Marcia Meoli: GOP has confused greed with leadership for decades
The lack of leadership from the Republican Party is breathtaking, but not new. Just look at their record in providing speakers of the House over the past decades.
Democrats held the Speaker position from 1955 to 1995, about 40 years.
Newt Gingrich then became a Republican Speaker touting his “Contract for America,” but had to resign in 1999 amid lost popularity and ethics problems. He forced a government shutdown over some of the same issues that Republicans obsess on today and pushed the criticism of President Clinton over the Lewinski scandal at a time when he was cheating on his wife who was ill with MS. Impressive! Gingrich is “credited” with playing a key role in hastening political polarization and partisanship which exists to this day. He was described as "an expert in how to seize power, but a novice in holding it."
The same can be said for his party, the GOP.
Next, the party gave us Dennis Hastert. He is the longest-serving Republican speaker in history. Someone had to replace Gingrich and they tried to pick Robert Livingston of Louisiana, but he also cheated on his wife (repeatedly) and it was not a good time to go in that direction. So, they settled on Hastert. Perhaps they didn’t know that Hastert had sexually abused boys while coaching high school wrestling and covered that up with bank crimes. Hastert served 13 months in prison for those crimes. He left us with the “Hastert Rule,” which increased partisanship by forbidding bills from going to vote unless a majority of the majority support it.
Hastert lost the speakership when the GOP lost the House leadership in 2007.
John Boehner was the next Republican speaker, serving from 2011 to 2015. The party increased in its divisiveness and this was the reason he resigned as speaker. Extremists in the party made increasing demands and would not cooperate with anyone. (Flash to the future at this point: Kevin McCarthy wanted to succeed Boehner at the time, but pulled out of that quest because of the divisiveness in the caucus. He also said (honestly) at the time that the hearings on Benghazi were politically motivated against Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Republicans did not like that either.)
So Paul Ryan took the speakership. He served from 2015 to 2019. Ryan at least came to the office with credentials for a clear policy on something. He was a conservative expert on budget matters. Ryan did not want to be speaker. He did so only after it appeared that no one else would get the votes for the job. As speaker, he resisted much of what President Obama wanted and tried to work with President Trump, but that meant presiding over a dramatic increase in the federal budget deficit, which must have been difficult for him, knowing his history as a deficit hawk.
Ryan quit both the speakership and Congress as the Democrats took control of the House in 2019.
And now we just witnessed the speakership of Kevin McCarthy which lasted only nine months. It is probably a little soon to adequately describe this example of cacophony. The people who sunk this speaker have no policies other than disruption. They are not there to solve any problems. They simply want to complain and strike back. It doesn’t matter to them that the House has ground to a halt, just at the time when one of our Allies, Israel, was attacked viciously and needs our full support. (This is the same party of the senator from Alabama who is stopping military appointments because of his view on abortion.) They have no loyalty except to their own right-wing agenda. Similar to their standard-bearer, Trump, who just turned on the Israeli leadership after years of portraying himself as a staunch ally of Israel.
Congressional Republicans are trying, and failing, again to fill the position which will be second in line to the Presidency. Will it be Rep. Jordan of Ohio? Jordan was sued by victims of sexual misconduct accusing for failing to report the crime while coaching for their college wrestling team. What is it with these guys and wrestling? Can’t they find anyone better than this? Oh, I forgot, Trump wants Jordan, which begs the same question about Trump.
Republicans have confused selfish greed with leadership for decades now. It is beyond time that voters stopped encouraging this by putting them anywhere near winning elections for a government that they want to destroy.
— Community Columnist Marcia Meoli is a Holland attorney and resident. Contact her at Meolimarcia@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Marcia Meoli: GOP has confused greed with leadership for decades
