AMAC Exclusive – By Shane Harris
After 15 rounds of voting, California Republican Kevin McCarthy finally secured the votes to become Speaker of the House late Friday night, ending nearly a week of proceedings that elected Democrats and the mainstream media gleefully called an “embarrassment” for Republicans. But if the last four years have made anything clear, it is that the House Democratic Caucus, not their colleagues on the right, are the real embarrassment to the country.
No Republican representative ever ended a prayer on the House floor by saying “amen and a-woman,” as Congressman Emanuel Cleaver did while presiding from the Speaker’s chair.
A House Republican has also never been under investigation by the FBI for marrying her brother in order to skirt U.S. immigration laws. That distinction belongs to Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
No House Republican ever said men can get pregnant – as multiple House Democrats have.
House Republicans were not the ones who shamelessly donned Kente cloth and took a knee in Congress in a performative act of identity politics following the death of George Floyd, a staged photo op that many on the left even criticized.
No Republican ever “camped out” on the steps of the Capitol and shed crocodile tears for news cameras in a naked political stunt, as “Squad” member Cori Bush did in August of 2021.
Republican lawmakers did not call for defunding the police and restricting Second Amendment freedoms, even as they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on their own private armed security – that was Cori Bush and the “Squad” again.
It was House Democrats, not Republicans, who introduced a bill to abolish federal prisons and release violent criminals back onto the streets.
House Republicans were not the ones who, immediately after taking power, passed a slate of radical bills to federalize elections, pack the Supreme Court, add Washington, D.C. as the 51st state, and impose radical gender ideology on every American.
No House Republican ever claimed to be a devout Catholic, but then turned around and called any abortion restrictions “sinful,” as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi did – an act for which the Catholic archbishop of San Francisco prohibited her from receiving communion.
It was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, not a Republican, who showed up to the Met Gala in a designer dress that read “tax the rich” – apparently unaware of the irony in wearing the garb to an event that costs $30,000 a ticket. At that same event, attendees walked around maskless while the hired help were forced to wear masks.
Speaking of COVID-19, no Republican ever called for locking down the country and then got their hair done at an indoor salon in violation of COVID restrictions, as Pelosi did at the height of the pandemic.
That was hardly the first embarrassing incident from Pelosi, as she repeatedly struggled to make it through short press conferences, stammering and appearing to seem lost and confused.
It was also Pelosi, not House Republicans, who ripped up President Trump’s 2020 State of the Union Address on national television – one of the most childish and cynical acts in American political history. Footage later revealed that Pelosi had spent much of Trump’s speech trying to surreptitiously “pre-rip” the pages, making clear that her theatrical fit of frustration was calculated and staged.
One year before that incident, it was House Democrats, not Republicans, who refused to stand and applaud when President Trump announced record low unemployment numbers for Blacks and Hispanics, as well as new initiatives to care for veterans.
House Republicans weren’t the ones who arbitrarily limited attendance at the 2022 State of the Union to 50 members, only to lift the requirement a few days later in a blatant (and failed) attempt to manufacture a COVID “victory” to boost Joe Biden’s sagging poll numbers.
During that State of the Union Address, it was Democrat Nancy Pelosi, not a Republican, who was caught on tape bizarrely rubbing her knuckles together and making strange faces at Joe Biden.
No House Republican ever got caught sleeping with a Chinese spy – that was Democrat Eric Swalwell, whom Pelosi declined to remove from the House Intelligence Committee even after the humiliating affair was exposed.
Republicans did not turn the January 6 Committee into a kangaroo court aimed at demonizing every one of the 75 million Americans who voted for former President Trump. Republicans also were not the ones responsible for stringing out that investigation for more than two years in order to squeeze as much political juice out of the incident as possible.
House Republicans weren’t the ones caught lying about their experience during the Capitol Riot in order to garner media attention, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was.
It is House Democrats, not House Republicans, who are ignoring the pleas of border communities and denying that the country is facing an illegal immigration crisis.
House Republicans weren’t the ones who pursued two politically motivated impeachment trials against the President of the United States, both of which ultimately failed and were a massive waste of time and money.
House Republican women were also not the ones who took to Instagram Live and YouTube to complain about “the patriarchy” and how oppressed they are while demonstrating their skincare routines and applying designer makeup.
While both parties have expressed their support for Ukraine in its war against Russia, only Pelosi read a cringe-worthy poem from U2 frontman Bono on the House floor as though it was a profound contribution to the discussion.
It was House Democrats, not Republicans, who opposed a measure expanding security protections for Supreme Court Justices and their families following violent threats in the wake of the Dobbs ruling last year.
And finally, it was new Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries, not Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who used his first floor speech to deliver a rambling partisan rant filled with left-wing buzzwords and no substance. (But of course, the most embarrassing part of that spectacle was the media establishment and other elected Democrats clapping along like seals and pretending the speech was impressive, just as they did for four years of similar embarrassments under Nancy Pelosi.)
The turbulent speaker selection process was undoubtedly not the best look for House Republicans to kick off the 118th Congress. But as far as “embarrassments” go, a few days of intra-party negotiations to choose a leader hardly stack up to Democrats’ record of cringe-worthy misfires, slipups, and outright failures that the country thankfully rejected last November.
Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio. You can follow him on Twitter @Shane_Harris_.
