WASHINGTON, District of Columbia — Center for Renewing America president Russ Vought said the reason Republicans are afraid to speak about cultural issues is because of the “cartel”-style leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“Cultural issues for decades have just been kind of pushed away,pushed to the side,” the former Director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump White House said. “Why? Because they’re existential threats to the cartel.”
Speaking on a panel with Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), Vought detailed the backroom, anonymous votes — which he styled the “cartel vote” — that take place so that the House leadership can ensure a win once a measure reaches the floor.
“There’s an expectation that the cartel vote is the real vote, and they want members like Chip and others to just assent to it,” he said. “The real vote’s on the House floor.”
“If you say to a member, ‘I want you to go home and explain to your constituents why you did not defund Planned Parenthood,’ and the answer out of your mouth is, ‘Well, John Boehner said I couldn’t do it’ … That’s not a conversation you’re ever going to win,” he continued.
Further to the point of House dysfunction, Roy added, “We haven’t had a vote on an amendment on the floor of the House of Representatives in open debate since May of 2016.”
Roy also said Republicans can easily win on cultural issues and pointed to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) as proof.
“Being willing to just go fly right into the sun with Walt Disney,” he said of DeSantis taking on the company pushing left-wing propaganda on children. “Most leaders, the cartel in this town, would say, ‘Oh, you can’t touch Disney, it’s Disney!’ But DeSantis went right out, took it right to them, and won 60-40.”
Speaking generally about institutions and their power to shape their members, Vought said spending decades in them changes people without them even knowing.
“One of the things that I’ve learned about being in institutions is they shape your behavior without you knowing it,” he said. “And the people who come in and they’re not watching for how their behaviors are getting shaped are having it shaped, and they wake up 10 years, 20 years, and they’ve adopted all the paradigms that they ran against.”
Breccan F. Thies is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @BreccanFThies.
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