Tea party Republican Todd Courser is the comical gift that keeps on giving. His latest social media missive is titled “What about the seats?” and is over 2,000 whining words about the tyranny of the state House seating chart.
Srsly.
It’s hard at times to know what should and should not be shared with people about the mechanical processes of official government, nor what is even worth sharing, and how it affects them. As a representative my first duty is of course to God, then to my family, then my home district, and finally to the great people of our state that truly want a voice that is uncompromising in its advocacy for the cause of freedom and liberty. All of this should be done with a sense of decorum and civility that is due the respect of the office with which I have been entrusted.This issue I need to bring to light today is that of the seat selection process in the House of Representatives. While the seat one sits in may seem trivial, there are much deeper issues going on at the root of what really happens.
The scary-sounding “deeper issues” Courser refers to are the rules for the seating chart that, not particularly surprisingly, Republican leadership in the House ignores. Courser was assigned a seat that kept him from sitting with his pals, a move that he says was done “in a strategic manner such that forming coalitions between like-minded legislators is very difficult”.
What this means, of course, is that Courser didn’t get to sit next to his fellow theocrat extremists Cindy Gamrat and Gary Glenn. When he says, “the seat one sits in may seem trivial”, he is absolutely correct. If he can’t do the job he was elected to do without sitting next to his friends, he has no business in the House of Representatives.
It’s also quite illuminating that the people of his district come third on his list of priorities. He puts God and family before them in his tome but I would suggest that Courser puts himself before all of these. He is acting like a spoiled 5th grader, petulantly stamping his little foot when he doesn’t get his way.
“This is how the machine keeps its grip on power,” Courser tells us. I have news for him: if this is his idea of “the machine” stepping on the people of Michigan, he has no clue how the Republicans in Michigan have been shitting on workers and women and the LGBT community and a host of other groups in ways that make his all-important seating chart a thing to point at derisively.
For all his petulance, Courser says that his seat is actually just fine: “I must say, I am completely fine with the seat I have been assigned,” he writes. “I have no complaints whatsoever.” Which doesn’t explain the need for his 2,000+ word ‘Courser’s Complaint’.
Courser’s Complaint finishes with this:
P.S.S. [sic] Many have asked me to comment on a whole host of things over the last few weeks – Agema Issue, the twisting of Committees away from being effective for the conservative cause or for good governance, the MIGOP Chairman’s race, the real legislative process, and of course the seat selection process. I personally have been focused on the seats because I think this illustrates how important it is to have the public trust, how it can be lost, and of course why first steps matter for the integrity and credibility of all involved. I think it is absolutely crucial to understand how much first steps matter and that all of this says a lot about what will come, so at this moment the rest of these topics will have to wait a little longer…
Todd Courser’s priorities tell us everything we need to know about him. These other weighty issues he mentions are put aside so that he can focus on what REALLY matters to him: where he gets to sit when he’s doing the job his third-in-line constituents elected him to do. Given his attitude, he’s lucky the House leadership lets him sit on the House floor at all.
