2023, the year House Republicans played stupid games and won stupid prizes

Taylor Swift, Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2023, perfectly described congressional Republicans in the age of Donald Trump with the line — “You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.”

The first “stupid prize” for this past year’s GOP’s House majority is the trophy for the second least productive year of legislation in the history of Congress.

“Stupid prize” number two also goes to them, for producing so much public contempt for Congress.

According to a November Gallup poll, Congress has a dismal 15 percent approval rating and 82 percent disapproval. As the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) used to quip, the votes of approval could only have come from blood relatives and paid staffers.  

So much of the negativity around Congress is directly tied to the fact that Republicans have passed only 22 bills into law this session. Of those 22, one bill established a commemorative coin, and two renamed medical centers. 

Even the 80th Congress, famously by labeled by President Harry S. Truman as the “Do Nothing Congress” (1947-1949), managed to pass 906 bills.

A third “stupid prize,” goes to this Congress for being the first to expel a member for lying and embarrassing behavior.

A damning House Ethics report found Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) used campaign funds to buy Botox, and designer clothing, and to pay for access to the pornographic website OnlyFans. It was the first time in Congress’s history that a member was expelled without being convicted of a crime or supporting the Confederacy during the Civil War. 

Another dunce prize goes to the current House for censuring more of its members than any congress since 1870.

As the Washington Examiner’s Cami Mondeaux reported, the “trio of Democrats censured by the House this year marked a milestone not seen in more than 150 years, raising questions over whether the historically rare form of punishment is becoming weaponized in the lower chamber.”

“Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) became the 27th member in history to be censured…following earlier reprimands for his colleagues Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.),” Mondeaux wrote.

The practical effect of these censures is zero. But the time wasted that could have been used on serious issues is mountainous.

The biggest impact of Republican breakdown came when they ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy, (R-Calif.), who has announced he is immediately retiring from this clown show. He does not want to watch as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) threatens the current, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), in case he dares work with Democrats to fund the government this winter.

“If we are seven months into the Mike Johnson speakership and we’ve only moved a single-subject spending bill, then Mike Johnson would likely face a similar fate,” Gaetz has said.

These repeated episodes of Republican self-sabotage prompted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)  to write on X, formerly Twitter, that her GOP colleagues risk destroying one of the great institutions of democracy — the U.S. House of Representatives. “I can assure you Republican voters didn’t give us the majority to crash the ship,” Greene concluded. “Hopefully no one dies.”

They are not dying, but lots of Republicans and Democrats are leaving. More than 35 have decided to retire. 

That includes McCarthy, who was House Republicans’ number one fundraiser. That is bad news for the future of the GOP caucus.

Meanwhile, the GOP House is trying to impeach President Biden with no evidence.

All these problems result from GOP members kowtowing to former President Trump. 

His complete control of the party is evident in the loud criticism of Ronna Romney McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, for being insufficiently pro-Trump.

As former congresswoman Liz Cheney warns in her new book, Trump’s command over scared Republican lawmakers will end the balance of power between Congress and the presidency if Trump wins a second term in the White House. 

“People who say, ‘Well, if he’s elected, it’s not that dangerous because we have all of these checks and balances,’ don’t fully understand the extent to which the Republicans in Congress today have been co-opted,” Cheney told CBS News’ “Sunday Morning.” “One of the things that we see happening today is a sort of a sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States.”

Historians will have to figure out why House Republicans remain loyal to Trump even after witnessing the losses Republicans have endured under his leadership, especially in the 2020 election.

There has never been a demonstrable Trump “coattail effect,” whereby having him at the top of a GOP ticket leads to a major victory for congressional Republicans.

And according to a Reuters-Ipsos poll released last week: “In the seven states where the election was closest in 2020 — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Michigan — Biden had a four-point lead among Americans who said they were sure to vote.”

Reuters also noted: “Some 31 percent of Republican respondents said they would not vote for Trump if he was convicted of a felony crime by a jury.”

Republican members of Congress who stand by Trump in the new year will be singing the refrain of “stupid games” leading to “stupid prizes” — in this case a potential blue wave of defeat.

Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.