Speaker 1: This is absolutely fascinating. The right wing Wall Street Journal,
part of News Corp owned by Rupert Murdoch, has put out an op ed indicating that although Republicans
will be taking control of the House in just a few weeks, they are too dim witted, essentially too
stupid to wield power. This is super interesting. Not because someone wrote Republicans are kind of
dim. Most of us knew that, but because the right wing editorial board of the Wall Street Journal
wrote it. Republican Party masochists writes the editorial board on Friday. Republican division
and disarray on Capitol Hill bode ill for the next Congress. And the entire article is worth
reading. But there is a particular article that is interesting. I'll actually start
with a paragraph before their main demand is so self-defeating. Talking about Republicans here,
their main demand is so self-defeating. It could have come from Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez. The dissenters want Kevin McCarthy to concede that any member could call the chair
vacant and insist on a vote to replace the sitting speaker in order to get the votes
to become Speaker McCarthy, supposed to weaken himself so much that he wouldn't be able to govern
as speaker. Yet a narrow Republican majority of only 222 to 213 requires a leader who can
enforce party discipline. That's how Nancy Pelosi has been able to govern with the mirror image
majority in the last two years. Too many House Republicans are too dimwitted to understand the
uses of power and how to wield it. They'd rather rage against the machine to no useful effect.
I don't care who wrote this, and it happens to be the right wing Wall Street Journal editorial
board. It's completely correct and accurate as an assessment of the Republican Party right now.
They are so obsessed with rage and anger and fear that they care more about perpetuating
over. We're going to take down McCarthy. Our focus will be to go after Hunter Biden or to
impeach Joe Biden. Even if we don't know why. And we're going to make people afraid of the
immigrants that Joe Biden's letting in, even though there's really no significant changes
to immigration policy from Biden since Trump, this is what it's all about. The rage is what
many of the modern MAGA Trumpists used rage and fear to get elected in the first place. Last week
we talked about reactionary populism, many of them using reactionary populism, which includes
making people angry and making people afraid. That's why they don't have plans or policies.
That's why they are totally lacking in policy and a policy platform beyond just stop the Democrats
from doing what they want to do or what they would like to do. They were the angry opposition to what
was happening in power Democrats for a while now. They're going to be in office. They're
going to control the House of Representatives. The outrage is all that they have. And so that rage,
this is the correct answer. We've seen it for so long now among these people and many of them. And
I've spent time in parts of the country where this is the case. They grew up in a church. I spent
time in rural, northern or rural, as some like to say. I don't say that way in rural northern
Indiana. And people basically go to two places, they go to church and they go to a shooting
range. Those are places where you become angry and you become afraid. You're filled with hate,
rage and anger, and you see it firsthand in a lot of these conservative places,
and they use fear of immigrants. Members of the Republican Party say the dangerous immigrants are
going to come in. You've got to be afraid of them. So we need nativist immigration policy.
We certainly need guns to protect ourselves from them, ignoring the reality. That both naturalized
legal and undocumented immigrants, both are less likely to commit crime in the United States than
natural born citizens. And it makes sense if you know your status is not legal or you have legal
status, but you still see yourself as someone who came here later, you would probably go out
of your way to avoid criminality and interactions with police. Widely documented, but yet fear of
immigrants. It's in the church. It's part of the narrative around why people need guns. Grievances
over perceived injustices. The right loves to say it's the left that does grievance politics.
Actually, it's the right. It's the right. Black Lives Matter movement is bad and discriminatory
and terrible, and we have a grievance against them and we must fight them. Antifa.
I could go on and on. The free speech rights that are being taken away from us, which really aren't
being taken away. And then, of course, the use of divisive rhetoric for its own sake.
Protect American values, defend the Constitution. Defend and restore free speech,
things that are meaningless if you follow the facts on the ground, but that they use to drive
these politics. So I believe the Wall Street editorial board is right. These Republicans
will be taking control of the House, but they are too dimwitted to really understand how to wield
power. This is a good thing for the left. To the extent that they end up just chasing their tails,
talking about Hunter Biden for two years and hopefully accomplishing nothing, and maybe
Democrats can get a couple of things done while Republicans are busy trying to impeach Joe Biden.