Bill Straub: Whiz kid Massie up to his old tricks as Republicans muddle toward leadership disaster

And it appeared, at least for a while, that Massie had finally gone Hollywood and embraced the mainstream, although it was the Republican version of mainstream, which these days, is as warped as Bukowski’s poetry. He was a good boy, even voting to approve the rule for a spending plan aimed at reducing the national debt that drew opposition from several conservatives.

But the walls came tumbling down last week when the House voted to oust McCarthy from the speakership for sins both real and imagined. Massie fought against the tide – an unaccustomed position since he, as previously noted, sought to give two previous Speakers from his party the old heave-ho – but his efforts in McCarthy’s behalf went for naught.

Now our Whiz Kid is back at his old games-playing schtick. A majority of the House Republican Caucus lined up behind Rep. Steve Scalise, R-LA, to replace McCarthy. Since the GOP holds only a slim majority in the chamber, Scalise couldn’t afford to lose more than four of their votes since Democrats would have, certainly, unanimously opposed the nomination. As of noon on Thursday, 13 House Republicans expressed their opposition, more than enough to sink not only Scalise’s hopes but efforts to craft a spending bill for the current fiscal year, which carries a Nov. 17 deadline as the result of a continuing resolution that, by coincidence, cost McCarthy his job.

You have probably guessed that Massie, reverting to form, was one of the hold-outs. He endorsed Rep. Jim Jordan, R-OH, as worthless a ball of flesh as has ever existed, to replace McCarthy but he fell short in the GOP caucus and, despite the failure, Wonder Boy won’t budge off the mark.

Now the hammer has dropped. Scalise, realizing he could do nothing to convince the hold-outs to come to his side, has removed his name from consideration for the speakership. Once again, Wonder Boy Massie’s fingerprints are all over the crime scene.

What was old is new.

Massie said he informed Scalise he wouldn’t be supporting him.

“Surprises are for little kids at birthday parties, not Congress,” Massie said on the X social media site. “So I let Scalise know in person that he doesn’t have my vote on the floor, because he has not articulated a viable plan for avoiding an omnibus.”

Now, for those keeping score at home, an omnibus is a super-sized bill that, in this case, would produce a spending plan for every nook and cranny of the federal government for the entire fiscal year. An omnibus diverges from the stated process of passing 12 individual appropriations measures. But Congress hasn’t proved able to get its act together and adopt the dozen spending packages on time since 1997.

Since then, it’s been series of continuing resolutions to keep the doors temporarily open and then an omnibus.

Massie has a legitimate point. This is no way to run a railroad and he’s suspicious of what mischief might befall the federal budget as items slip in and out. But time’s a wasting. Congress is probably as divided as it has been at any time since perhaps the Civil War. Lawmakers can’t even agree who the next Speaker will be. Getting 12 spending measures through, even at a breakneck pace, is not possible. Failing to do will result in a lengthy federal government shutdown.

And Massie is part of the problem. He has shown neither the ability nor the inclination to compromise, a facet of his nature that will make it nearly impossible to reach a resolution. He’s just one vote, but string enough of them together and you reach deadlock.

The late Sen. Wendell Ford, D-Owensboro, probably advanced the best plan – switch the federal government to a biennial budget, which funds the federal government over two years. It affords extended consideration of the nation’s needs as well as more time to work things out and get more people on board.

Emergencies can be addressed the same way they are now – through supplementals for extra disaster appropriations that occur as the result of floods, tornados and the like.

Massie, our Whiz Kid, is a perfect example of the sort of problem confronting the next Speaker, whoever it might be – the expanding chasm between traditional conservatives and the crazy wing that wants to drain the swamp.

Traditional Republicans, like Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-KY, the GOP floor leader, have always favored a muscular foreign policy that confronts your enemies, both real and imagined, and your allies.

But a growing number of Republicans like Massie, following the lead of former President Donald J. Trump, are anxious to recede from foreign involvement.

Massie, for instance, recently told Business Insider reporter Bryan Metzger, “I am opposed to foreign aid.

“Some people say my position on opposing all foreign aid is radical. I think what’s radical is sending money to other countries when we’re going bankrupt.”

The country faces economic challenges but it is not going bankrupt. It doesn’t help the situation, however, when Massie treats with hugs and kisses every tax cut that pops into any nitwit’s brain since those measures are further expanding the national deficit he supposedly fears so much.

Over the past year Massie has voted more against measures aimed at making life miserable for Russia in wake of its invasion of Ukraine more than a dozen times. Now, despite the inhumanity perpetrated by Hamas this week in its ghastly terrorist attack on Israel that cost hundreds of innocent lives, Massie indicated an unwillingness to support a stand-alone bill dispatching additional aid to Israel.

Make no mistake – Steve Scalise is no prize and shouldn’t be considered for dog catcher, not to mention Speaker of the House. He is reputed to have said he was David Duke – a former Louisiana state representative, White supremacist, antisemite and one-time grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan – “without the baggage.” It’s a scenario questioned, legitimately, by Dr. D. Stephen Voss, an associate professor of political science at the University of Kentucky who is well acquainted with Louisiana politics, but let’s just say any review of Scalise’s voting record is unlikely to gain him any support from the NAACP.

Now, to be fair, it’s unlikely Scalise would have been any better or worse than either McCarthy or Jordan.

And that’s the problem.