Republicans see the writing on the wall, and it signals disaster for them

In all of 2023, a dysfunctional Congress passed only 27 bills. Worse still, other than kicking the can down the road by passing short-term extensions of funding, what they passed was mostly things like renaming some Veterans Affairs clinics and commissioning a commemorative coin for the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps.

Republicans took a record 15 humiliating votes to elect a speaker, then removed that speaker even though he was the party’s best fundraiser, then they spent more weeks in fruitless attempts to name a new speaker before settling for someone whose only attribute was that he was too unknown to have dedicated enemies. Then there was the resignation of the former speaker, deeply embarrassing failures to simply count their votes, internal divisions of every description, a Republican member expelled from Congress, and the deep, deep ignominy of destroying the border deal they had spent the entire year demanding just to please Donald Trump.

The walls on the Republican side of the House and Senate may not actually be inscribed with mene mene tekel upharsin, but they might as well be. Weighed and found wanting is an excellent description of Republicans in Congress—and it doesn’t take a Biblical prophet to read this message. As CNN reports, faced with a chaotic party engaged in consuming its own to benefit a candidate who has already taken them to defeat in the last three election cycles, some big-name Republicans are heading for the exits.