For those who remember the Muppet Show on television, one of the joys was seeing celebrity guest stars surrounded by muppet characters, usually in a typhoon of comic mayhem. Today, the Muppet Show is gone and C-Span offers a chilling substitute.
On Tuesday, three Republican congressmen may have felt a bit like guests surrounded by muppets as a vote to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas failed by a razor-thin margin. There was, for instance, Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., surrounded by his colleagues after he voted no, with puppet-like shouts and flippy gestures, trying to get him to change his vote.
It was a blow to a craven and useless project – Mayorkas being guilty only of working for a Democratic president – but it was not the moral rebuke some journalists made it out to be. Speaker Johnson mistakenly brought the resolution to the floor before he had enough votes and has promised to bring it back when more of his caucus is present.
Johnson also declared a bipartisan border security deal negotiated in the Senate a “nonstarter” admittedly before he had seen it, despite arguing on the other side of his mouth that the border is a “catastrophe” requiring immediate action.
Johnson denies that his opposition is about denying the Biden Administration a policy win and helping Donald Trump – who is likely to earn the Republican nomination for president again and wants to use the border as grist for his campaign. Johnson also denies that staging the first impeachment of a cabinet secretary since Ulysses Grant was in the White House is an election-year Muppet Show skit. Still, the escapade reeks of felt and latex.
Interestingly, the border security package won the support of the National Border Patrol Council this week – the body that represents Border Patrol agents and endorsed Trump for president twice.
They detain migrants, but how will they do amid these dark muppets?
