The Tribune

With CHARLIE HARPER

THE circus atmosphere surrounding the dogged efforts by California congressman Kevin McCarthy to become the new speaker of the US House of Representatives was widely mocked and derided in various American news media. It did seem odd that an extensively televised contest in which the outcome was largely preordained dragged out over an entire week and 15 separate votes.

McCarthy’s bid for leadership was stoutly opposed by twenty House members of the self-described Freedom Caucus. This group espouses hard-right positions on many issues including domestic spending and international isolationism. They profess general allegiance to Donald Trump. A leader and oracle of this group is Mark Meadows, the former North Carolina congressman whose tenure as Trump’s White House chief of staff covered the last period of Trump’s presidency.

These Freedom Caucus stalwarts held the influence they were able to wield during McCarthy’s humiliating ordeal because the Republicans only earned a 9-vote majority in the 435-member House of Representatives in November, meaning they could only suffer a handful of defectors in order to prevail in the face of a unified Democratic opposition.

Much attention during this endless imbroglio went to four-term Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, who is the son of a former Florida Senate leader and now represents the westernmost congressional district in Florida that includes the city of Pensacola, upscale “Redneck Riviera” beach communities like Destin and huge military installations, including Eglin Air Force Base and the Pensacola Naval Air Station.

Gaetz made headlines last year for eloping to California to marry his girlfriend while he was reportedly implicated in a federal sex-trafficking investigation. Nonetheless, Gaetz won re-election last November with almost 70 percent of the vote.

He was one of the last holdouts in the McCarthy Speaker saga, at one point so enraging one of his GOP House colleagues that the two almost became involved in a real-time, televised fistfight.

“There’s no deal you can make with Gaetz,” Newt Gingrich said in an interview a week ago at the height of the drama. “He’s essentially bringing ‘Lord of the Flies’ to the House of Representatives.” Gingrich is the still politically-active former Georgia congressman who is largely credited with ushering in the era of a take-no-prisoners political approach that has steadily suffused the Republican party over the past 30 years.

Gingrich, often ridiculed in the liberal press for his combativeness, public extramarital affair with his current wife while married to her predecessor, and disdain for the “establishment” generally, has been a very consequential American politician. A consistent Trump supporter and recent critic of the Freedom Caucus rebels, Gingrich told reporters that “we weren’t just grandstanders (in the 1990s). We were purposeful.” He said he would be glad to show the current rebels how to successfully wield power. “But anything that takes longer than waiting for their cappuccino, I doubt they’re interested in.”

When Gingrich led the Republicans to control of the House of Representatives in 1994, he succeeded in taking over the House from a Democratic majority for the first time since 1952. That victory launched what has been described as “the zero-sum brand of politics that mutated into the Tea Party movement and the grievance-based populism of the Trump era”.

Outgoing House majority leader Steny Hoyer told reporters that the Freedom Caucus holdouts “are employing the old Gingrich argument that you don’t get any benefit from cooperation or compromise, only from confrontation.” Hoyer, who entered the House 42 years ago, recalled that Gingrich “played to the anger and disaffection of people whom Nixon had called ‘the silent majority’ twenty years earlier”.

“Those feelings of bitterness and resentment predated Gingrich,” Hoyer said. “But he took extraordinary advantage of them, just as Trump did later and just as this (Freedom Caucus) crowd’s doing now.”

Another congressman said: “Gingrich was the one who understood best how to use the television cameras that had been recently installed in the House chamber when he was first elected. And that was one of the tools that over time helped coarsen the process and led to this increasing degree of militarism we’re seeing.”

Assessing the current GOP slender majority, Gingrich said “we’re in a period where everything’s going to be very hard.” No kidding.

When US politics gets particularly outrageous, fractious, scary or simply embarrassing, as many as 15 percent of Americans declare they’re ready to emigrate to somewhere else, according to recently published research by the Gallup Poll organisation. But hardly any of them follow through and move permanently to another country.

While the US remains the runaway world leader in attracting immigrants, it ranks only 26th in emigrants. According to figures released by the United Nations, around 2.8 million American-born people had emigrated to other countries as of 2020. But two-thirds of those emigrants were minor children born to two Mexican parents while they were living in the US, and they were simply returning to Mexico with their parents.

After Mexico, the top emigration destinations for Americans were Canada, the UK, Germany, Israel and Australia. Language, cultural and/or religious affinities often underpinned these moves.

A leading researcher told The Washington Post that “very few Americans leave their homeland for political reasons. And fewer still leave under real duress or peril. The UN Refugee Agency listed just 426 American refugees in 2021”. That compares with UN estimates in the same year of 6.8 million refugees from Syria, 2.7 million from Afghanistan and 2.4 from South Sudan.

“Exploration is the key underlying factor for most Americans who leave,” the researcher said. “But there’s also something else going on as well, whether it’s a job, a partner, studying abroad, wanting to help others – something like that.”

So unless these patterns change, those affronted by the political chaos to come in Washington won’t actually leave the US. They’ll just rant.

FIRST ROUND OF NFL PLAYOFFS HAS ARRIVED

The NFL playoffs have arrived, with the first round spread out over Saturday, Sunday and Monday for maximum television exposure and revenue for the league and its wealthy owners. Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers missed the playoffs by losing the last game of the regular season at home to the Detroit Lions. But Tom Brady has made it to the postseason again with his Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Florida’s other two franchises in Miami and Jacksonville also were able to extend their seasons with critical home wins last weekend. It’s the first season in 25 years that the Sunshine State’s three NFL teams are all in the playoffs.

For the Fins, much depends on the health of their often-spectacular quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. But even if he is cleared to play, Miami will be a significant underdog Sunday afternoon, facing the Buffalo Bills in the refrigerated air and animated crowd atmosphere of western New York state.

Plus, the Bills are still playing for their stricken defensive back Damar Hamlin, whose heart stopped beating on the playing field in Cincinnati ten days ago and who has created a national sensation with his inspiring recovery. Miami’s dramatic home win over the Bills back in September was, and feels like, a long time ago.

You might better like the chances of the Bucs and Jags, both playing at home against teams they vanquished on the road in September. Then, the Jags outclassed the Los Angeles Chargers by four touchdowns, and the Bucs beat the Dallas Cowboys by 16 points.

The Cowboys, at least until they stumbled on Sunday in Washington, had been playing relatively well, and are likely to be a much more formidable opponent for Brady & Company this time around.

And the Bucs are in the playoffs with a losing record. Still, the teams don’t play until Monday evening.

Would you favour inconsistent Dallas QB Dak Prescott over 45-year-old Brady on what might be the last playoff season for the Greatest of All Time?

Jacksonville and its young quarterback Trevor Lawrence face an up-and-down Chargers team also led by a very talented young QB in Justin Herbert.

This Saturday evening game is a tricky one to forecast, but the oddsmakers say it might be wise to go with Herbert’s and his team’s greater recent experience in the playoffs.

In the weekend’s other playoff games, the home teams (San Francisco, Minnesota and Cincinnati) can be expected to triumph.