S4 Ep19: Congress: The Dumbest It’s Ever Been (with Joe Perticone)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I’m Sarah well publisher of the Bulwark. And this week, we are talking about an institution less popular than New Coke and the Chrysler PT Cruiser, the United States Congress. With a couple of exceptions, Congress’s approval rating has been mired in the teens and twenties for over a decade. Because it’s a dysfunctional retirement home of politicians seem to take us from one near disaster to the next every few months.

And the Republican Congress in the House is one of the most dysfunctional we’ve ever seen in recent years? In early twenty twenty three, it took Republicans fifteen ballots to get Kevin McCarthy across the finish line as speaker of the house. He was out by October, and it took Republicans a month to settle on yet another speaker, Mike Johnson. So I’m wondering how voters, particularly Republican voters, feel about their new and old congressional leadership. My guest today is the Bulwark eyes and ears on Capitol Hill, our national political reporter, Joe Perticon.

What’s up, Joe?

I’m doing great. And I’m very happy to be on the podcast.

I’m happy to have you on first timer.

Mhmm.

So you’re killing it for us there on the hill. Is it sad up there? Is it good? How you doing up there?

It’s it’s still fun because it’s what I love doing, but it is the dumbest it has ever been.

Just tell us how long you’ve been dealing with the Hill.

I’m coming up on year ten. This spring since I’ve been in DC, and I’ve covered Congress in some way or another for most of that time. I started when John Bainer was speaker And I was there for the Pelosi years, the Paul Ryan years, and now this, you know, era of uncertainty where they had the war of the five speakers in the summer, and now whatever’s gonna happen to Mike Johnson.

When you say it’s the dumbest you’ve ever seen it, like, What’s the second dumbest you’ve ever seen it?

I I would say that really early days of the Freedom caucus, and so you saw the kind of stuff we’re seeing now, but on a much smaller scale. Guys like John Fleming kept trying to impeach, then IRS commissioner, John Koskinen, And it would be this kind of back and forth. And they’d say, we’re gonna impeach him. We’re gonna do it. And then there’d be these threats, and they’d cause a big chaotic moment, and you’re just seeing it on a much more grander scale now.

They follow through with the impeachment threats now too.

Yeah. Well, and we’re kind of in this weird era now where the base of the Republican Party and the establishment or leadership, in this case, Trump obviously, and Mike Johnson, their goals are pretty much aligned. And so when you’re not aiming to actually pass real policy, you’re just stuck with the infighting and the constant back and forth. And because the majority is so slim, you’ve never seen the freedom caucus more powerful than they are now. And they just like to disrupt stuff when they feel alienated or irrelevant, they act out by tanking rule votes or even removing the speaker entirely.

Yeah. Okay. So I wanna start with how some of these people talked about their individual members of Congress. So we purposely, when we screen for this group, we tried to put in people whose members of Congress have been making a lot of national news, because we wanted to see how their behavior filtered down to their districts. Right?

Like, I’m always sitting there being like, do Marjorie Taylor Greens constituents think it’s, like, great that she’s, constantly saying, you know, she’s gonna censor Elon Omar. Like, is that how they want her to spend her time? So we chose people who are kinda in the news. Let’s listen.

Well, I was just listening to my congressman Andy Biggs this morning, and he’s very frustrated. And so he was relating that I keep trying to get a bill passed and they put so much pork and more taxes into it. I guess in this bill that they sent to the seventh, there’s money for taking care of all of our immigrant, making sure that they’re have all that they need once they get here, and he was just very frustrated with that. I agree with him.

That gates is my representative. So, I agree with everything that’s being said though. But he has had the flare for the dramatic for sure. I think he planes a lot to the national. I think it’s about a spotlight.

It’s not really what he’s doing for us. It’s what we can do for him. So but he is good at communicating what he’s doing. He sends out newsletters by email, you know, once or twice a month and I don’t always agree with him, but I do feel like it’s a spotlight thing for him.

But my Congresswoman is MTG and she knows, you know, she’s always in which stuff up to read. And I just got something where she’s trying to sense her own more. You know, I know this stuff is important, and that makes me angry too. Because everything is going on with Israel and we’ve got these people in our Congress. Real mad about that.

Love to talk about that. But I want our borders closed. I want them to stop spending. I want somebody to do some damn thing about something. You know, these screaming women in this congress If I wanted to hear that, I’d watch the view.

You know what I’m saying? My woman’s one of them, you know, but she’s got the screen with the best of them. I figured, And so, you know, it’s out there, but I think we need to bring class and decor back to our Congress. It would be a great step in the right direction.

So I’m gonna just hit you with one of my overall takes from this group that I thought was pretty interesting and kind of in conflict. On one hand, they really wanted congressional leaders to get things done. Right? They wanted something done about the border. They wanted something done about health care costs.

Like, they wanted things. And yet, They also seem to want a little bit of these performative things, like your MTGs, your MadGs, and you know, there’s this thesis now that it’s more important to be a content producer in Congress than actually past legislation, you know, Madison Cawthorn or when he was there, and he said, that he built his whole office around comms rather than legislation. So is this mindset of drawing spotlight hogs? Like, are they being drawn to Congress now because that’s gives them a platform to be sort of like YouTube stars, content creators, or, like, are they still incentivized to pass legislation and do serious things?

I think it depends on the style of these members. Obviously, this group of people, their representatives drift way more towards the showmen like Matt Gates and Marjorie Green, and even Andy Bigs. Like, the one woman who’s from Arizona was saying, like, oh, she loves Andy Bigs. Well, he He’s one of the main people, and so is Gates obstructing stuff from getting done.

Right.

And I think the consensus among the group was that You know, if everyone was this kind of conservative and we got rid of the rhinos, then they would be able to accomplish all of these great things. Well, you’d still have fifty percent of the chamber as Democrats. And there’s no way to have a Matt Gates in a lot of these districts that get you into a majority. And so it was just very strange that they like the pomp and the show of a mad Gates without really getting the results. But that kinda plays into the whole Matt Gates mantra that, like, if everyone was like him, then we could get it done.

Oh, yeah. Right? It’s like, well, we wanna get things done, but we wanna do it without compromising. It’s like there’s this thing where that they’ve forgotten this piece where compromise is actually how one achieves policy outcomes. But because voters today and I hear this all the time, they’re just They’re hostile to compromise.

Copirmizes is one of the things that will get you voted out by the base of the Republican Party because they see you then as part of the unit party. When voters talk about you know, the establishment. What they mean is people who compromise with Democrats. I don’t know what to do about the fact that voters They’re hungry for something to get done, but they don’t want their elected officials to do the things that would lead to better policy outcomes.

Yeah. There’s just zero interest in the whole compromise thing. And if you look at how Marco Rubio was treated in twenty sixteen, he was constantly tied to being one of the gang of eight on the the old immigration proposal. And you’re seeing them. They learned their lessons from that.

Right now, they’re all saying This immigration bill is dead on arrival in the house. Because if you associate with this compromise, that even, like, hard core conservatives like James Langford was the top negotiator. You’re a rhino because you gave concessions when you shouldn’t have. The concession was, you know, if it’s a five thousand to eighty five hundred border crossings a day, they get to shut down the border. Well, they say it shouldn’t be one border crossing a day.

If this had been the rule for the past year, the border would have been closed for the past year. And they’re all rejecting it immediately. They’re not even entertaining the idea of an amendments process. They just are declaring it dead. And it’s a perfect example of how this style of thinking has totally taken over the people in charge now too.

It’s not like old John Bainer or Paul Ryan days where they would have to compromise or Kevin McCarthy even saying, well, we have to keep the lights on, and then he gets thrown out of the speakership, and this immigration bill is a perfect example of that.

A perfect example, where there’s real legislating to be done, real opportunity for compromise, but Trump told them not to do it. But you’re right. This point about Mike Johnson and Trump, like, the mega establishment now runs things, and they have no interest in legislating. So I know that before we did the focus group, one of the things you were interested in is whether these voters thought Republicans have brought anything to the table. By being in the house majority.

And it really was the Biden impeachment inquiry that resonated particularly strong with the Spocus group Let’s hear about that. And what else they consider GOP accomplishments?

I think there’s more criminality here. I think we’re gonna be really surprised. And, unpleasantly. When it gets to the end, I think he’s been very bad for a very long time, so I’m grateful. I’m grateful it’s coming out.

I’m not confident that anything will happen because seems like the Democrats always get their way, which is frustrating to me, but I am happy that it’s moving forward. I personally like the investigations have been done by Jim Jordan in

a lot of those into, like, the Twitter files and all that stuff has been released. To show the abuse of government that’s been done in the last four or five years. I think that’s more that we know the better off we are to help prevent this in the future and protect our rights. So I I think those different investigations are really well spent time to inform the public. What’s been going on and who’s been infringing on our rights.

Let’s say I’ve been very, very pleased with our investigation into the research that’s been done, and the professionals that they’ve had, Peter McCola, and others there to bring in and talk about the source of that, what’s happening with the Jabs, and

all the

rights that were taken away from people. I think that that’s something that they’ve been talking about. I’ve been pleased with the emphasis on the border. Certainly living in Arizona, we’re very much affected by that.

Okay. So what I’m struck by here is that the performative stuff still is the stuff that they like you know, hey, we’re gonna impeach Biden and we’re gonna, you know, investigate the origins of COVID. None of those things are going to improve these people’s lives materially with the exception of maybe the immigration bill that they talked about Like, do you get the sense that Democrats have the opportunity to go on offense here to see Republicans tanking the best immigration compromise that they have gotten in decades?

Yeah. The narrative there is that Republicans block immigration reform, which is something that Dems could seize on. But regarding the investigations, something that really struck out to me was this kind of admission that Nothing in the impeachment inquiry has yielded anything yet. The group kept saying, well, we’ll get to see what comes out. We like that they’re doing this so we can find out.

If there had been something in all of the many times James Comer comes out with these bombshells every other week, that end up getting debunch right away, they would be siding them. And so I thought it was really interesting specifically on the impeachment that even in the most deep red circles, they know that nothing has come out of this inquiry yet. And that that really blew my mind because I thought they would latch on to some of the things that James Gomer goes on Fox and brags about. And instead, they were just kind of like, we like what they’re doing and we wanna see more of it so we can find out. That was the most surprising thing.

What do you think happens when there’s not much more to find out?

I’m I’m not very good at predicting what happens next, especially in, like, Ron DeSantis chaotic is this. It is a massive political win for Democrats if they decide to close the books on this thing. So I can’t imagine them doing that. The inquiry stage could just drag on and on and on. And that way, they can keep trickling the things out that they do, but they really haven’t done anything to move into the next stage.

Yeah. And I guess that’s probably is what they do. Right? They just leave an open inquiry in the hopes of not having to admit that there’s no there there. Okay.

So I wanna dive into how these voters thought about the Kevin McCarthy coup. McCarthy organized his entire political life around becoming speaker and keeping Freedom caucus members and their voters happy. Which she did unsuccessfully. So let’s listen how these voters thought about McCarthy.

Kevin McCarthy looked like a Mitch McConnell light I’ve I’ve felt like he was gonna turn and his compromises were already bordering on being questioned and well in my mind. And, I don’t think the way it was done necessarily the best way, but I’m hoping that the end results pays off better dividends.

I don’t think that our prior speaker would have just rolled over and given everybody money and I like the fact that they maybe he hinted at that and it was time for him to go.

The problem with McCarthy, I think, is that he was controlled in a in a certain way. And like a lot of it, they call them establishment Republicans or the rhinos. So somebody doesn’t know what that is. On the back end that would be Republican and named only. And it was necessary maybe to put him down in that way so that the establishment so that there could be a turning.

Like, yeah. So it wasn’t pretty, but any change I think was necessary

I hated seeing Matt Gates just be so hard on Kevin McCarthy. I too thought Kevin McCarthy doing a good job. I thought he was a good guy and, you know, it’s it’s hard. It’s a hard position to you gotta kind of give up things to get things I hated seeing Matt Gates. I I just hated them.

Like, why are they doing this to each other? Why are they doing this to the part?

I think McCarthy was doing his best job and he was communicating very well. I do think he’s a lot better, and Mitch McConnell will get to him. He is just not a very good leader over the other side of the Senate, but think he was doing his best. You have to make concessions when you don’t have both things in Congress.

So here again, we get to this sort a central conflict, which is that some people liked Kevin okay and understood that he was in a tough spot and didn’t like to see the freedom caucus going after him. On the other hand, there were a bunch of people who were like, no. This guy’s an establishment Rhino, and, like, I’m glad they got rid of him. Were you surprised by their reaction?

Yeah. I was. I was surprised that people felt bad for him because it didn’t appear that anybody else did. It’s just interesting how with McCarthy, the ones who wanted him out. It’s because he passed a CR and did the debt deal.

And now my Johnson’s, like, passed multiple CRs. He’s just doing How about

that woman who, like, talked about a CR, like, passing the CR? Like, she knew that he’d done that. I was I was kind of impressed with this group’s knowledge of, I mean, we screened for people who knew who their congressman was, so it immediately gave us, like, a cut above. But I was impressed when she just started throwing out following the continuing resolutions.

Yeah. And a lot of them mentioned, like, they consume conservative media But a lot of them also mentioned that they’ve read their members’ weekly or monthly newsletters. Yeah. And when you read those, there’s obviously pure spin partisan messaging, but you get details that are on, like, real policies or things that they’re trying to do. So them knowing what a CR is and how Bulwark, it probably stems a lot from them reading their member’s newsletter in in more ways than just watching Fox, you’re not getting into these details of what CR is and how it functions.

You’re just getting the complaints about it.

Yeah. But you make a great point. They’re paying attention, but they’re not exactly applying the same standards to everybody because the things that they were mad at McCarthy about, they’re just not had at Johnson about. And I think a lot of that has to do with simply the vibe they get for McCarthy, which is Old Rhino Republican, which they don’t like, And Johnson, which is, like, new Magga Republican, which we do like. And so, like, the New Magga Republicans just get a lot of leeway.

It’s not about a strict ideological application of terms.

Yeah. And Mike Johnson doesn’t have this history of being you know, young guns with Paul Ryan. And so in the conservative media space, there’s no way to tie him to Rino is, even when he’s doing, like, the exact same things that McCarthy did, he gets the PR bump from a lot of the hardcore conservatives in conservative media and within the conference too.

Yeah. That’s a great point. What do you think the latest evidence on Matt Gates, his going after party, how much of that was retribution for the house ethics committee investigation of him?

That’s a lot to speculate on. I mean, based on the reporting, it’s very obvious that the two have hated each other. And that it did feel very personal in the weeks following the motion to vacate. A lot of the members were so mad at Matt Gates. And, like, I remember there was brief buzz that they were like, we should expel him from the Republican conference.

But then it’s like, oh, wait. You’ll be in the minority if you’d lose one more member. But I think that it was viewed as very personal. And it was painfully obvious, and they had a history together and everything. And the way he’s giving so much more leeway to Mike Johnson for doing the same things, That also tells you there is a major personal element to it.

Well, yeah. I mean, that is part of the story that you’re telling. You know, it’s not just that the voters are being inconsistent. In terms of applying these standards, it’s that the Freedom caucus is being inconsistent in applying these standards. Like, with Kevin, they were ready to hold his feet to the fire with Johnson, they’re giving him lots of latitude.

Yeah. They’ve tanked, some role votes. That’s, like, the new favorite tactic is to just block business for the day. Congress isn’t working hard enough, so we gotta block business and send everybody home. It’s tons of logic there.

Yeah. It goes back to these fundamental tensions, one of which as I was sort of outlining before is that while people spiritually, right, they believed that Kevin McCarthy wasn’t tough enough for them and wanted to see someone new. They also they’re, like, uneasy with the chaos internally. They sort of don’t like the Republicans attacking each other. But they do not like these rhinos.

The rhinos, I mean, in focus groups now, I like that people felt the need to like, spell it out. Like, she wanted to make sure you knew it was Republican’s name only, but this comes up constantly. Like, Liz Chaney’s a Rhino, Adam Kinzinger’s a Rhino literally anybody who doesn’t love Trump as a rhino. Some of them talk specifically about going rhino hunting. Let’s listen to that.

Those borderline rhinos. I think they’re the real issue. The the Vietnamese that’s kind of representation.

Go along to get along. Yeah. No more.

There’s certain places in New York. You’ll never get a real, very conservative Republican, and you’re gonna have somebody that’s gonna be closer to a rhino, but I’d rather have that rhino in there for getting control of the Senate, then I would losing it to a Democrat and putting a purist in there that is going to get slaughtered in

Well, there’s a thing in South Sarah Longwell. They call it a rhino hunt. And, basically, what they do is they meet in, Greer And, it’s a county in Greenville. They talk about all of the rhinos that are out there that they wanna get rid of But the problem that I have, but but that kind of a thing is that it just makes for more division

So, you know, I wanna start at my own group called save the rhinos. Like, an animal protection group. All we do is try to save moderate Republicans who are trying to do their hate thing and compromise. That woman said there’s basically a group out there. They go rhino hunting.

Like, who do we wanna get out? Because they’re not Pure enough. So how did these supposed Rhino’s left in Congress like Mitt Romney and Ken Buck? Like, how did the GOP leadership and the other Republicans get along with now. Like, who are gonna be the relative adults once they’re gone?

So both are retiring, Buck and Romney, but I think that there aren’t that many moderate Republicans in Congress and the ones who are considered moderates. They’re not really moderate in their policy. They’re moderate in their tactics. So Don Bacon is a reliable party line Republican voter. His tactics are just marly different from the freedom caucus.

And so the fact that all these moderates, the actual moderates have really dwindled, shows that they really don’t have to work with them that much because I don’t think there’s this eagerness to work across the aisle, at least in the house, except on, you know, bland policy, and immigration’s not one of those.

So there aren’t that many left. Like, what do we do? I mean, because one of the guys in that group was talking pragmatically about how you, you know, you gotta accept that you’re gonna have some of these more moderate Republicans. But he was kind of a outlier voice. Like, it seems like There is more interest now in purity than there is in pragmatism.

And what does that mean for just, like, doing stuff? Up there.

Yeah. The math in this belief doesn’t really add up because, like, the guy who said he understands to necessitate for some rhinos. Well, half the chamber is gonna be Democrats anyway, maybe slightly less than half like it is right now. And then you have what? Everybody’s a Freedom Caucasus, and then you have a couple rhinos, as he says, from New York.

Well, that still puts you in the minority of Congress and of the public. And so it’s really hard to understand what they want other than they want people to fight. And it’s really hard to be a fighter when you’re in the majority because you’re supposed to be doing things when you’re in the majority. And that’s how you see in this Congress, nothing is getting done because you have so many fighters. And they’re not really accomplishing their policy aims.

They’re just doing the kind of fighting that they got used to in the minority.

It is clear listening to voters weekend and week out. That they do want things to get done. But that is coupled with this desire both for them to fight. And for there to kind of be a fight. Right?

They do like a fair amount of the performative stuff. The I wanna investigate this and impeach my orchis and go after Biden. And it’s almost like they can be sated by the show. Even though they’re not edified by it. Right?

It’s not nutritional for them. It doesn’t give them the things that they genuinely want, which is, like, health care that they can afford. It comes up all the time. It is amazing to me how much Republican voters want better, more affordable health care. And yet do not impose that at all on their elected officials.

Like, never or there being, like, you gotta do something about health care guys.

Yeah. And, for example, if there’s buzz, then there’s a goal of the next Republican administration to start privatizing Medicare. And it’s like, you talk to any voter, any person eligible for Medicare, and they’re like, That is the last thing that they would want. But professional Republicans understand what the voters want in terms of what they want politically, immigration being one of them.

Okay.

They got their policy goal of overturning row, and it’s been a nightmare for a public What would happen if they got their policy of huge border overhauls? And now there’s no surge at the border, or there’s these kinds of mass deportations. And if everything gets under control, well, he can’t run on it anymore.

Obviously, Trump is trying to tank this immigration bill, and Johnson says it’s set on arrival along with Lee Stephan and Steve Scalia. But is it just that? I mean, Part of me knows that, yes, it is. That, like, Trump wants to be able to run on chaos at the border. And does that mean that they genuinely don’t wanna fix it?

I think that there’s no possible way of fixing it that would satisfy them that wouldn’t be terribly inhumane and grant an insane amount executive authority to a future president to use. That’s what they want. They want it to be a million times more strict than what is ever being proposed. These hard liners do, at least. And on the flip of that, if Republicans take back the Senate, Well, they’re not gonna have a super majority.

Right. So why would Democrats go all in on a compromise, let’s say, in the next congress, to send a border bill to Trump’s desk, why would they not filibuster it? And this is something that John Thune said a couple weeks ago, is he was like Democrats will never give us a compromise. If we somehow take back the Senate and we need to pass a sixty vote threshold, They’ll never give in. And why would they, especially if you’re tanking the hardest things that Congress can actually accomplish as immigration?

They’ve been trying to do this for years. And they’re not even gonna allow it now. Your luck’s not gonna change unless you get sixty one Republicans in the Senate.

I hear that, but that just means they’d rather have the issue than solve the issue.

And it is a waning Republican issue across the board. Immigration is. They can run on immigration, and they are the far more trusted party in all the polling on immigration. And Like, they got their wish with Roe, and it’s been terrible for them. Why would they wanna get their wish now?

But it’s sort of different with Roe. I think the majority of the country wasn’t with Republicans on wanting abortion to be Will Saletan all these states that it’s now illegal in. Whereas, I feel like the majority of the country does want better border security and does want to know who’s in the country. I mean, I think this one of the reasons that Democrats are so vulnerable on this issue is that there are plenty of Democrats who also want something done about the border. And so Republicans, what?

They don’t think they’d get credit for it if they did it right now. They think that Joe Biden would get credit, and that’s why they don’t wanna do it. Or they just want it to, like, always be a problem that makes people wanna elect them?

I think it’s a mixture of both. You don’t wanna ever hand a win to Democrats. That’s, like, rule number one of Republican legislating. And at the same time, like, you can’t run on it because if you pass something like this and it becomes law, both parties would be fighting over who gets to take more credit, but You’d have to run on what you just accomplished. You couldn’t be like the border isn’t being solved right after you passed the biggest border bill in decades.

And it’s easier to just run on things as is.

Yeah. Well, the other thing that’s notable about this, right, it’s tied to Ukraine funding. And so the other piece of this is that the folks in the house, unlike there’s still people in the Senate who want to help Ukraine in this fight. And for them, it feels important not just to get the border deal, but also to get the money for Ukraine. There’s also Israel money in there.

But the house, as the Republican parties changed and the voters are much less interested in helping Ukraine, the incentives for the house, like, they’re not interested in funding Ukraine. They both have the interest in kind of not giving dems the win on the border deal and they don’t wanna fund Ukraine because the base of the Republican party is no longer interested in that either.

Yeah. And the majority of the house republican conference now doesn’t support Ukraine.

I wanna move on to talk about Mike Johnson a little bit. Because the voters are a little warmer toward Mike Johnson than they are to McCarthy. But Mike Johnson’s like somebody who does wanna support Ukraine. At least his rhetoric has been wanting to support Ukraine, but then his actions have not been.

So leading up before he became speaker, he was didn’t have a solid record on supporting Ukraine. His tone has changed quite a bit since becoming speaker. Maybe that’s because he started getting the real intelligence. On what’s actually happening and why it matters. Yeah.

But he understands the pulse of the conference. And most of the conference doesn’t want this Ukraine funding. They either are pretending like they’re AT and T war, or they wouldn’t rush it when select few who think that. And then there’s others who just Understand that, like, aid to Ukraine has become synonymous with lip policy. And once something becomes like that, it becomes toxic.

For a lot of people.

Just where I’m taking crazy pills, the idea that sending the money abroad to help democracy that this is just, you know, lib politics because I’m old enough to remember, like, code pink and everything else.

Like, the Freedom caucus position on Ukraine is the same as Coat Banks now.

Yeah. That’s right. That’s right. Alright. But let’s listen to how voters talk about Mike Johnson, which is a little nicer than they talked about Kevin McCarthy.

I’ve liked what the results have been as far as the power of the purse is being used now, which is their right to do, and they should be withholding funds and so things can be negotiated.

Mike Johnson, I think he is actually a better move with McCarthy, but I just didn’t like the way, like, I think we talked about it was way it was done

far as Ukraine goes with me. I feel like that we’re just at that stage of the game. We’re just paying blackmail money to these people. You know, I think it has all to do with the prosecutor and something with buy any and all that deal that went on. And, you know, I wanna see some receipts.

I wanna see what’s going on. And I think that speaker Johnson should be asking for the receipts if we’re going to Yep. Continue to have their back. Johnson nailed China on Oregon donations. I mean, he went after.

And nobody’s ever done that. They don’t have the ball since they got too much money in their court. You know what I mean? So nobody does that. And Johnson’s the only one and I read about it this morning.

And I thought, wow. That wouldn’t have happened with anybody else because he’s a newbie. He hadn’t been bought. He hadn’t spent the Senate time and just like saying his wife’s not dabbling with the Chinese.

So the deadline with the Chinese line is, of course, a reference to Mitch McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chow. So everyone in this group, we had a hand raise about who they thought was doing a better job, McCarthy or Johnson, and everybody went Johnson. He got the unanimous vote. So what do you think, Joe? Are there any murmurings that Johnson’s headed for the same fate as McCarthy?

Or do you feel like they’re gonna let him ride?

I mean, we’ve already seen him get more leeway Yeah. Sure. As two CRs or four technic leaks. They were in two separate tranches each time. So When we talked about how they know what CRs are, they kinda know the process, the people in this focus group, they didn’t really, though, in terms of what Mike Johnson’s been doing.

She says, well, he’s got the power of the purse. He’s getting it under control. No. He is not.

Yeah. Right.

Mike Johnson has stood over now two CRs, which means the current budget is a budget that was passed under Nancy Pelosi’s speakership. And you sometimes hear guys like Chip Royce say, this is a Pelosi budget. That’s quite literally true. It is the Nancy Pelosi budget. Happening in Congress right now because it’s just continuing what was passed last year.

My Johnson isn’t getting anything under control. Nothing’s under control right now. They keep punting every couple months. And next deadlines, March first and March eighth for the next two. And it’s, like, I haven’t seen anything to indicate they’re gonna avert another example of what we just saw.

I don’t know if they’ll retaliate in motion to vacate because they haven’t done it since even though it’s been the same stuff that’s occurring. And there also isn’t, like we said, there isn’t that personal animus towards Mike Johnson that existed. If somebody wants to motion to vacate, they could. Like, Freedom caucus have thrown tantrums and tanked rule votes over what’s happened, but I haven’t seen anyone indicate the whole motion to vacate other than these failed kind of threats.

Yeah. You just reminded me that I should clarify that when you call a voter, high information, it doesn’t mean the information is correct. The same way if you call somebody low information, it doesn’t mean that, like, they said a bunch of things that are false. Actually, low information just means, like, they don’t pay that much attention to the news or politics. Like, they’re not really plugged in, whereas high information voters can often be very plugged in.

But depending on what they’ve plugged into, that information can be wildly wrong and just sort of shaped by the media ecosystem that they exist in. But I was sort of surprised because we weren’t actually asking about Mitch McConnell. I mean, eventually, we did because they they kept bringing up Mitch McConnell. And, boy, His national approval rating is six percent. For a guy with this much power, like, this is not a person who has voters bought in on him.

And for a guy who has probably accomplished more conservative policy wins than any person in a generation?

Yeah. That’s right. And they hate it. Let’s listen.

You know, the freezing in front of the camera kind of thing. You know, it’s like a circuit breaker just went all. You know, it’s when it’s time to go, it’s it’s time to go. Terrible limits, I’m gonna say age limit. Man, if I’m in my eighties, I don’t wanna be up in there.

I don’t think I’ll ever, you know, retire as it were, but man, can’t you do something write a book?

I’m eighty years old, and I certainly wouldn’t wanna be president nor would I wanna be in the Senate. But I look at guys like John Kennedy And, this guy’s as sharp as they come. So I’m I’m closer to to put limits on anything.

I do agree that, like, to have people in Congress that will pass bills that will affect future generations, and they’re not gonna be around for the next ten years doesn’t make any sense for this nation. These people in their high eighties, they have no accountability. They’re not gonna be around and in fifteen, twenty years.

So the age stuff, though some of us are less about Mitch McConnell or just more about the gerontocracy in Congress. But when we asked people in this group, who they wanted to see as the next senate leader, they mentioned Ted Cruz, Rick Scott, Josh Holly, but the biggest contenders are actually John Cornon from Texas, John Baraso from Wyoming, and John Thune from South Dakota. So what can you tell us about their internal machinations? Do you think McConnell could stepped down after the twenty twenty four election?

I have no idea, honestly.

That’s fair. That’s a fair answer.

I was surprised of how well they like Rick Scott. I think that’s a testament to how frequently he appears on Fox News. Yeah. He is regularly there. Mitchell McConnell is the punching bag in conservative media right now because he’s the most powerful person who’s not in the club of Maga like, Rick Scott has the warmth of a mortician.

And the fact that all of these people in this group were, like, We love this guy. Rick Scott’s great. Well, so Rick Scott just goes on Fox a lot. Same with Joe Kennedy. And the idea that Rick Scott could take the mantle from McConnell is silly.

I think that the next leader of the Republicans will be somebody named John.

Yeah. Corn and dune Barassa? Probably thin.

I bet money on thin.

K. Well, that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. I mean, leader Tommy Tumberville would be a problem.

I don’t think that any members of the Senate Republican Conference have the tactics, like the know how and the mastery of someone like Mitch McConnell Mitch McConnell’s of the age of people like Harry Raid, who are just really, really good at this. Nancy Pelosi is another one who’s really, really good at this. The past several Republican leaders of the house have been really bad at this, Bainer, Ryan, pork, Kevin, And now Mike Johnson, they’ve all been bad at it. McConnell is like the last one. I think who would be really, really good at this.

And so even if somebody different comes in and they have, like, more policies that you agree with, I don’t think they can wipe everyone into shape the way the McConnell and Harry Reeves and Pelosi historically have.

When you say good, what do you think makes them good?

Understanding how government works as in understanding how compromise is how you accomplish things. Like, Not everything has to be this, you know, fifty fifty compromise. It depends largely on the makeup of things. Right now, it’s a pretty much split senate and a pretty much split house. So you have to have all these compromises if you’re gonna do anything.

And so understanding and being able to navigate that is how you govern. And if you’re not doing that, you’re not governing. You’re just throwing a series of tantrums, which is what we see in the house. Yeah. They’re not governing.

Like, they pass a CR. That’s not really governing. That’s just, like, avoiding complete chaos.

Yeah. Kicking the can down the road.

During the three weeks without a speaker, that was not technically a government shutdown, but it was they weren’t doing anything for three straight weeks. That doesn’t happen when your goal is to actually govern.

Yeah. You know, I got asked a lot by reporters during that three week period. They’re like, are voters gonna care about this? Chaotic insanity. And I was like, that really?

Because, I mean, already now it’s sort of a distant memory. Right? It’s not like it comes around a voting time in the house and people are gonna be like, oh, I remember what this person did. They remember if people suck getting paychecks. Right?

If you shut it down and you can’t go to a public park. But just the infighting and, like, the show, I don’t see voters holding that against people, do you when you’re out on the trail?

So when I was just in New Hampshire, I was mostly talking to people about presidential stuff, obviously, Yeah. But a lot of people remembered that. You know, when I start talking to people like, oh, I typically cover Congress, but I’m out here on the trail talking to you folks. They go, oh, Congress must be chaotic. And I’m like, yeah, it is.

So I think it sticks with people. And Congress has low approval ratings, but it stays the same because everybody likes their member of Congress.

Well, this is what I mean. And nobody’s voting out their Congress person Yeah. You might be like, oh, it’s a clown show over there. But, like, people have always kinda said that, and they don’t vote people out because of it.

In the front line districts though, this kind of stuff matters. And they may not be in this no speaker stalemate that it was last year, but they’re still not doing anything.

Do you mean, like, lawler?

Yeah. People, like him, a lot of the New Yorkers who came in, well, we’re gonna get a really good indicator of it next week when they do the special election. Yeah. I think it breaks through on these sort of independent voters that you see in places like Pennsylvania and New York and wherever Orange County sometimes though less so in recent years.

Yeah. I was referring to Mike Lawller, who’s one of the he’s in one of those swingy districts there in New York. And he, like, sometimes tries to be the good guy, negotiator, like a serious guy. He criticizes them when they wanna shut things down. But I wonder if They would hold that against him when it comes time to vote, but maybe in the swing of your districts.

But, like, Marjorie Taylor Greens never gonna get punished for being too extreme by her district.

But you can see people like Lauren Bobert who are That’s true. Very much getting punished. She now has a carpet bag to the neighboring district because people were not liking what she was doing. Is she gonna win that? I don’t know.

I think being a carpet bagger is, like, one of the most fatal brandings still in races. And the guy before her, the Republican she unseated and the primary Scott tipped in was the quietest human being ever. And she has now ruined a lot of the chances in that district unless they can get somebody normal in time. Marjorie Taylor Green works in her district, but when you get these people in these districts who who aren’t these hard red districts, but you get these far right people as your nominees, and it puts things really at risk. Joe Kent, in the last cycle.

Yep. You know, lost a long held Republican seat.

J. B. Herrera Butler seat. That’s a great point. So not no consequences.

As soon as I have JBL in my head, you know, like, there’s no accountability whatsoever, but you’re right. It’s not absolutely nothing. I do wanna close With George Santos, our friend George Santos. He’s been out of the news for the last couple months. We purposely screened this group for people who had some baseline level of knowledge of Santos.

We just asked if they knew who he was, and then we ran them through his various misdeeds. So, like, you said, there’s a special election in his former Long Island district on February thirteenth, and the current bowling has former Democratic rep Tom Swazi, slightly favored to win back his seat against the Republican Vasey Philip. So let’s hear these voter reactions to Santos and his expulsion.

First of all, who’s vetting these people? Why wasn’t this figured out before we remain full? Television.

RNC, I think.

Way to go or on whatever their name is.

It was the media. They’re usually the ones that slaughtered the republic. And so I was amazed that he could get by with in the state of New York.

I think he was a closet democrat. I think he have Democrats that are actually running all that just reminded me of Barack Obama.

You know, based off of all the lies and obviously, all things fabricated. I think he definitely deserves some of our hard to promise it, but expelling does create a standard where, you know, if we dug up dirt on all these people in the house, half of them or seventy five percent of them will probably be gone.

So Sanchez’s departure left Republicans as you’ve noted this razor that majority, which leaves Mike Johnson in a very precarious position. The balance of power currently sits at two nineteen to two twelve. What do you remember about the vote to expel Santos?

You know, he quickly ran out. I was in the chamber when that happened, and he bolted out before I could get down shares. The removal made sense, I think, to a lot of these members because the New York Republican delegation, they were the ones behind this. There was an earlier attempt by Democrats to expel him and it didn’t work. It had to be a Republican led.

The New York Republican hated him because his presence and his continued presence in Congress is a major liability for them, and it might be a major liability in this special election Think about it. If George Santos was on the ballot at the same time as Mike Lawer, his neighboring district, that’s fatal for him because All the ads are Ron DeSantis. And if you’re a Republican, you’re gonna be lumped in with him. And so they they had a political obligation to get rid of him. But I think that was just an episode.

I don’t think it’ll have much of an impact outside of maybe that New York area.

What about the precedent it sets? I mean, I remember getting asked about this at the time whether or not you you let the voters decide, you know, and that this precedent of expelling people, I guess my gut reaction a little bit to this was I only use expelling people more. Like, I understand that the will of the voters is sacrosanct, but also You’ve got menendez. It’s just hanging out in the senate still. Well, he’s super under investigation.

Sure Republicans would love to get rid of Bauber if they could or some of the other people who just embarrass them constantly. I mean, McCarthy did everything he could to get rid of Cawthorn because Cawthorn was a huge scandal a minute. So do you think Republicans, if they could expel people more they would?

I think that Santos got what happened to him without going on trial yet because he was an unprecedented member. Menendez is not. Like, members have been charged with corruption before. And it really isn’t until conviction until there’s action taken. Santos is entirely different.

It was every single thing about him was fabricated. And a distraction too from whatever they were trying to accomplish. So I I just think that if they could use the power to expel more, don’t know what kind of precedent this creates. You know, they’re you’re gonna see people attempt to expel members just through privileged resolutions by You know, you could see Marjorie Taylor Green saying, we gotta expel Ilhan Omar, and she could force a vote on it. But the votes wouldn’t exist to expel Ilhan right now.

The reason why the expulsion of Santos happened because it was bipartisan.

Yeah. Right.

Yeah. You had tons of Republicans and then obviously all Democrats.

One of the few things everybody on Congress could agree on was that George Santos had to go. Okay, Joe, before I let you go. Is there anything else about Congress going on up there? Like, I I’m obviously, I’m letting this conversation with the voters guide us. But, like, what do you see up there that really stands out to you?

The lack of actual work getting done, obviously, in the Senate, they’re just confirming a lot of positions because that’s all they can do. In the house, they’re really not doing anything besides renaming post offices and passing CRs. And so the lack of action is that an all time low, we’re on pace for one of the least effective congresses in history. And there’s zero interest in doing anything about it. Everyone’s incentivized to either be chaotic or to complain about the chaos.

No one’s actually accomplishing anything. Particularly the way the house acts, it’s really hard for members to do things because they’re trying to impeach the DHS Secret Podcast the time that all these negotiations were happening. Same thing applies to the impeachment inquiry into Biden. Like, when you’re doing these nakedly political things, it makes everything that much harder and move that much slower. And it’s gonna get even worse as the election draws New York because they’re gonna take more time off.

It takes six weeks off in August to go campaign, and then they’ll be back for a short time. Like, if you think Congress is not moving fast enough or doing anything right now, it’s just gonna get way slower. Way slower.

Oh, well, on that note of real optimism, Joe vertigo. Thank you so much for joining us, and thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of Bulwark Secret Podcast, you can rate review and subscribe to us on YouTube. We will see you guys next week. Thanks, Joe.