Oh Look, It’s Just What the House Speaker Fight Doesn’t Need: Ginni Thomas
This week was supposed to see the start of the 118th Congress but things have come to a standstill as Republicans continue to fail to elect a Speaker of the House. This is, by the way, the first time a speaker hasn’t been immediately chosen in 100 years (the last time being in 1923), and nearly every other session leading up to the Civil War. (Which was also a time of unprecedented violence between members of congress.)
The first day of voting resulted in three failed attempts by Representative Kevin McCarthy (CA-23) to get the necessary votes in order to become Speaker of the House and start the legislative session. In response, 72 (and counting) high-profile conservative activists released an open letter in support of the 20-ish Republicans derailing their party’s projection of unity. Of the many names signing off on this statement published by Conservative Action Project (CAP—I’m not even joking), one of the most interesting signatures in the worst way is Ginni Thomas.
To the broader public, she’s best known as “the wife of” conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. However, that’s sort of sexist, especially considering she’s been girl-bossing, gaslighting, and gatekeeping since before many of us were born. From arguing against Family Medical Leave Act, sending “Stop The Steal” QAnon messages to people close to former President Trump, and even harassing Anita Hill over two decades later, Thomas maintained being a terrible person in her own right.
While it’s on brand for her to be a disrupter at all costs, the Republicans’ failure to get to their agenda (or lack thereof) is not really a point in her favor. Thomas was cited as a force helping plan the January 6 Insurrection that occurred two years ago today. One of the few things Republicans have signaled they want to do (and could) is to discredit the work produced by the Jan. 6 Committee and other investigations. In fact, one of the last big CAP open letters she signed was two expel two Republicans from the GOP conference for their involvement on the Jan. 6 Committee. Her now signaling support to 20-something members preventing McCarthy’s ascension is a choice.
While the end of the letter denotes that the organizations listed under each person’s name are for identification purposes only, it’s kind of unsurprising who is present when you see what infamous organizations they work for. For example, the President of Citizens United, Davis N. Boosie, signed a letter talking about “democratiz[ing] the House” and wanting to “bring accountability back to the People’s House.” As a quick refresher, the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Trade Commission gave corporations more power in politics and made it more of a pay-to-win system than it already was. Citizens United successfully argued to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010 that a business should be able to spend an unlimited amount of money on free speech grounds.
Sounds pretty undemocratic to me, but then again, so is insisting that tens of millions of ballots be thrown out of various states so that a very conservative Democrat would lose the 2020 General Election. With McCarthy going 13-0 in Speaker votes as of this writing, it’ll be interesting to see if this letter (likely one of many) from so many donors to the GOP will influence the current stalemate.
(via Huffington Post, featured image: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
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