AZ Central – The Arizona Republic
Rep. Andy Biggs is now the MAGA conductor leading a symphony of the damned
Phil Boas, Arizona Republic – January 5, 2023
Arizona U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs was there for the creation of the new Republican Party. He thrilled at its new populist leader and marched side by side with him to shake up the establishment.
He became an evangelist of the new national populism and obediently voted for its policies.
When the movement began to flag, he participated in its schemes to stay in power and propagated its lie that a national election had been stolen.
The new Republican Party has not fared well.
It has been battered in three successive election cycles, but it is fully formed and still manages to control one wing of government – the United States Congress.
If MAGA didn’t work, give them more MAGA
Today, for just a moment, Andy Biggs is directing the orchestra, with its wheezing bassoons and screeching trumpets, playing a music that is pure pandemonium – clapping symbols, broken violins and honking trombones all crashing into one another.
And because no one can control this orchestra, Biggs, by default, is the man in the swan tails and gloved hands who taps the baton and holds its fate.
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From Biggs’ perspective, the problem is quite clear. The new Republican Party is not populist enough. If Make America Great Again didn’t work, well, then, we must Make America Even Greater and Greater and Greater.
More trombone. More wheezing bassoons.
Never flinch. Never change the music. Never surrender to the gathering facts.
Just keep playing this symphony of the damned to its crescendo.
Biggs and his band don’t mind the turmoil
Even its chief conductor Donald Trump has seen enough to know that something has to change. He has called on the GOP caucus to bring some order to this mess by finally electing California Republican Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House.
But Biggs is in control now. His merry band of renegades has just enough votes to stop McCarthy’s ascension and to hold the House in perpetual dysfunction.
And without a speaker, nothing else gets done in Congress.
At any moment a deal may be struck and speaker named, but it is clear now that the Republican Congress is an ungovernable mess. No matter who becomes speaker, he or she will be held hostage to the whims of cranks and scofflaws who can create turmoil with a flick of their finger.
Republicans who had hoped to take back the House and Senate saw their red wave flatten and now hold Congress by only a 222-213 margin. That razor-thin governing majority means the GOP will struggle to wield influence in the federal government.
This is the legacy of Trump populism
This is the legacy of Donald Trump and MAGA – a movement filled with misfits and mediocrities who could never play well together or with others.
And there is Andy Biggs, the Professor Harold Hill to this River City Boy’s Band, pretending that the noise emanating from the instruments is music and not discord and anarchy.
Donald Trump populism is dying, and if you could choose anyone to lead its dirge, I could think of few more fitting than Andy Biggs – the consummate believer, the pure zealot, the man who won the sweepstakes to direct the Trump orchestra to its inevitable oblivion.
Phil Boas is an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic.