Former Rep. Jason Chaffetz may have to wait a while before he gets invited to play golf with John Boehner.
The former House Speaker trashed Chaffetz in a lengthy piece in Politico that ran over the weekend, calling him a “total phony” more interested in self-promotion than legislating.
“F*** Chaffetz,” Boehner said. The same goes for another House member, Rep. Jim Jordan. “They’re both a**holes.”
It was not exactly a novel assessment of Chaffetz’s tenure in the House, but made headlines nonetheless, given that it came from the nicotine saturated lips of the guy who was, for a spell, the highest-ranking Republican in the country.
It seems like it was a month of candid assessments in a business not known for candor.
Look at Jeff Flake. The Arizona Republican Senator had had enough, and last week said he was walking away, abandoning his re-election bid and, in the process, blaming President Donald Trump for the rancid mess our political process has become.
“It is time for our complicity and our accommodation of the unacceptable to end,” Flake pronounced.
Liberals and many moderate Republicans heaped praise on Flake — more than he deserved, frankly, since he has voted with Trump nearly 95 percent of the time and probably was going to lose his seat either to his Trump-backed conservative challenger or the Democrat.
Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker said this month that Trump is “obviously not going to rise to the occasion as president,” and Sen. John McCain’s ongoing feud with Trump is well-documented.
Unfortunately, all of these guys have managed to find their spine on their way out of office — or, in Boehner’s case, already out on the back nine of the golf course. It’s like giving Orrin Hatch a unicycle for his birthday — doesn’t do a whole lot of good at this point.
During a recent online town hall, Sen. Mike Lee was asked about Flake’s comments, and Lee said that he will speak up when he sees any president abusing the constitutional authority, but “that doesn’t mean I’ll be able to call him out every time he says something with which I disagree.”
Now and then Lee has criticized the president — most notably calling on Trump to get out of the race last year, after an old video was released of the candidate boasting about sexually assaulting women, but more recently when he took a firm stand against a neo-Nazi march in Virginia.
Good for Lee for doing it.
So maybe he just left his moral compass at home the day he decided to cozy up to Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.
In a Fox News interview, Lee said he sees eye-to-eye with Moore on constitutional and separation of powers issues. This is the same Roy Moore who was twice thrown out as Alabama’s chief justice for his judicial activism, and who said homosexuality should be illegal because it’s not mentioned in the Constitution — as if there is explicit constitutional language sanctioning whatever it is Moore does in his bedroom.
Moore has said the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage was worse than the court’s 1857 decision condoning slavery, he recently said a judge who ruled against Trump’s ban on transgender soldiers in the military should be impeached, and he argued the only Muslim member of the U.S. House should not be allowed to serve because of his religion.
To his credit, Lee — who holds the Senate seat once occupied by Reed Smoot, who was initially blocked from taking office in 1902 because of his Mormon faith — said Moore is “dead-wrong” on a religious litmus test for members of Congress.
The truth is Moore is dead wrong on pretty much everything. It hasn’t stopped Lee from giving Moore a glowing endorsement and doing fundraisers for the Alabama Republican.
Moore didn’t even need the help, he’s up by double digits in most polls, but by embracing Moore, Lee embraces the fringey and even dangerous ideas that the Alabama candidate espouses.
Before conservatives start shooting email flames, I’ll say, you’re absolutely right, Democrats are often no better when it comes to blind partisanship.
But here’s the point: Utahns elect people to Congress to be their voice and stand up for what they believe. That starts with the Constitution, but doesn’t end there. It includes demanding dignity of the presidency, respect for our democratic institutions and equality for the citizens.
Leadership won’t come from this White House. So until more members of Congress start putting those principles ahead of cultish partisanship, the climate in Washington will continue to deteriorate. And they need to start finding their voices now, and not waiting until they’re headed for the life rafts.