The GOP is divorced from reality and believing their own made-up conspiracy theories. They'll spend all their time tossing red meat culture issues to the base while ignoring the pressing needs of our country.

Can you govern on a lie? House Republicans give it a try.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/13/house-republicans-govern-lie-weaponization-committeee/

#GOPLies
#GOPWontGovern
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPInsane
#GOPDrunkOnOwnKoolAid

“Despite the ‘deep state’s’ repeated attempts to stop me, I stand before you as a duly elected member of the United States Congress and tell you that a deep state exists and is perhaps the strongest covert weapon the left has against the American people,” he told the House.
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Yee-haw! Zinke was speaking in support of a new Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, or, as Democrats call it, the “Tinfoil Hat Committee.” In substance, it’s the QAnon committee, with a remit to probe the “deep state” and other wacky conspiracy theories. With the panel’s creation, QAnon completes its journey from message board for the paranoid to official policy of the House Republican majority.
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how could Republicans possibly govern? Now we know. They are going to govern by fantasy and legislate on the basis of fiction.

On Monday, their first day of legislative business, they voted to repeal funding for a fictitious “87,000 IRS agents” who don’t exist and never will.
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What next? Sorry, that’s secret. And therein might be the biggest falsehood of all. After numerous promises of “transparency” from the new leaders, they are refusing to reveal multiple backroom concessions Kevin McCarthy made to secure the speakership.
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One change Republicans did reveal is the gutting of the Office of Congressional Ethics (it won’t be able to hire new staff when current employees leave), which will help shield lawmakers’ wrongdoing from public scrutiny. Also made known: a commitment to vote on abolishing the IRS and eliminating income taxes.
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Boasting to reporters about passage of “the bill to repeal those 87,000 IRS agents,” he claimed that the Congressional Budget Office “confirmed” that those agents would “go after people making less than $200,000 a year,” including “the single mom who’s working two shifts at a restaurant.”

In reality, the IRS is hiring only about 6,500 agents — and that’s over a decade. In reality, the CBO said that only “a small fraction” of revenue from increased enforcement would come from taxpayers earning less than $400,000 a year.

Here’s what else CBO said: The Republicans’ bill to cut funds to the IRS — the new majority’s first legislation — would add $114 billion to the deficit. So much for fiscal responsibility.

But Republicans spent the entire debate repeating the outright falsehood that 87,000 “agents” would “target American working-class families” (Jason T. Smith, Mo.) and “harass and spy on middle-class and low-income families” (Michelle Steel, Calif.). Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) falsely said the CBO had projected “as many as 700,000 more audits, [of] Americans making less than $75,000 a year.”
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Former majority leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told the House it was the “most dishonest, demagogic rhetoric that I have seen.”
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Sean Hannity visited the Rayburn Room off the House floor this week where, under the watchful eye of a George Washington oil portrait, he broadcast interviews with McCarthy and his leadership team.

Total mentions of inflation: 1.

Total mentions of jobs: 1.

Total mentions of the economy: 2.

Total mentions of investigations: 20.

“Thank you, brother,” McCarthy said to Hannity before they got down to probing all of the planned probes: investigating the FBI, DOJ, China, the “weaponized” feds, the Afghanistan pullout, covid-19’s origins, Anthony Fauci, the “Biden family syndicate,” Hunter Biden’s laptop and more.

And now: President Biden’s handling of classified documents. Intelligence Committee Chairman Michael R. Turner (Ohio), who dismissed Trump’s hoarding of classified documents as a “bookkeeping issue,” now demands “a full and thorough review” of Biden’s conduct. Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (Ky.), who said probing the Trump documents would “not be a priority,” said of Biden’s documents: “We’re probing it.”
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And now comes word that Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) and other Republican moderates, in a sign of their lack of faith in McCarthy, have begun talks with Democrats about a “discharge petition.” That would circumvent GOP leaders, increasing the debt limit without them.

Republican leaders are right to be paranoid about “weaponization.” But the biggest conspiracy might come from within."

"The good news is that most of the U.S. government remains in the hands of functional adults. The bad news is that the House is headed down the rabbit hole to its own Wonderland, where things will become “curiouser and curiouser,” and its members will have to placate their extremists by believing “six impossible things before breakfast” every day."

The GOP Goes Down the Rabbit Hole - The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/01/the-gop-goes-down-the-rabbit-hole/672689/

#GOPAlternativeReality
#GOPInsane
#MagaIdiots
#GOPLovesPower

"...Meanwhile, Jordan’s fellow leader in the Coalition of the Unhinged, Paul Gosar, also tweeted on Saturday that Republicans “will conduct a real investigation into J6. The effort to attempt a coup between traitor Gen. Mark Milley and [Nancy] Pelosi will be reviewed and exposed.” This, apparently, is a reference to when Pelosi, as speaker, called Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, two days after January 6 because she was concerned that Trump might try to start a war as a diversion from his election loss. (She wasn’t alone: Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, among others, reportedly had the same concern. So did I.)

I doubt that most Republicans in Congress actually believe that the most senior military officer in the United States is a traitor. And yet, they all remain quiet—because under the GOP’s rules, any one member can move to vacate the speaker’s chair and start the whole leadership fiasco all over again, and that includes Gosar, the dentist from Arizona turned conspiracy-obsessed crank who now sits in the People’s House.

But Gosar’s gibbering raises the larger question of what else McCarthy might have agreed to while he was slicing up his political soul like a pound of cheap olive loaf. We’re in the dark—and so are many members of Congress, apparently. Punchbowl is reporting that the rules package, the first order of business about how the House will run, contains a secret three-page addendum—some sort of deal between McCarthy and his fellow Republicans that the rest of the members have not seen.
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The good news is that most of the U.S. government remains in the hands of functional adults. The bad news is that the House is headed down the rabbit hole to its own Wonderland, where things will become “curiouser and curiouser,” and its members will have to placate their extremists by believing “six impossible things before breakfast” every day."