Three-Point Shots, Vol. 1, No. 30: Friday, November 17, 2023

The cruelty of GOP policy may seem mysterious, until you meet the policymakers. This week: Pat Fallon, Chip Roy and George Santos. Also, the Lege gets ready to pass another terrifically bad bill.

         Welcome to another edition of Three-Point Shots, a part of my Life Its Ownself Substack page. If you enjoy reading it, please 1) hit the Like button, 2) subscribe to the Life Its Ownself, and 3) share it with others in the link below. Comments are welcome and encouraged.

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Friday, November 17, 2023, 8:00 a.m.

         Imagine, if you will, a once-great political party in the world’s oldest surviving democracy brought to its ignoble end by mediocre strivers, crazed ideologues, and shameless grifters. You have entered … the GOP Zone.

         Today we briefly surveil three members of the House Republican Conference, each of whom in their own way demonstrates the rot at the core of the modern GOP.

         To be clear, I am not naïve enough to think the strivers, ideologues and grifters are limited to the Republican Party; Democrats have them, too. My observation is only that, in the current GOP, these defects are features, not bugs.

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1.    The Pointless, Self-Promoting Political Life of Pat Fallon

         You may never have heard of Par Fallon and, but for this brief historical note, you never may. And that’s as it should be, for Pat Fallon personifies the mediocrity and small-minded ambition that diminishes our democratic institutions.

         Pat Fallon’s life started out very promising. Growing up in Massachusetts, he attended the University of Notre Dame and played on its 1988 national championship team. He was in Air Force ROTC and served four years in the Air Force after graduation. He earned the Air Force Achievement Medal, which, let’s face it, recognizes those “who were not eligible to receive the higher Commendation Medal or the Meritorious Service Medal.” It’s not exactly a participation trophy, but …

         After mustering out, he moved to Denton County (why?), where in 2009 he was elected to the Frisco City Council. Three years later, he ran for a state House seat, although there was controversy over whether he actually lived in the district. Nevertheless, he was handily elected in a district so gerrymandered no Democrat ran in the general election. He served three terms in the House, where the acme of his legislative accomplishments was co-sponsorship of a bill allowing “students and district staff to offer traditional greetings regarding the celebrations, including ‘Merry Christmas.’" I am not making this up.

         In July 2017, Fallon announced he would challenge local senator Craig Estes in the next year’s GOP primary. This came after Lite Guv Dan Patrick pronounced a fatwa on Estes for refusing to support Patrick’s move to abolish the two-thirds rule in 2015. Patrick’s retribution was swift: although Estes had chaired committees in four previous sessions, he was given no chairmanships when the new Lieutenant Governor handed out assignments. When Fallon announced his challenge to Estes in 2017, Patrick paid for Fallon’s polling and showed other signs of favoritism. Fallon easily won the primary against Estes, and thus did Fallon begin his illustrious career as a state Senator.

         Which did not last long. After only two years, he ran for Congress in 2020 to replace the gone and unlamented John Ratcliffe, who’d been named Director of National Intelligence by then-President Donald Trump. Fallon took office in January 2021, about the time Ratcliffe lost his job. (I wonder, would Ratcliffe have taken the DNI job in early 2020 if he knew what fate awaited him? Of course he would, because he’s a buffoon.)

(Fallon’s picture appears next to the word “undistinguished” in the dictionary.)

         On January 6, 2021, Fallon’s first act as a congressperson was to vote against certifying Joe Biden’s election. It’s been downhill ever since. Last May, he voted against the Fiscal Responsibility Act – the bill that precipitated the defenestration of Kevin McCarthy (R-Craven). Fallon exists in that political and policy miasma between the Freedom Caucus, of which he is not a member, and the Anti-Woke Caucus, of which he is.

         Which made it less of a surprise when Fallon announced last Monday that he intended to run for his old Senate seat in 2024, foregoing what seemed destined to be a scintillating career in the US Congress. He was promptly endorsed by Grand Poobah Dan Patrick, presumably because Fallon would be a dependable Senate sheeple. However, the next day he announced he would abandon his nascent run for the Texas Senate and run again for his congressional seat.

         My take: Fallon has been an elected official for 14 years and has nothing to show for it but ambition. There is no Fallon Rider in the Frisco city budget allocating money to after-school programs, nor crucial piece of Texas legislation that has his brand on it, much less a federal “Fallon/Kennedy Campaign Finance Reform Act” – and there never will be. If he runs for his House seat next fall, he will win – and be in the minority for at least two years. (The Former Guy may, by some collective psychosis of the American people, return to office, but he will have no coattails.) Two years from now, you will be asking the same question you ask now: “Who?” 

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2.    Useless Texas Congresspeople, Part Duh: Chip Roy

         In a sane and morally consistent universe, the fact that Chip Roy was Ted Cruz’s chief of staff should have been the end of his career. He’d be selling used Teslas in Abu Dhabi by now. But Chip Roy is in fact a member of Congress, a leader in the Freedom Caucus and, like his former boss, a publicity-grabbing firebrand asshole.

         For some time now, Chip has been dismayed by the direction of the country, and further dismayed that his GOP colleagues have not turned their four-seat majority in the US House into a complete remaking of American society, rolling the country back at least a century. And, to our chagrin, he will not shut up about it.

         Yesterday, in a 55-minute stemwinder that is painful to watch, Chip said the quiet part out loud about the record of the 118^th Congress under GOP leadership. Here’s the money quote:

One thing. I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing. One. That I can go campaign on and say we did. One! Anybody sitting in the complex, if you want to come down to the floor and come explain to me, one material, meaningful, significant thing the Republican majority has done besides “Well, I guess it’s not as bad as the Democrats.”

         My take: Democratic consultants slept peacefully last night between dreams of the TV ads Chip had written for them. The GOP really stands for nothing positive, only “we’re not as bad as those Marxist Dems.”

         Chip Roy is the apotheosis of the GOP created by Newt Gingrich 30 years ago: intractable, intransigent and transfixed by the illusion that if they were outrageous enough, the American people would suddenly agree with them. It hasn’t happened in 30 years; God help us all if it ever does.

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3.    The Gregarious Grifter George Santos

         George Santos is not a Texan, but in the boldness of his grift and shamelessness he almost ought to be. Perhaps he will invent a new chapter in his life in which he was from Texas all along; does any city want dibs on him?

         Even before he was sworn in to the 118^th Congress last January, Santos was widely known to be a serial liar and fabricator of his résumé. I am loathe to bore you, or myself, with a blow-by-blow recitation of all the George Santos drama this year (including two federal indictments), but Santos claimed that an investigation by the House Ethics Committee would clear his name. Meanwhile, he was part of the GOP’s razor-thin majority in the House, and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Short-Timer) was determined to protect him.

         The report came out yesterday, and it’s bad; worse, frankly, than I thought it would be:

Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit. He blatantly stole from his campaign. He deceived donors into providing what they thought were contributions to his campaign but were in fact payments for his personal benefit. He reported fictitious loans to his political committees to induce donors and party committees to make further contributions to his campaign—and then diverted more campaign money to himself as purported “repayments” of those fictitious loans. He used his connections to high value donors and other political campaigns to obtain additional funds for himself through fraudulent or otherwise questionable business dealings. And he sustained all of this through a constant series of lies to his constituents, donors, and staff about his background and experience.

         Santos himself is missing from the report. Although he promised to cooperate with investigators, he refused their requests for information and would not meet with them.

         Santos called the report a “disgusting politicized smear” without specifically denying any of its findings. He announced he will not run for re-election in 2024, but he is sure to play the victim card and try to parlay his downfall into another grift. He refuses to take any responsibility for his actions, and his shamelessness is part of a virus that runs through the GOP body politic (see Trump, Donald). As David Graham points out in The Atlantic:

Shame had a purpose. It kept some bad actors from public life, and it chased other ones from public life. With its decline, people like Santos will blithely charge into office and make a mockery of representative democracy. Bodies like the House Ethics Committee can fight valiant rearguard actions like this one, but they can’t and don’t serve much preventative function.

         My take: Santos is acting from a playbook that did not exist a generation ago. Donald Trump is its author, but Bob Menendez is also using it. While he may soon be expelled from the House, we have (unfortunately) not seen the last of George Santos.

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         Your weekend ahead:

         … today the House is set to debate HB 1. This is the education bill that combines increased per-pupil funding and school safety improvements with a voucher program that would require private schools to meet state accountability standards. There is still plenty of opposition to vouchers in the House, so it will be interesting to see what happens.

         … Donald Trump is coming to Texas on Sunday. He and Governor/VP wannabe Greg Abbott will be serving meals to DPS troopers and Texas National Guard soldiers stationed on the border. Having gone through “rapists,” “criminals,” “thugs” and “vermin,” what new slur for immigrants will Trump come up with? Suggestions in the comments, please.

         … are you a fan of Wes Anderson’s “Rushmore?” Anderson, a graduate of St. John’s School in Houston, shot the film on and around the campus. On its 25^th anniversary, check out the oral history from many of the film’s creative principals in the Houston Chronicle.

         … the pandas are coming back!