GOP Throwing Everything At Wall Just To See What Works

It's your Sunday show rundown!

The GOP is in disarray. So let's check in with some Republicans, on the Sunday shows, to see what they believe in these days. SPOILER:  It's unclear .

On CNN's "State of The Union", host Jake Tapper interviewed Arkansas GOP Governor Asa Hutchinson about the slew of anti-trans bills Arkansas has passed:

Tapper to Gov. Hutchinson: "You've said you want people to look at Arkansas as a place of tolerance & diversity...… https://t.co/yi94q5TjUg

— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1618150447.0 

TAPPER: A lot of Arkansas Republicans are really focused on trans kids. And they're targeting them with legislation. They offered a bill that would ban trans kids from participating in girls and women's sports. You signed that law, even though you have acknowledged there are no actual cases in Arkansas of trans kids causing any sort of problems on the athletic field. If this is not an actual problem in Arkansas, if there are no [...] athletes in Arkansas objecting to this, then what is the end result of this, other than demonizing a bunch of already vulnerable kids?

HUTCHINSON: Well, any time you are passing laws to address a problem that currently doesn't exist, but you worry about in the future, you have a potential of getting it wrong.

Did Hutchinson just admit they're passing laws to address problems that don't exist , it's just that they're worried that might exist at some point? Yes, he did.

After spewing some transphobic dogwhistles, Hutchinson noted that he vetoed a bill that went too far, even though it was clear he knew the legislature would just override him, which they did. 

So that happened.

Around the same time on "Fox News Sunday," GOP Senator John Thune of South Dakota was very courageous when asked to respond to Donald Trump calling Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a "dumb son of a bitch" and mocking McConnell's wife.

Cowardly stuff here from John Thune https: //t.co/O1xZjSnXPy

— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1618151449.0 

WALLACE: [Y]our reaction to President Trump at a meeting of the RNC big donors in Florida yesterday, calling Mitch McConnell a dumb blank?

THUNE: Right, right. Well, look, I mean, it's just -- it's like I said, I think a lot of that rhetoric is -- you know, it's part of the style and tone that comes with the former president.

That is quite a defense! Again, Trump called McConnell a "dumb son of bitch" and mocked his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, for her opportunistic resignation, yet the most Thune could muster was some slight critique of Trump's "style and tone." Truly, truly a profile in courage.

While Thune was exposing his belly for Trump, last week's returning champion GOP Senator Roger Wicker was trying the old Lucy and the football trick of politics in response to questions about President Joe Biden's infrastructure proposal.

 youtu.be   

WICKER: The president offered $1.9 trillion [for the Covid relief act]. Republicans came back with $600 billion, and the president said, that's not good enough. Make me another offer. Now, that's -- that is normally not the way negotiations go.

The president should have come back with a counteroffer, and if he will do that with the Republicans that are meeting with him in the White House tomorrow, I think we can get somewhere and have a much bigger infrastructure package than we were able to do under the last administration.

Actually that's precisely how negotiations work. President Biden made an initial offer, Republican senators came back with a smaller number, Biden said it wasn't good enough and asked them to come back with a counter-offer. Problem is that Republicans think compromise means "do everything we want or else." The COVID relief bill had bipartisan support with the people that matter: voters.

And if the bar is "a much bigger infrastructure package than we were able to do under the last administration," that shouldn't be hard since Trump may have had one million Infrastructure Weeks, but didn't actually do jackshit about infrastructure.

Wicker also lamented Joe Biden's lost centrism:

WICKER: Well, listen, we're willing to negotiate a much smaller package, but I thought Jonathan Karl's lead-in piece was -- made a very good point. Americans voted for a pragmatic moderate that they thought Joe Biden was. Where is that centrist candidate they thought they were voting for back in November of last year?

What is Wicker talking about? Well, watch this:  

Candidate Biden suggested he would be a moderate, transitional president. Nearly three months in, President Biden h… https: //t.co/SQ8SnpaXv4

— Jonathan Karl (@Jonathan Karl) 1618148101.0 

Here comes here comes the "Both Sides Brigade," this week led by Jonathan Karl, telling us what Biden is going to "ram through."

There is so much effort expended trying to turn sensible ideas radical just so they can pretend all issues have two sides. But infrastructure really isn't radical. Roads, bridges, airports, high-speed rail, broadband for rural areas -- these are all just sensible things, as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg explained well last week.

And replacing 100 percent of lead pipes in the country? The Roman Empire knew this was infrastucture in 312 BC when they created the early aqueducts. Don't be dense, Jonathan Karl.

Have a week.

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