Massie In A Mess, Con't

Trump's pathological need for praise and his malignant desire to be the hero that saved America from COVID-19 is so massive that anyone else who steals the spotlight from him, even for a moment, faces getting run over by Trump's Twitter-based wrath. Justin Amash found this out the hard way, that glibertarian grandstanding at Trump's specific expense gets you crucified and strung up on a meathook to bleed out. 

Yesterday Thomas Massie decided he was going to make national news again with his contrarian tantrum hintong he was strongly considering delaying passage of the COVID-19 phase 3 relief bill by forcing a floor vote. Now Massie is finding out the price for his folly and that there's no room in the GOP at all for anyone whose "principles" interfere with Dear Leader's glory.

A $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package was supposed to get a voice vote Friday by the House of Representatives — until one Kentucky congressman disrupted those plans.

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, of Kentucky’s 4th District, has other congressional members fearing he will force an in-person vote on the bill in Washington, D.C., causing the vote to be delayed and potentially forcing representatives to gather in person at the Capitol during the COVID-19 outbreak to vote.

President Donald Trump hammered Massie Friday morning on Twitter, calling him a “third rate Grandstander” and “a disaster for America, and for the Great State of Kentucky.”

“Workers & small businesses need money now in order to survive,” Trump said in one of his tweets about Massie. “Virus wasn’t their fault. It is ‘HELL’ dealing with the Dems, had to give up some stupid things in order to get the ‘big picture’ done. 90% GREAT! WIN BACK HOUSE, but throw Massie out of Republican Party!”

Trump had previously commented on a potential “grandstander” delaying the vote, but he didn’t mention Massey by name. He was still confident it would pass after it passed the Senate unanimously, according to the Washington Post.

“You might have one grandstander, and for that we’ll have to come back and take a little more time and it’ll pass, it’ll just take a little longer. But let’s see whether or not we have a grandstander,” Trump said at the White House Thursday, according to the Washington Post.

Oops.

I stand by my statement that Massie remains a national embarrassment and should be made to resign over this.  It's by far from the first time he's pulled crap like this, delaying votes on disaster relief bills to demand amendments and full floor votes to let everybody on Earth know he has no interest in being a federal government employee in a federal government he has no intent of believing in.

But now he's poked the big orange bear and possibly cost Trump his weekend victory lap.

I'll continue to go unheard as Massie's constituent and a dirty, unwashed plebeian blogger.

He won't survive Trump's wrath much longer though.  And yes, Massie has a serious primary challenge from Republican Todd McMurtry, one of the lawyers representing Nicholas Sandmann in the Covington Catholic defamation case, if you think this area is capable of producing a non-embarrassing, non-asshole Republican.

But you know what?

Massie has a serious Democratic challenger this time, nurse practitioner Alexandra Owensby who is running and needs our help.