Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
There's no record of Edmund Burke -- the great Irish-born British statesman and father of modern conservatism -- actually saying what is often attributed to him: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." But it does capture his worldview well enough.
It also captures a renewed, possibly short-lived triumph of courage and wisdom within the Republican Party.
Amid threats to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson for allowing a vote on aid to Ukraine, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) captured the party's own divide between the good and the rest in colorful terms on CNN Sunday. "It's my absolute honor to be in Congress," he said, "but I serve with some real scumbags."
Gonzales was taking aim at Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Bob Good (R-Va.), but he could have included quite a few others.
For the last few years, congressional Republicans have been split into factions that are not ideological in the traditional sense. Pick nearly any standard domestic policy issue -- abortion, gun rights, taxes, immigration -- and you won't see much evidence of the schism. Even (public) support for Donald Trump doesn't delineate the divide.
No, the difference is largely over tactics, rhetoric and psychology. One faction, comprising an overwhelming majority of the House GOP caucus, is interested in accomplishing the possible. The other is more interested in aiming for the impossible and then complaining about falling short.
Of course, members of the latter group don't admit to the impossibility of their goals; that would ruin the con. They insist that with enough willpower, particularly among their leaders, they could impose their will on the Democratic-controlled Senate and White House. They make that case on television, on social media and in floor speeches. And when they inevitably fail, they whine that they were "betrayed" by Republican quislings who collaborated with the Democrats, all while raising money off the notion that they're courageous warriors who are willing to lose on principle.
The success of their shtick has depended on a number of factors. One is that the Republicans' narrow House majority empowers the fringe.
To become speaker last year, Kevin McCarthy agreed to a change in the rules that makes it possible for a single representative to move to "vacate the chair" -- that is, trigger a vote on whether to depose the speaker. That's what happened last year after McCarthy avoided a default on the national debt, kept the government open and committed other alleged outrages.
Gaetz and seven other Republicans, representing less than 2 percent of the country, were enough to oust McCarthy against the wishes of 95 percent of the Republican caucus, with Democrats uniformly hewing to the bipartisan tradition of refusing to support a speaker of the opposite party. In other words, the Republican firebrands, who think the worst sin imaginable is to work with Democrats, voted with Democrats to oust their leader.
McCarthy's successor, Johnson, brought four bills to the House floor Saturday -- three to provide vital military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, and one to force a Chinese company to sell TikTok or cease operating in the United States. The bills passed overwhelmingly, with all but the Ukraine bill winning a majority of Republicans' votes.
Now Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) want to oust Johnson for his "betrayal" -- not of the caucus, country or Congress but of the tiny fringe faction that thinks it should call the shots.
They'll probably fail, for several reasons. First, few Republicans -- including some who oppose Johnson -- want to be seen following the lead of the House's most notorious cranks and bigots. Second, Trump doesn't want the Republican caucus to turn into an embarrassing circular firing squad while he is running for president. (It's remarkable that Trump is worried that other Republicans will make him look bad.) Third, Democrats have signaled that they will help Johnson keep his job after he courageously did the right thing. And finally, no one appears to want Johnson's job who could also get the job.
The most important development for the party in all of this is that the rest of the caucus has realized that going along with the arsonists -- all of whom have safe seats and would be happy to throw their bombs from the House minority -- amounts to politically suicidal appeasement.
"The majority of the majority -- the vast majority of the majority -- is sick and tired of these high school antics," Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) said last week. He also noted that "the only way to stop a bully is to push back hard."
One can only hope that realization sticks.
First posted April 24, 2024. (C)2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.