CLOWN SHOW: Kevin McCarthy’s House Agenda Rollout
September 23, 2022
In a tellingly comical series of events, House Republicans’ rollout of their extreme agenda has been like an episode straight out of Veep.
First, McCarthy made the agenda website public early, before taking it down and password protecting it after it was reported on.
HuffPost: “House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) was supposed to announce the party’s ‘Commitment to America’ on Friday, but instead, a multi-page document bearing that name briefly appeared online Wednesday on McCarthy’s website. Approximately an hour after New York Times reporter Annie Karni tweeted it out, the part of McCarthy’s site with the document was locked down and accessible only with a password.”
Then McCarthy decided to use a fake Abraham Lincoln quote to talk about his agenda:
Daily Beast: “At the top of a letter to Republican lawmakers thanking them for their contributions to the ‘Commitment To America’—the policy agenda they are launching near Pittsburgh on Friday—McCarthy included a quote attributed to Lincoln. ‘Commitment,’ reads the quote, ‘is what transforms a promise into reality.’ For McCarthy’s purposes, it’s a pitch-perfect message. There’s just one problem: there’s no record of Lincoln actually saying it.”
And then, to top it off, McCarthy released a video about his plan that featured stock footage of a Russian oil drilling rig.
HuffPost: “‘We celebrate the rich heritage of the American story and the vibrancy of the American Dream,’ the voice says, over footage of a drilling rig at sunrise. But this video snippet, an apparent nod to America’s natural resources, wasn’t filmed in America. It’s stock footage created by Serg Grbanoff, a filmmaker based in Russia. Grbanoff told HuffPost that he filmed this scene in Russia’s Volgograd region.”
The video also used footage of a child running in a field in Russia.
HuffPost: “In another scene, a boy is seen smiling and running in a field with a toy airplane. The words ‘Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ appear on the screen, a reference to the Declaration of Independence. This clip was also created by Grbanoff, and also filmed in the Volgograd region.”
…and footage of a Slovakian grocery store.
HuffPost: “But this is footage from a European grocery store. If you look closely at the screenshot, you can see a tag hanging on one of the store shelves that says ‘AKCIA,’ a Slovak word meaning ‘action.’ Informally, ‘AKCIA’ is used to designate sales in Slovakian stores.”
But, do not let the failed rollout of the agenda distract you from the extreme policies that Republicans have proposed. Republicans have said they will they will work to raise costs by repealing Democrats’ legislation to lower drug prices, ban abortion in every state, gut Social Security and Medicare, and more. The American people cannot afford this extreme agenda.