laptop

Hey, what do you call a group of moderate House Republicans? Well, if you’ve paid any attention to Congress since “Frasier” went off the air, you’d call them “non-existent,” but news website Semafor calls them “the Mod Squad”!

That’s just one of many problems with Kadia Goba’s article “America’s Next Top Moderate: Which House Republican wants the title?” Seriously, though, the number of true moderates in the House Republican caucus is absolute zero. Almost all of them share the same politics as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Matt Gaetz. The only difference is the relative volume of their voices and an adherence to country-club congressional decorum. But a politician’s moderate Twitter feed doesn’t mean they support moderate policies.

Just last week, Nancy Mace from South Carolina voted for the extremist, anti-abortion bill that she’d criticized publicly. Nonetheless, she’s listed as one of the “five members who’ve taken on the role of quasi-spokespeople for the Mod Squad.”

This is the same Nancy Mace who flew up to New York and groveled to MAGA voters outside Trump Tower. If Democrat Abigail Spanberger stood outside Bernie Sanders’s Vermont home, holding up her phone that played “In Your Eyes,” in a desperate appeal to his supporters, she’d probably lose her moderate cred.

PREVIOUSLY:

Nancy Mace Doesn’t Need Trump, She’s Got Her Trader Joe’s Wine And Her Dignity.

The Myth Of The Normal Republican

205 Out Of 206 Republicans Agree: Mental Health Doesn’t Matter

Semafor suggests it’s worth keeping an eye on these supposed “relative” moderates with their “rolling group chat of policy ideas, messaging strategy, and even some spicy memes on secret text chains.”

They have the power to stall legislation or, if they work with Democrats, to try and get bipartisan bills to the floor through procedural workarounds — if they have the guts to buck leadership themselves.

You’ll notice that the quoted sentence above includes a link to another Semafor article explaining why we shouldn’t count on “procedural workarounds” to escape the Republicans’ self-inflicted debt limit crisis. Whoops!

The “Mod Squad” obviously doesn’t have the guts to “buck leadership themselves.” They all voted for Kevin McCarthy as speaker even after he gave away everything, including possibly their own kidneys, to the far-right extremists. Except for Tony Gonzalez from Texas, they all voted for the lousy House rules that stank of Gaetz’s influence. “Mod Squad” member Don Bacon from Nebraska might call the GOP sedition caucus “the Taliban” and “terrorists,” but he seemingly has no problem negotiating with them.

Brian Fitzpatrick from Pennsylvania co-chairs the Problem Solvers Caucus with Democrat Josh Gottheimer. To his credit, he worked to build support for President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill over McCarthy’s opposition. He also told Semafor that he’s “discussing” a discharge petition with Gottheimer that would force a vote on a bill to increase the debt limit. That’s truly put up or shut up time for the “Mod Squad,” because if they all vote with Democrats, they could prevent a catastrophic debt default.

Finally, freshman Rep. Mike Lawler from New York, who beat former DCCC chair Sean Patrick Maloney, takes us on a dizzying merry-go-round of bipartisan talking points: “Obviously, in this split government, we’re looking to get things done,” he said. “That’s the important key for all of us that are in these districts, you know, we want to see results. And, you know, obviously, we’re gonna have to work not just within the conference, but across party lines, with the Senate and the Democrats.”

We should temper any praise for these “mavericks” with the harsh reality that Kevin McCarthy is speaker of the House and 9/11 conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene now sits on the Homeland Security committee. They could’ve played true hardball like Gaetz and demanded concessions that might’ve forced McCarthy to lead like a normal person. Instead, they became willing, if silent, producers of the horror show we’re about to watch. No amount of “spicy memes” about George Santos can make them less culpable.

[Semafor]

Follow Stephen Robinson on Twitter if it still exists.

Subscribe to the Wonkette YouTube Channel for nifty video content!

Look at our pretty photos on Instagram!

Yr Wonkette is 100 percent ad-free! Please subscribe, donate, and otherwise help keep us alive and kicking!