While Representative Matt Gaetz and the “hateful eight” have acted in a rather crude manner with no foresight in taking their grievances against leadership, they do have valid grievances. Republicans are very bad when it comes to keeping promises to voters.

Before the 2010 midterm elections, the Republican base was urged to come out in force and help the GOP take the House in order to repeal Obamacare, even though they damn well knew they couldn’t keep that promise.

The House Republicans’ “Pledge to America” vowed “to repeal and replace the government takeover of health care with common sense solutions focused on lowering costs and protecting American jobs.” The party won more than five dozen seats, the most in seven decades. There is no chance this pledge will be achieved.

While Republicans have a big majority in the House, Democratic control of the Senate and the presidential veto power make repeal or major change impossible.
— New York Times, 11/22/10

In 2014, Republican voters got more of the same as they were told giving the GOP a solid majority in the Senate would result in the repeal of Obamacare, even though they damn well knew they couldn’t keep that promise.

In addition to their oath to keep up their efforts to repeal Obamacare, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner said Wednesday the new Congress would authorize the Keystone pipeline and send a slew of House-passed jobs bills to the president next come January. That’s when Republicans will formally take control of the Senate, putting Republicans in charge of the entire legislative branch.
— Daily Mail, 11/6/14

Of course, Republicans didn’t have that vetoproof majority so Obamacare (again) stayed in place. But during the 2016 midterms, leadership assured voters that a Republican House, Senate AND president would mean the end to Obamacare. We just had to elect Donald Trump and it would get done….

Republicans narrowly failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But their newly passed tax legislation included a provision getting rid of Obamacare’s mandate requiring Americans to buy insurance, and President Donald Trump immediately declared victory in the partisan health care wars. “When the individual mandate is being repealed, that means Obamacare is being repealed,” he crowed at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday. “We have essentially repealed Obamacare.”
— Politico Magazine, 12/20/17

Seeing how Republicans on the Hill look at their base as suckers, why not play this hand one more time!

“If we can get the House back and keep our majority in the Senate, and President Trump wins reelection, I can promise you not only are we going to repeal Obamacare, we’re going to do it in a smart way where South Carolina will be the biggest winner,” Senator Lindsey Graham said in an interview with a South Carolina radio station.
— The Hill, 8/8/19

Obamacare is just one of many promises made-promises unkept by Republicans over the course of many years. There’s balanced budgets, lower taxes, and many more. Just because Republicans depend on short memories and assumed intellectual inferiority, doesn’t mean trust will continue to be in infinite supply. We all know there’s hope because Donald Trump made many pledges to Americans in 2015-16 and actually accomplished more despite the Category 5 political interference he faced his entire term from within the party, from Democrats, and their media. He left office with achievements for the American people than was, more often than not, labeled “historic”.

Some politicians can keep promises, while Republicans can definitively only point to one in recent memory.

Republicans don’t have a monopoly when it comes to blatantly breaking promises to the base. Malcolm X made it clear that any black person in 1964 that voted for Democrats was a “chump” and “traitor to your race”. Democrats continue to break promises and blacks continue to give them the supermajority of their votes.

Unlike President Donald Trump, Republicans appear more interested in keeping their personal perks of power that delivering on promises made to put them in their seats of power. Until we have term limits (a very unlikely self-inflicted wound), there’s no reason to believe any promise a politician makes before or after an election. We all known this yet we allow them to sucker us every two years.

And seeing how Newt Gingrich is going off halfcocked against Matt Gaetz, let’s not forget the 1994 “Contract with America” that helped Republicans take the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years.

How many of those promises were actually written into law…?

Some observers cite the Contract with America as having helped secure a decisive victory for the Republicans in the 1994 elections. Republicans were elected to a majority of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1953, and some parts of the Contract were enacted. Most elements did not pass Congress, while others were vetoed by, or substantially altered in negotiations with President Bill Clinton, who would sarcastically refer to it as the “Contract on America”
— Wikipedia

Yeah, the “Contract with America” helped Republicans and Gingrich to become speaker. Making promises they knew they could keep? Not so much.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 24% of Likely U.S. voters said removing McCarthy from his position as Speaker would be good for Congress, while 26% thought it would be bad for Congress. Forty-one percent (41%), however, said it would not make much difference.
— Rasmussen Reports, 10/4/23

While this doesn’t defend Matt Gaetz’ actions, it does make them understandable.

Enter the latest distributor, blogger Erick Erickson.

I haven’t been in a Safeway since my family moved home from Dubai in 1990.

While that may be true, it’s clear he doesn’t avoid other supermarkets. Timing is everything.

The congressman did not want to be seen with me on Capitol Hill. He needed to get some stuff anyway and decided he’d let me walk with him through the cereal and dairy selections at the Safeway near my hotel. He is not happy with President Trump. He was never a die hard Trump supporter. He supported him in the general and never expected him to win. But he did. So the congressman, whose district Trump won, has been a regular supporter on Fox News and elsewhere defending the President. He is happy to be quoted, so long as I don’t name him. He says he just needs to vent. I suggest what we’re doing is one of the reason’s Trump won — a congressman says nice things in public and bad things in private.

“Everybody does this shit,” he says. It’s his turn. We have known each other for years and have been promising to connect this week while I’m passing through DC. So this is it. I’m passing along his comments, not endorsing them.
— Erick Erickson, 4/11/18

IF that person actually exists.

#NeverTrump blogger Erick Erickson has found it within himself to relay the words of an anonymous Republican in a conversation he claims to have had at a Safeway supermarket somewhere in the Washington, D.C. perimeter. We admire his memory skills in being able to document the rant of this congressman word-for-word. Obviously, it would’ve had to be by memory because it’s hard to believe an irate congressman would allow himself to be documented via a smartphone or other recording device while demanding to remain anonymous… again, IF the dairy aisle meeting really occurred.

I read you writing about this, about wanting to say nice things when you can and criticize when you need to. He may be an idiot, but he’s still the President and leader of my party and he is capable of doing some things right.

But dammit he’s taking us all down with him. We are well and truly f**ked in November. Kevin [McCarthy] is already circling like a green fly circling sh*t trying to take Paul’s [Ryan] job because nobody thinks he’s sticking around for Nancy [Pelosi]. She’s going to f**k up the cafeteria again too. [Lord’s name in vain], at least I’ll probably lose too and won’t have to put up with that sh*t.

It’s like Forrest Gump won the presidency, but an evil, really f*cking stupid Forrest Gump. He can’t help himself. He’s just a f**king idiot who thinks he’s winning when people are b*tching about him. He really does see the world as ratings and attention. I hate Forrest Gump. I listen to your podcast and heard you hate it too. What an overrated piece of sh*t movie. Can you believe it beat the Shawshank Redemption?

To make this encounter appear authentic, Erickson interjected some of his on-call wisdom.

Aside from his misspelling “Spielberg”, Erick’s gray matter stenograph was flipped back on.

Judiciary is stacked with a bunch of people who can win re-election so long as they don’t piss off Trump voters in the primary. But if we get to summer and most of the primaries are over, they just might pull the trigger if the President fires Mueller. The sh*t will hit the fan if that happens and I’d vote to impeach him myself. Most of us would, I think. Hell, all the Democrats would and you only need a majority in the House. If we’re going to lose because of him, we might as well impeach the motherf**ker. Take him out with us and let Mike [Pence] take over. At least then we could sleep well at night. You know having Mike as President would really piss off all the right people, too. They think they hate Trump. Mike is competent.

I say a lot of shit on TV defending him, even over this. But honestly, I wish the motherf*cker would just go away. We’re going to lose the House, lose the Senate, and lose a bunch of states because of him. All his supporters will blame us for what we have or have not done, but he hasn’t led. He wakes up in the morning, sh*ts all over Twitter, sh*ts all over us, sh*ts all over his staff, then hits golf balls. F*ck him. Of course, I can’t say that in public or I’d get run out of town.
— Erick Erickson “quoting” unnamed Republican Congressman

If Erick Erickson was any kind of blogger/writer of integrity, he would have never agreed to keep such comments off the record.

If Erick Erickson was any kind of Republican, he would never have allowed such a tirade to continue without proper rebuttal, but seeing how Erickson is a #NeverTrumper, IF that conversation occurred, he was probably nodding in agreement while trying to pay attention as he was surrounded by hundreds of readily-edibles.

Our guess is that this is #FakeNews by another so-called conservative irrelevant begging for attention, and in the liberal Democrat tradition, by any means necessary.

“a person who differs markedly (as in social adjustment or sexual behavior) from what is considered normal for a group”

One would be curious as to what O’Donnell meant as Bill Clinton would be a hard act to top when it comes to sexual deviancy in the White House. But I digress….

Lawrence O’Donnell says Donald Trump’s lies are finally catching up with him as Republicans break rank and say that there’s no evidence to support his claims that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.
— MSNBC, 3/16/17

Granted this is nothing new as Mr. O’Donnell’s Twitter feed is pretty much insult after insult and retweets of other insults. WMAL’s Chris Plante pointed out on the 17th that O’Donnell was also aided by yet another deceptive video edit (courtesy of the artisans at NBC News) designed to make Donald Trump appear to be a liar via a recent conversation Fox News’ Bret Baier and Speaker Paul Ryan were having about the STILL unproven, Democrat accusation that the Russians influenced the 2016 presidential election. MSNBC edited a portion of that segment and inserted to make it appear that Ryan was saying there was no proof that Trump was wiretapped during the election.

If you consider the intended audience, the fact that Lawrence O’Donnell believes he can use a 13-day-old video clip on a topic unrelated to a rant almost two weeks later illustrates how easily those who hate President Trump are to tweak and the condescension O’Donnell has for the intelligence of his audience.