We're All Just Dead Mice to Republicans
And somehow the snake is still hungry.
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I'm sure some of y'all are wondering what the hell is going on in our Nation’s Capital tonight, and you’re probably any combination of too confused, too cynical, and too annoyed/depressed/enraged to look into it.
I’ll break down it down in brief, simple terms.
Republican Senators are being openly greedy and corrupt with all their personal asks in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill—that’s the proposed, massive federal budget bill—but they're struggling to fit all those asks, like a snake choking on a bucket of dead mice.
The snake is the small group of elites who stand to benefit most through ludicrously greedy tax cuts and whatnot.
The dead mice, of course, are the many, many millions of Americans who will lose out on horrific cuts to Medicaid and other essential programs.
Among other things, seventeen million Americans stand to lose health care coverage so that Republicans can make the wealthiest people in the country a fraction of a fraction wealthier than they are now.
And these Senate Republicans need to make each other happy because no more than three of them can decide they don’t wanna shove dead mice into the snake.
They already lost two: Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina. They can only lose one more Republican. If they lose four, the whole thing falls apart in the Senate.
Sen. Tillis was basically like: “I’ve been pretty much okay with shoving dead mice into snakes before now, but this is just way too many. This is a disgusting amount of dead mice, so many that I’m actually gonna retire after this term because I don’t have the stomach for it anymore.”
Meanwhile, you have Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri who was basically like: “I’m very upset that all these dead mice are being shoved into the snake. It’s a damn, crying shame. Terrible thing. Anyway, I’m gonna keep shoving dead mice into the snake because I’m a sociopath.”
And not only are they struggling to shove as many dead mice as they can into this choking snake, they somehow need to figure out a way to eventually shove that bloated, choking snake into a smaller, bloated, choking snake known as the House GOP in a process known as “reconciliation” because the Senate and House bills need to align for final passage.
And it’s really not looking great that House Republicans are gonna be satisfied with the number of dead mice shoved into the snake and Senate Republicans know this but they’re all too goddamn greedy and cruel to think straight and ensure passage in the House.
This is all obviously immoral and breathtakingly inhumane and will lead to unprecedented suffering and Senate Republicans know this and nearly all of them are trying to game the process for themselves.
Take, for example, Sen. Lisa Murkowski—she’s an independent caucusing with the Republicans—who was persuaded by her Republican colleagues to shove all these dead mice into the snake so long as some of the mice from her home state of Alaska are exempt.
But then the Senate Parliamentarian—that’s the Senate procedural expert who ensures the whole process is in line with Senate bylaws, kinda like ensuring none of the mice are poisoned—piped up today and was basically like: “Hold on, you can’t do that. Alaskan dead mice aren’t special. Figure out another way.”
So, all these GOP senators are sitting there trying to figure out who gets their own preferred dead mice shoved into the gaping maw of this suffocating nope rope while knowing it may not eventually get down the throat of the smaller nope rope.
Their greed and shamelessness have incapacitated them, which is why much of D.C. is still working this late, long past midnight, counting how many dead mice are getting shoved into the snake and then taken back out and then put back in.
If this is all very disgusting to read, you have an excellent grasp on the general feeling here at the moment.
That’s where we are right now, and it remains very, very unclear what happens next.
I'm with Indiana Jones, I don't like snakes. But, it's a very apt description of Republicans right now. And, since I live in MO, thank you for the snark about Josh Hawley. Once again, he ran away.
With all the attention on Medicaid etc cuts (rightly so) they are also killing renewable energy and my solar business will die and take 50 jobs with it.