Republicans are blowing up their own agenda to 'own the libs'

Any rational adult would consider that a good jumping-off point for another bill, especially considering that 71% of Americans in a recent poll said they wanted to see more bipartisanship in Congress. What's more, the bill is being stopped by Idaho Republican James Risch, who is himself a cosponsor of the bill. He has worried that Republicans won't get enough credit for the bill, that it will be more Democratic at the end of the day. This, even though three of Republican Sen. Marco Rubio's smaller bills are within the larger piece.

Then there's another issue Republicans hold dear: regulating big tech companies. The House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on antitrust on Wednesday held a markup of its big tech report, which recommends that companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon be brought down to size because they have too much power.

Now, if you've been listening to anything the Republicans (and former President Donald Trump) have said about these companies, you know they believe that companies like Facebook and Google have too much power and use that power to censor speech. In fact, the report came out of an agreement in 2019 between the committee's top members in each party, Democratic Rep. David Cicilline and now former Republican Rep. Doug Collins, and at the start, both sides took it seriously. But Collins then left the House and passed his leadership baton to none other than the GOP's top crisis actor, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio.

During Wednesday's markup, Jordan and fellow Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California kept insisting that they needed to insert new language about censorship in the report. Any of these suggestions could've been made over the past few months. Instead of working in a bipartisan manner to address the growing problem of tech monopolies, the move was a farce designed to slow the process and make life more miserable for the Democratic majority.

"The gist of the Republican position right now is 'We believe big tech should be broken up. That's why we are disagreeing with your report making the case for breaking up big tech,'" Matt Stoller, an antitrust researcher at the American Economic Liberties Project, tweeted after the markup.