'Being 'too crazy' for today’s GOP is truly a feat,' but Massie manages

By BERRY CRAIG

AFT Local 1360

"The Great Compromiser must be spinning in his Lexington tomb over "#Masshole."

Henry Clay, Kentucky's greatest-ever politician--sorry, Moscow Mitch, you're not even close--helped broker a trio of compromises to save the Union and stave off the Civil War, the most lethal conflict in our history.

Fourth District Rep. Thomas Massie -- a leader of the GOP's loopy libertarian compromise-is-surrender pack, was nicknamed "#Masshole" for making House lawmakers rush back to Washington--at the risk of exposing themselves to the coronavirus--to pass the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill today.

Massie tried and failed to stop a voice vote on the measure, which is headed to Trump's desk.   

Massie's stunt provoked the president to tweet-slam him as "a third rate grandstander." The handle's a hoot coming from the narcissist-in-chief, a fourth-rate grandstander at best. 

Before the vote, former Secretary of State John Kerry, tweeted, "Breaking news: Congressman Massie has tested positive for being an asshole. He must be quarantined to prevent the spread of his massive stupidity. He's given new meaning to the term #Masshole. (Finally, something the president and I can agree on!)" 

(Massie, an MIT grad, famously humiliated himself in a tangle with Kerry over Kerry's Yale political science degree during a congressional hearing on climate change.) 

Anyway, Clay, who died in 1852, was the heart and soul of the Whig Party. He left the Kentucky legislature to become U.S. House Speaker, secretary of state and a U.S. senator. He ran for president three times, but many historians rank him above many presidents of his day.

Abraham Lincoln of Illinois--the Bluegrass State's greatest native son--called Clay his "beau ideal of a statesman." 

Massie is from Garrison in Lewis County. But in Washington he dwells in the most fetid far-right-wing fever swamps of Republican politics. He was one of four House members--all Republicans--who last month voted against a bill that made lynching a federal crime.

"Thomas Massie has proven himself so unreliable and bats*** crazy that the national GOP has begun looking for primary challengers to him," a Daily Kos scribe wrote in December. "Being 'too crazy' for today’s GOP is truly a feat, and yet he manages."

 Uber-right-wing Covington lawyer Todd V. McMurtry is taking on Massie in the Republican primary. McMurtry claims he's more loyal to Trump than Massie is. "#Masshole" insists that he dotes on the Donald, too.

Shannon Fabert of Hebron and Alexandra Owensby of Fort Thomas are vying in the Democratic primary. Either one would face a steep uphill battle in the deeply Republican Red district of northern Kentucky. 

Meanwhile, the Kos post included a lengthy list of "some of the other jackassery from Massie over the past few years, and the extent of legislation which he mindlessly opposes." Click here.

"The Great Compromiser's" statue occupies prominent spot in the U.S. and Kentucky Capitol. I don't know if there's a statue of Massie anywhere. But given his new nickname, the men's room in the Lewis County courthouse seems like an appropriate place for one.