Vote Democrat, and Be Better Protected from Mayhem. Like Him.
With Congress in free fall, voters need to know about the guy who pushed it off the cliff.
September 17, 2023
By Mark Horan
Few industries spend as much trying to reach consumers, especially suburbanites, as insurance companies. Liberty Mutual’s emu, Geico’s gecko, and Progerssive’s Flo and Dr. Rick (the man stuck with the Sisyphean task of saving young homeowners from becoming their parents) have audiences that might rival Taylor Swift — or at least Travis Kelce.
They all share one thing in common: They’re funny.
Then there’s Allstate’s Mayhem.
Played for the past decade by actor Dean Winters, Mayhem is anything but humorous. Instead, he travels streets lined with picket fences and manicured lawns (the quiet, safe suburbs are his co-stars), wreaking havoc.
When he shows up, homes flood, cars slam into one another, and hot curling irons tumble to the floor, igniting first the rug, then the entire house.
Each time Mayhem walks away from the mess he’s made, he issues a wry warning: “Get Allstate. And be better protected from mayhem. Like me.”
America, meet Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, our real-life Mayhem.
If you’re wondering why the U.S. House of Representatives has been without a speaker for two weeks and why they may be about to elect notorious right-wing pugilist Jim Jordan as Kevin McCarthy’s successor, look no further than Congressman Mayhem.
Like Allstate’s Mayhem, Gaetz cares not who or what lies in his destructive path. Of all the dark figures spawned by Donald Trump — Don Jr., Eric, Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, to name a few — Gaetz outpaces the rest in narcissistic belligerence.
In July, he almost succeeded in causing the United States to default on its debts — for the first time in history.
Just a little over two weeks ago, he nearly triggered a government shutdown. Only a last-minute stopgap deal by his fellow Republican, then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, avoided that calamity.
Gaetz’s response? File a motion to fire McCarthy, which passed two weeks ago with just eight Republican votes but with the unanimous assistance of Democrats.
Since Gaetz started this circus and created a Speakerless House, Hamas militants unleashed their vicious rampage on Israeli civilians and Ukraine ran desperately low on ammunition they needed from the U.S. Here at home, we inched closer to another another potential shutdown on November 8th, when the government runs out of money.
And still, as of this writing, we have no Speaker. (Jordan failed today in his first attempt to gain enough votes; another vote is scheduled for Wednesday morning.)
Gaetz claims his reason for sowing so much chaos is his opposition to soaring deficits and growing national debt, which is interesting since he never cared about Donald Trump running up both.
His real passion is fame and power. Gaetz already has roughly half a million X (formerly Twitter) followers. Match that with gobs of recent TV coverage, and he is fast staking his claim to substantial notoriety and, to a degree, influence. Legislating? Passing bills? That takes work. As far as Gaetz is concerned, that’s for suckers.
Not surprisingly, Gaetz relies on Steve Bannon, noted Trump bomb-thrower (and convicted felon), for advice. According to the New York Times, Bannon has counseled Gaetz to offer outrageous amendments or floor actions — like ousting McCarthy — and then watch the ensuing conflagration. (When Gaetz formally made his motion to get rid of McCarthy, Bannon texted a reporter his one-word reaction: “KABOOM.”)
So far, Democrats are content to let these events unfold, assuming voters will see it as a Republican mess. However, according to a CNN/SSRS poll released Sunday, voters remain contemptuous of both parties. Seventy-four percent disapprove of GOP’s leaders, and 64 percent disapprove of Democratic leaders.
Polls also show that voters would prefer Congress seek cooperation and compromise, not disorder and dysfuntion. A Monmouth University poll taken late last month found that 64 percent of Americans believed that members with whom they agree on budget principles should nonetheless be open to compromise.
For Gaetz and Bannon compromise is a dirty word, a slur aimed at those who enable the “status quo,” the most contemptible of all conditions.
The task for Democrats this week and for the next 13 months is to keep nihilistic characters like Gaetz front and center. Though he already has unfavorable marks from about 40 percent of the voters, roughly 40 percent say they don’t know enough to rate him, giving Democrats a chance to paint a vivid picture of Gaetz, the real villain in this story.
Voters may want to know that Gaetz has been arrested for drunk driving but escaped prosecution even though he refused a breathalyzer. Or they may be interested to know the Justice Department investigated him for statutory rape and child sex trafficking in 2021 but declined to charge him, even though his longtime political associate, Charles Greenberg, was convicted and sentenced to 11 years in prison.
They may also be keen to learn that many of his Republican colleagues have grown weary of his antics. One was so frustrated last January that he had to be restrained from punching Gaetz on the House floor.
If Gaetz does indeed force government shutdown in November, Democrats must be ready to empty both barrels, making sure voters know this is not just a political food fight but an action with real consequences, from plunging 401k and college fund values to grounded planes and unsent social security checks.
It was turmoil like this that led voters — notably suburbanites — to vote for Joe Biden in 2020 and, in 2022, for Democrats in six critical 2022 Senate races.
To stop the Republicans again in 2024, Democrats need to shine a bright light on Gaetz, Jordan, Taylor Greene, Bobbert, and the other members of the KABOOM caucus. For a slogan, they could do worse than drawing inspiration from Allstate: “Vote Democrat, and be better protected from mayhem. Like them.”
