Send in the Clowns

By Martin H. Levinson

The Republican Party is the fun party, filled with politicians frolicking wherever and whenever they can. Exhibit A: the Republican funsters in the House of Representatives.

The Republican comedy troupe in the House has kept the nation rolling in the aisles with jokers such as Lauren Boebert, who after being ejected from a movie theater where she was filmed fondling her boyfriend’s genitals, delivered this killer one-liner to an usher, “Do you know who I am?” (afterwards, employing physical comedy, she gave the staffer the finger) and the gaffe queen Marjorie Taylor Greene, another nutso humorist, as exemplified by her hilarious riff on Jewish space lasers and hysterical Nazi-related reference to “Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police.” There’s also the dissembling comic genius George Santos, a cockamamie conman whose outrageous lies and absurd denials make him the equal of other more famous prevaricating Republican funnymen—wags like the celebrated farceur Richard “Those tapes are mine” Nixon and his sidesplitting sidekick Spiro “There’s nothing wrong with taking bribes” Agnew. And let’s not forget former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy who, with his ability to turn into Jell–O pudding when asked to take positions on controversial issues, has raised the bar in showing how mirthfully unprincipled a politician can be.

The Senate abounds with GOP humorists, entertainers like the uproarious Ted Cruz, who risibly read Green Eggs and Ham to filibuster the Affordable Care Act, and the Trump-era contortionist Lindsay Graham, who during the 2016 campaign called Trump “crazy” and “unfit for office” and then went on to become a Trump lapdog and one of Trump’s most devoted court jesters. Senator Mitch McConnell, a prune-faced cutup with a deadpan delivery, may be even funnier than Cruz and Graham with his skill at playing practical jokes, such as not allowing the Senate to vote on Merrick Garland, Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, and blaming Trump for inciting an insurrection but voting to acquit him of that charge.

The ringmaster of the Republican comedy crew is a guy who made his comic bones on a TV show called The Apprentice where he pretended to be a successful businessman. He was so funny on that show, firing people and humiliating them for their incompetence, and had such great ratings that he decided to run for president. His penchant for pungent punchlines and goofy nicknames, like “crooked Hillary,” “little Marco,” and “low energy Jeb,” endeared him to the Republican base and won him the office. Once in power the gaiety kept on with Trump’s incitement of an insurrection, an in-your-face obstruction of the Mueller investigation, and a mandate that people swear loyalty oaths to him.

Bless his facetious and treasonous soul, Trump keeps making the nation laugh with his smug mug shot taken recently in Atlanta, his playing hide-and-seek with the FBI using classified national documents that he buried all around Mar-a-Lago, and his good-natured threats to people who might testify against him in his upcoming criminal trials.

God willing, the Republican party will continue its viability as the nation’s foremost chuckle-worthy political faction. Policy, legislation, and budgeting be damned. When it comes to running the country, send in the clowns.