I study Congress for a living. One of the things that I do is determine which members of the House and Senate I respect. It just sort of happens. I'm a misanthrope, so there are a lot of people I don't like (most of humanity, by definition), but when you spend a large chunk of every day reading about Congress, you come to some assessments of which legislators are intelligent, honest, competent, sincere, etc. Ted Cruz is an asshole. That is a statement of fact. I am not falling prey to the ad hominem fallacy by stating that fact. I am simply stating a fact. If I rejected a Ted Cruz argument by referring to the fact that Ted Cruz is an asshole, then I would be falling prey to the ad hominem fallacy. Simply calling Cruz an asshole? Nope. Making a banal observation.
In fact, last Spring, I taught my Congress course, and at one point, I turned to the students and asked, who's the biggest asshole in Congress? In unison, every student in the room yelled, "Ted Cruz!" I love those moments. You may notice, though, that for as much as I make derogatory comments about individual legislators, Ted Cruz gets off rather light around here. Yes, I make comments about him being a member of the Senate's "Drama Club," and such, but I am far more brutal to Susan Collins, Bernie Sanders, the late John McCain and a general assortment of others one might not expect. "Moderates" and party rebels are supposed to be the ones treated with respect, and they are the ones I excoriate most forcefully, whereas my fawning praise for both Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner-- consummate insiders on alternate ideological sides, might leave one wondering how I decide whom I respect.
And why I hold Susan Collins in so much contempt, and why I did before her Kavanaugh vote, with the full expectation that she would do wrong based on my complete disdain for her.
Susan Collins may be the dumbest person in Congress, either chamber. And that's saying something since the House includes a guy you know by the name of, "Louie Gohmert." Yes, Suze may be even dumber than that redneck hick. Yeah, I'm an elitist. What of it? Books are good.
Let's start with Teddy. Not the one who murdered a woman in a drunk-driving accident. The non-murdering one. Yeah, that takes Roosevelt out of it too (that dude was a racist, imperialist psycho with some terrifying bloodlust). When it comes to political Teddys, Cruz is the non-murderer. That we know of. (Oh, and fuck you, Donald, for that batshit crazy lie about his dad, which people have forgotten because you tell so many batshit crazy lies that it is hard to keep track, you fucking lying sack of shit!). Sorry. Tangents. Anyway, Cruz is just an asshole. As an asshole-American myself, I have a hard time judging other assholes. Hypocrisy bugs me, so I try to avoid it. Basically, he's a conservative. If you don't like his political beliefs, you won't like him, but he's a conservative. Eh. His votes are really no different from Jeff Flake on anything of substance. Jeff Flake is going to bug me more because Flake does his bullshit moral posturing. And that brings me to the first basic point about what I find contemptible. Phony moral posturing. The more of that you do, the more I'll find you contemptible.
Pretend you're going to take a stand, and don't, and... I've got a problem with you. Hi, Suze! Have you started writing your speech yet for when "Brett" strikes down Roe v. Wade? It'll sound extra-annoying in that quavering voice of yours.
What else does Ted Cruz have that Little Susie doesn't? A brain. He's a conservative. He votes for policies that serve his ideological goals. Give him a conservative bill, and he'll vote yes, at the end of the day. He'll try to push the bill rightward with his Drama Club dramatics, pull stupid stunts like the 2013 shutdown, and such, but ultimately, he'll vote yes on conservative bills. He'll vote no on liberal bills. Offer him a conservative judicial nominee, even more importantly, and he'll vote yes. A liberal nominee, and he'll vote no.
Ted Cruz, Harvard Law graduate, is smart enough to be an "attitudinalist." He understands the, I think, indisputable fact that judges are ideological politicians in stupid costumes, motivated by normal political attitudes. And he votes accordingly.
Susan Collins is too stupid to understand this. Susan Collins is, as Rex Tillerson called Trump, a "fucking moron." Ted Cruz voted for Kavanaugh because he knows that the result will probably be a Justice who votes to overturn Roe v. Wade, and certainly a vote to uphold every single abortion restriction that makes its way to the Court. Susan Collins is way too fucking stupid to get this. Ted Cruz has retrograde attitudes towards women, but ultimately, they don't even matter to him because he cares about abortion. Susan Collins ostensibly cares about abortion too, and wants Justices to vote in the opposite direction. In every conceivable way, it was signaled that Kavanaugh disagrees with Collins. But, the reason I coined the term, "dupeshit," for her is that she tried to let herself get talked into voting for him by that "settled law" bullshit because she wanted to be talked into voting against her policy preferences.
Ted Cruz is smart enough to vote in a manner consistent with his policy preferences. Susan Collins is so fucking stupid that she actively tries to talk herself into voting against them. And succeeds so well that she will vote for an obvious liar and drunken rapist rather than vote consistently with her policy preferences. If you accept the premise that life begins at conception, which is a fundamentally religious belief, then at least Ted Cruz's vote is rationalizable and consistent with a defensible view of morality. Collins? Nope. She's just stupid.
So let's go back to Louie Gohmert. Louie Gohmert is stupid. He is about one neuron short of a synapse, but even he votes consistently with his policy preferences.
I pose the following question, then. Is Little Susie Collins dumber than Louie Gohmert? She is, in economics terms, at the very least, "irrational."
And she puts the lie to the notion that you just need more women in office if you want issues like rape taken seriously, as I have been addressing repeatedly. If they are Republicans, unless they happen to be named, "Lisa Murkowski," they're going to be rape apologists. Don't believe me? Susan Collins acted just like Joni Ernst, and Suze was supposed to be a "moderate." Behold, the modern GOP. You can't have a "modern" GOP. You do know the acronym, right?
Susan Collins is objectively stupid. She votes against her own policy preferences, and in fact, tries, actively to talk herself out of voting for her own policy preferences, and winds up voting to put a lying, drunken rapist on the Supreme Court. At least with Ted Cruz, he's just putting someone who agrees with him on basic points of ideology on the Court.
Susan Collins is more contemptible than Ted Cruz.
Yes, this method of analysis requires to you accept that acting on the basis of a variety of policy views can be legitimate. I do. Regular readers know that I am consistent in my fawning praise for both John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi. What did they have in common? As Speakers, they were both institutionalists, who acted brilliantly to pursue what they thought was in the best interest of the country. The fact that their policy beliefs were different doesn't mean I can't respect both because they both thought they were doing the right thing, simply looking at policy from different perspectives.
In contrast, consider Mitch McConnell. When the epitaph for American democracy is written, it may very well read, "Murdered in cold blood by Mitch McConnell." Mitch McConnell is what John Boehner would be if Boehner were a sociopath rather than a well-intentioned conservative. On policy, they generally agreed, and McConnell is similarly brilliant. The difference is that McConnell is willing to burn down every small-d democratic norm in service of short-term victory and securing power, and the damage of that, year after year, is beyond my ability to tally at this point. Here's a quick read over at Vox that reflects some of my thinking on this point for a while now.
But here's an interesting observation about McConnell. He has at least one, if not admirable trait, lack of vice. He has no ego, in the colloquial sense. He is willing to be hated and disrespected. If you think he's a bad person, so what? If you think he is stupid, and a failure, so what? There are a bunch of nitwits in the GOP who want McConnell removed as Senate leader. Seriously! He's the smartest guy in the party! And he doesn't care that his own party hates him! He'll just get the job done. The ability to subsume his own ego, the complete lack of vanity... it is, in its way, admirable.
Susan Collins? She wants you to think that she is a careful, cautious, pro-choice moderate, independent-minded and all that fucking bullshit, and not the mindless twit who gets manipulated by her betters every fucking time. Image matters to her. She lacks the lack-of-vanity that McConnell has. Lacks. Whatever. She's vain.
And full of shit. And incapable of thought. And she just put a lying, drunken rapist on the Supreme Court. And she's too stupid to understand that she acted against her own supposed policy preferences.
Even Louie Gohmert is smarter than that, and that dude is stupid.
