(Illustration by Barry Blitt, found at The New Yorker).

In political fallout from such horrid weather the country is experiencing right now, beyond the human misery and death, most-glaring is just how awful Republican are in handling anything out of the ordinary, or having any meaningful governing tactic, which for the way-vast majority of the party is currently just being way-incompetent drama queens.
Texas is a mess, the statewide snowstorms and freezing temeratures has created a catastrophic natural tragedy. However, it’s a mess in DC, too, after four disastrous, chaotic years with the T-Rump, same for Obama in 2009, following eight shitty years with GW Bush. The GOP leaves shit in its wake, and ends their time in power worse than at the beginning.
Blame for the situation in Texas lays plain on Republican Greg Abbott and his crew, instead of action, producing bullshit that’s near-about destroyed the state’s electrical system, blaming everything from frozen wind turbines and Democrats with their Green New Deal, anything but them — all shit-faced lies.
Republican’s can’t govern, they can only yell blame to someone/something when shit happens. And it’s been that way since Ronald Reagan.

Death of Rush Limbaugh emphasized the link between Reagan and the T-Rump — the 40-year shift of the Republican party was channeled through Limbaugh and his ilk, morphing over the years, embracing the infestation-arrival of Sarah Palin, until we have the Q-infected shitstorm and useless GOP of today. In a quick nutshell.

A prime example of this particular Republican attribute is one Ted Cruz — his lying, sanctimonious escapades the last couple of days has been all over the Interwebs:

Ted Cruz had a huge container of luggage for each hour he planned to stay in Mexico pic.twitter.com/WL1Drp2vpW

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 18, 2021

Cruz blamed his daughters for taking the trip, first claiming he was just making an overnight trip to drop them off, but then it surfaced he’d been booked at a Cancun hotel until Saturday — only after the shit hit the fan did he return.
And the reality from CNN this evening:

But texts sent by his wife, Heidi, on Wednesday appeared to paint a different picture, The New York Times reported.
She asked friends in a group chat, “Anyone can or want to leave for the week?” the Times reported Thursday.
“We may go to Cancún,” she said, according to the media organization, referencing a “direct flight” and “hotels w capacity. Seriously.”
Their house was “FREEZING,” she said, per the Times, and suggested a trip lasting until Sunday.
They had stayed at the Ritz-Carlton in Cancún “many times,” she said, highlighting the hotel’s strong security and rate that week, the Times reported.

Accordingly, Cruz is a shitheel. Except he’s been one a long time, and just an example of the growing disconnect between governing and just enjoying the fruit of power, and money.
A much-similar asshole is just east of Texas and across the warm Gulf waters:

Unforced error? Famously combative with media, @GovRonDeSantis today says public criticisms about vaccine distribution in parts of Florida could divert vaccines to areas where there are no political criticisms of his efforts https://t.co/jqETqNjI9T pic.twitter.com/Idy4mfTJdk

— Ted Bridis (@tbridis) February 17, 2021

Details from NBC News this morning:

Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, ignored federal guidelines and prioritized getting senior citizens — one of Florida’s most potent voting blocs — vaccinated first.

When Holocaust survivors and Cuban survivors of the Bay of Pigs debacle — revered members of two other key Florida voting blocs — got their first shots, DeSantis made sure he was there for the news conferences.

And now the governor stands accused of using the Covid-19 vaccine to reward powerful political supporters and developers by setting up pop-up vaccination sites in planned communities they developed and where GOP voters predominate.
…
“I’ll tell you what, I wouldn’t be complaining,” the governor said. “I’d be thankful that we are able to do it.”
…
“If Manatee County doesn’t like us doing this, we are totally fine with putting this in counties that want it,” he said.

DeSantis is a T-Rump wanna-be and he’s not governing with the best of them. Republicans just don’t give a shit about working for the people or anything — they’re in it for the power, and beyond that, have nothing but being an asshole. Apparently, a GOP trait.

And it’s not a shocker, more the standard catch phrase, no wonder — Jennifer Rubin this morning at The Washington Post looked at Cruz, Ron Johnson, GOP-whoever, and accordingly ‘…Republicans are, well, bad at their jobs,‘ which perversely is at the peril of MAGA-hat voters::

And all that brings me to ask: How in the world do Republicans get elected?
It is a serious question.
Cruz, Johnson and a host of other Republicans clearly see their posts as platforms for right-wing political theater.
If they were not in office, they would never get the right-wing media hits or the large social media followings.
They would not be greeted as rock stars at CPAC and other right-wing gatherings.

They seem not to view the job of legislator or chief executive as that of being a problem-solver.
The results of their actions or inactions do not appear to concern them as long as they’ve got the “narrative” right, which invariably includes blaming left-wing socialists for their own mismanagement, trying to convince White voters they are victims and blabbering about “cancel culture” (a left-wing plot to hold them responsible for their conduct?).
…
In other words, Republican voters, thanks to right-wing media, have come to regard politics as a “fight” for their racial and cultural identity, not as lawmaking or problem-solving.
We should not be surprised that they get rotten leadership and service as a result.
Tens of millions of Republicans voted in 2020 for the now former, disgraced president despite an out-of-control pandemic and historic recession.
He “owned the libs” and hated the mainstream media; that was what they wanted.

As proclaimed last summer during the T-Rump/GOP convention, and media questions about national plans for the future, or at least what to expect the next four years if the asshole got re-elected — zilch.
And they didn’t give a shit — per The Atlantic in August:

The GOP in general is remarkably quiet on how it would govern and what it seeks to accomplish in the coming years.
Breaking with precedent, the party decided against producing an original platform for the 2020 convention. (Put differently: It no-platformed itself.)
And Republican leadership has gone dark on a huge swath of issues: balancing the budget, reforming entitlement programs, tackling climate change, improving public education, reducing student-loan debt, and ameliorating racial inequalities—as well as getting the country through the pandemic and out of the recession.

With the planet burning, the virus killing, the economy collapsing, and millions of Americans preparing to vote, the country’s leading political cabal has moved into a queasy post-policy space: Its aperture has narrowed to just a few issues; its desire to try to pass major, proactive legislation has withered.
This is not just proof that a man as interested in his own image as he is uninterested in briefing books should not be president.
It is also a sign that American democracy is in peril.

Indeed, and all the shit listed of budgets and education and climate change and policy decisions on serious issues/subjects, all of which Joe Biden took action via Executive-Orders in just a month — shit the GOP couldn’t even think about for four years.
Embedded deep within the GOP is the horror of the T-Rump; this ‘political theater‘ as Rubin calls it, is in reality frighteningly violent and highly amoral. On Monday this week, just two days after T-Rump’s acquittal in the Senate, the GOP party played it out fairly squarely:

Washington County, Pennsylvania, GOP Chair: “We did not send him there to vote his conscience. We did not send him there to ‘do the right thing’ or whatever” https://t.co/YQIsMP1xGm pic.twitter.com/FKgN1hJxFl

— J.J. Abbott (@jjabbott) February 16, 2021

Backgroubd via The Hill:

“We did not send him there to vote his conscience. We did not send him there to do the right thing or whatever he said he was doing. We sent him there to represent us,” Washington County GOP Chairman Dave Ball told Pittsburgh-area CBS affiliate KDKA-TV.

Toomey, who is not seeking reelection in 2020, was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump on a charge of inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The vote marked the most bipartisan impeachment trial vote in U.S. history but fell short of the two-thirds required to convict and prevent Trump from seeking future office.
…
Other Republican senators who voted in favor of conviction, including Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.), have also been the subject of censure votes in their respective home states.
The North Carolina Republican Party voted Monday to censure Burr, who is also retiring.

“My party’s leadership has chosen loyalty to one man over the core principles of the Republican Party and the founders of our great nation,” Burr said in response.

And they’re after them, and after anyone who disagrees with the sense and sensibilities of the T-Rump.
Especially, someone with a conscience:

When the above film came out in October 1939, Alben W. Barkley, a Democrat and the-then Senate Majority Leader, said the movie “showed the Senate as the biggest aggregation of nincompoops on record.”
What? No…

(Illustration by illustrator and portrait painter, Tim O’Brien, and can be found here).