Republicans have taken over the House and cannot even elect a speaker. There is a lot of commentary about how wildly incompetent they are. They are not. They're doing exactly what they want: blowing up an important institution of democracy.
It's time to stop pretending that the party of Trump is incompetent. The goal internationally is to give more power to autocrats like Putin and a couple of mechanisms for that are attempts to defund or disrupt organizations like NATO and to undermine military effectiveness by blocking appointments throughout senior leadership positions in the military. (Right now Republican refusal to approve appointments has put more than 300 appointments for generals and admirals on hold, causing a leadership crisis within the military.) By freezing funding, they can undermine Ukraine's war against Putin and increase his odds of winning.
The goal is domestically to undermine social programs that might actually make their red state, poor, uneducated voters happy with government. Their goal is to mismanage government and prove that it is ineffective by making it ... well, ineffective.
Incompetence is not a bug in Trump's Republican Party. It is the feature. Trump and his MAGA boys are angry and want to destroy democracy. If you claim to be a Republican, either have the courage to own that or to walk away from the party.
