Officially, House Republicans censored Rep. Adam

B.

Shipping this week. What they actually did was give a YUGE in-kind contribution to the California Democrats’ campaign for the Senate.

That was just one example in recent days of the Republicans’ clown car backfiring the party’s bumbling drive to arm the government against political enemies, the very crime it inappropriately projects onto Democrats.

Separately, Republicans trumpeted a House hearing on a recent report that has been widely derided as a dud except in their parallel, fact-free, Fox-friendly MAGA universe that attempted to demonstrate Democratic bias in the origins of

the

government investigation,

eventually led

by Robert S. Mueller III, in the 2016 Trump campaigns involving Russian agents. Predictably, Democrats, inclusive Shiphumiliated the Republicans’ star witness, Special Counsel John Durham, a Trump robber and the report’s author, when they confronted him about finding no Deep State shenanigans and winning no convictions.

And in a third episode, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy

(R-Bakersfield)

had to scramble to avoid one of his caucus

S

most incendiary troublemakers, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, of forcing a vote in the House on a resolution to impeach President Biden. Those setbacks include a dirty face off on the house floor between Boebert and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, sponsor of a competitive impeachment resolution. (The term cat fight is disgustingly sexist, but in the case of these right-wing rivals, if the fur fits.)

All these events lead to a great waste of time and money. The Durham study alone took four years and cost more than $6.5 million to end with a whimper. Sure, the battle is enough

former president

Trump and serves up red meat for a party base that loves revenge as much as he does. But the Republican carnivores are doing nothing to advance a positive agenda for the country and extend their party’s appeal beyond bloodthirsty true believers.

That’s exactly the point Schiff made in a fundraising email about his censure: These political slander tactics divert the House’s resources away from pressing priorities that Congress should be addressing, which I, as your senator, want to address. tackle.

Have Republicans been so blindsided by Trumpian flattery that they didn’t realize what a gift they were giving Schiff by singling him out to supposedly mislead voters about Trump? Arguably, it’s not just the money Schiff is raising for his race against Democratic representatives. Katie Porter of Irvine and Barbara Lee of Oakland to succeed Senator Dianne Feinstein. By victimizing Schiff, Republicans polished the congressman’s otherwise drab image and established him as one of Congress’s most effective anti-Trump figures.

S

.

For anyone grounded in reality, the censorship was downright comical. The resolution accused Schiff, as the former leading Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and a Trump impeachment manager, of spreading false allegations that the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia.

But the allegations were not false. As angry as the Republicans are at the Mueller investigation, the record of a Trump Tower rally, shared polls, WikiLeaks and more

That

. Forget the semantic or legalistic debate over the word collude and call it any other name: the Trump campaign and Trump himself worked together and encouraged all help from Russia. (Russia, if you’re listening….”)

And how rich that McCarthy, from the speaker’s podium, would call Schiff’s alleged falsehoods, misrepresentations, and misuse of sensitive information. You would think he was describing Trump’s 37 count of hoarding and hiding hundreds of classified documents.

Then, speaking of misrepresentations, there’s this: The Republican sponsor of the censorship was freshman Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who comes from Rep. George Santos School of Self-Creation, according to a deep dive the Washington Post did on her. background. (Speaking of Santos, why didn’t the Republicans censor

it

for his lies and known fraud?)

Luna accused Schiff of tearing American families apart across the country with his untruths about Trump. Did she follow the former president’s career? Read about the Thanksgiving dinners across the country disrupted by his division? Forgotten that the families on the border were literally torn apart by his policies?

The Durham hearing would fit with ship censorship. But try as they might, the Republicans on the House of Representatives committee couldn’t detach themselves from the facts: Durham found no criminal misconduct by senior Justice and FBI officials (much less former President Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden), no Deep State conspiracy to get Trump, nothing prosecutable on the part of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of Torrance said mockingly at one point, “I don’t really know what we were doing here.”

Neither do the Republicans, it turns out. The house is such a circus under their (mis)management that one can hardly wait for the jesters to bring their half-baked Biden impeachment resolutions back to the table. If you want to weaponize the levers of power, you need facts, not pop weapons.

@jackiekcalmes