Who says the government can’t get things done? The Republicans in Congress turned the normally routine selection of the Speaker of the House into a middle-school drama that was embarrassing and hilarious at the same time.
For a few days, C-SPAN was the most entertaining channel on television. Near the end, Mike Rogers from Alabama lunged at Matt Gaetz from Florida, and Richard Hudson from North Carolina had to hold him back. Friday night at the House turned into Friday night at the Waffle House.
Finally, on the 15th vote, Kevin McCarthy got enough votes to be speaker. But he might have a hard time governing, considering he got rejected more than those calls that show up on the screen as Spam Risk.
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I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy for McCarthy. But I have even less for the 20 or so GOP House members who spent five days gumming the gears of the whole process. I wouldn’t trust them to run a car wash, much less a chamber of Congress.
And it just so happens that two of them are local guys.
Ralph Norman of Rock Hill represents a big chunk of north central South Carolina. Dan Bishop of Charlotte represents part of southeast Mecklenburg and a swath up to almost Winston-Salem. Norman’s district and Bishop’s district share a bit of the state line. Their ideologies are connected, too.
Bishop is probably best known for his time as a state legislator, where he was the prime mover behind what North Carolinians remember, with a heavy sigh, as “the bathroom bill.” That bill, signed into law by Charlotte’s own Pat McCrory, forced transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender on their birth certificate. It led to a huge backlash, including the NBA pulling its All-Star Game out of Charlotte, and the legislature eventually repealed and replaced the bill. So, yeah, big win for Dan Bishop.
Ralph Norman might be best known for pulling out his loaded handgun and setting it on the table during a conversation with constituents about gun safety. Or you might know him as the guy who cracked a joke, during the time of the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings, about Ruth Bader Ginsburg being groped by Abraham Lincoln. A real class act.
Bishop and Norman finally flipped their votes to McCarthy, but it took them to the 12th ballot to do it.
The hardcore group got some concessions from McCarthy, but I don’t think there was any noble principle behind all this. It would’ve been understandable if it were a raw power play. But to me, it just felt like one long pout.
Bishop and Norman and their friends can’t abide that they’re on the losing side even in their own party. They’re so mad some of them are sassing Donald Trump, the genie who willed most of their careers into existence. They can’t stand that Republicans will have to work with Democrats to get anything done. So they stomp their feet and poke their chins out like kids whose mamas are about to drag them out of the store.
That’s entertaining to watch, for a little while, and so was this. But at some point kids grow up. When it comes to Ralph Norman and Dan Bishop, I wouldn’t count on it.
Tommy Tomlinson’s "On My Mind" column runs Mondays on WFAE and WFAE.org. It represents his opinion, not the opinion of WFAE. You can respond to this column in the comments section below. You can also email Tommy at ttomlinson@wfae.org.
