The Uncouth, The Shameless and The Perverse

What is it with right-wing Republicans?

A metaphor that applies to my current political dismay: I am annoyed by Joe Biden but I am appalled by Donald Trump. Why is that a metaphor? Because I am annoyed, chronically, by the Democratic Party but appalled, mortally, by the Republicans. Which raises a question: I haven’t toted up the word count, but I suspect that I spend a lot more space criticizing Dems than GOPs. Why is that?

Well, because it seems in these DysTrumpian times, the Democrats are the only hope of saving our democracy, despite their idiot array of indulgences. They are misguided, but not fundamentally irrational. They believe in our institutions, even those—like the Supreme Court and the electoral college—that are weighted against them; even those—like the military—that they really don’t believe in. There is always the hope that a compelling argument made by the Sanity Caucus (which includes members of both parties) will have an impact on rational Dems. But rational Republicans I’ve known—I’m looking at you Lamar Alexander and Rob Portman—have been struck dumb, utter cowards in the face of Trump, even though they’ve retired from politics and have nothing to lose. Why the silence in the face of an authoritarian who threatens our freedom? Their mute buttons are still turned on, impenetrable and irresponsible. They are a lost cause. So I tend to write about Biden’s age more than Trump’s sociopathy, and about the Dems’ identity and woke obsessions more than the Republicans’ fundamental corruption. Because the Dems have to find a way to 51%, lest we lapse into Hungary or Russia.

But that’s not fair, is it? There are weeks, like this past one, when the right-wing populist nutballs just cry out to be scorched, even if nothing I write will have an impact on their putrid behavior. They swirl in centrifugal haste around the sewage-funnel created by Donald Trump, unimpeded by facts or decency. There are so many of them who are just terrible human beings.

The Democrats’ investigations and court cases tend to be overly litigious, but the Republicans’ crusades are pure politics, with little or no nutritional content. They are tactics. And at the heart of those of political smear jobs is one Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. He has no shame, sleek as a shark in his shirtsleeves. I first noticed him, and his bilious aspect, during the Benghazi hearings, an overt attempt to smear Hillary Clinton on the basis of nothing—as the Republicans later admitted—in advance of the 2016 election. Now Jordan is a prime mover in the nihilistic attempt to impeach Joe Biden, again on the basis of nothing, and he is trying to harass the Georgia Attorney General Fani Willis, who has brought charges against Trump. (Willis knows a bully when she sees one and seems able to take care of herself; she stuffed the loudmouth this week). And, furthermore, Jordan is claiming that the gun charges against Hunter Biden are just a diversion from the real crime—which, I suppose, is that of being a drug-addled parasite on his father’s good name. Jordan can’t seem to spend a day without flapping his yap in some noxious manner. Which makes him a very lucky camper

BECAUSE…

If Democrats were like Republicans, Jordan would be in deep cringe, hiding beneath the desk in his office, fending off an ethics investigations, fending off charges that he was complicit in a collegiate sexual assault scandal. You see, Jordan was once a wrestling coach at Ohio State. In those years a team physician, Dr. Richard Strauss, sexually assaulted hundreds of male athletes, most in the shower. Jordan claims he knew nothing about it, but several of the wrestlers say he did:

“Jim Jordan called me crying, crying, groveling, on the Fourth of July, begging me to go against my brother, begging me, crying for half an hour,” Adam DiSabato said [in 2020], according to video of his testimony. “That’s the kind of coverups going on here.

“He’s throwing us under the bus, all of us…He’s a coward. He’s not a leader; he’s a coward.”

And from NBC News in 2018:

Dunyasha Yetts, who wrestled at Ohio State in 1993 and 1994, said he and others told Jordan about Strauss.

“I remember I had a thumb injury and went into Strauss’ office and he started pulling down my wrestling shorts,” he said. “I’m like, what the f--- are you doing? And I went out and told Russ and Jim what happened. I was not having it. They went in and talked to Strauss.”

Yetts said he and his teammates talked to Jordan numerous times about Strauss.

“For God’s sake, Strauss’s locker was right next to Jordan’s and Jordan even said he’d kill him if he tried anything with him,” Yetts said.

Hmm. Jordan denies the allegations, of course. And Yetts later did jail time for bilking investors in a stock scheme. And the chances are this probably wouldn’t rise above a classic he said-he said legal situation; Jordan is scuzzy, but probably safe. But do you think that would have stopped him from exploiting these accusations if the jocks were on the other strap? Don’tcha think there would be hearings? And extensive pompous pronouncements about Democratic permissiveness and perversion, and the exploitation of American youth? Jordan should thank his lucky shirtsleeves that the Dems just don’t go in for this sort of thing, nor do the mainstream media. If George Stephanopoulos and Kristen Welker behaved like Sean Hannity, every Jim Jordan interview would be prefaced by questions about his complicity in this perversion. He would sound like…well, he wouldn’t be talking at all. He’d be hiding. But he’s not alone…

Take slickster horndog Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who is trying to overthrow Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. Boy, is he lucky! The “weaponized” Biden Department of Justice investigated a charge that Gaetz had sex with an underage female prostitute and Merrick Garland’s liberal fanatics found him—wait for it—not guilty. But the Republican House Ethics Committee is continuing an investigation nonetheless into charges that Gaetz “may have engaged in sexual misconduct [including. illegal trafficking], illicit drug use or other misconduct” because Gaetz did hang out with and went on the prowl with some very unsavory characters.

Hmm, again. I mean, Gaetz is the guy trying to throw our government into chaos, leading the charge to derail the spending deal Kevin McCarthy made with Joe Biden last spring to keep the government open and running past October 1. What a greasy, sleazy guy. But he’s still out there, spouting.

Then, there is the ever-aristocratic Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado who got kicked out of a performance of the musical Beetlejuice, according to the soft-porn New York Post:

Wild woman Rep. Lauren Boebert squeezed in a quick groping session between vaping and loudly singing during her already-infamous “Beetlejuice” viewing — later blaming her inappropriate behavior on her ongoing divorce.

Security footage from Denver’s Buell Theatre Sunday shows the 36-year-old Colorado Republican reaching down for her date’s crotch shortly after blowing a plume of vaporized smoke into the air, which she initially denied doing.

When her date — Democratic Aspen bar owner Quinn Gallagher, 46 — in turn appeared to fondle her breast, the congresswoman aggressively grabbed his hand to keep it there.

Boebert says she’s going through a tough divorce. I sympathize. But she was one of the rude Republicans who interrupted President Biden’s State of the Union speech with catcalls last winter and is an inveterate Stop the Steal liar and militia-flunky. This is a woman who traipses through our democracy as if it were a carnival fun-house, with nothing—no lives, no fortunes, no sacred honor—at stake. She is too much a fool to be called a traitor; just a useful idiot. And yet, she finds a happy home in the Republican Party.

To say nothing of Q-Anon puppet Marjorie Taylor Greene and the fantabulous George Santos, two degenerates who had relatively quiet times last week. And to say nothing, as well, of dashing—I mean, literally running away from the Jan 6 mob he encouraged—Sen. Josh Hawley and the craven Sen J.D. Vance, both of whom were taken to the woodshed by Mitt Romney, in his interview with The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins published (an excerpt from a book I’ll read avidly).

So there, for those of you who think I criticize Democrats too much. I will continue to do so—on crime, immigration, identity politics and political correctness—but I’ll try to do so on the merits. And I will let the personal depravities of the Republicans pass, except for today. I won’t play by their rules, I won’t harp on their moral obtuseness and personal disgraces. But you should never forget what a crude, barbaric bunch of hypocrites they are.

And thanks to those of you who have taken out paid subscriptions to Sanity Clause. I welcome the discerning eyes of all you free-riders out there, but you might think again about pushing this button: