If you listen to my podcast at The Professional Left, you know that we love it when life-long Republican voters insist that they are independents.
During the House Speaker election debacle, I suggested that a few Biden district Republicans could form the "Independent Constitutional Conservatives who never liked the tweeting" party and not only would they get an out with the media, they'd likely win their primaries.
"I'm an independent" is a get-out-of-responsibility-for-my-vote card.
And you see it here in this CSpan segment, where a comparatively articulate caller announces that he has filed the paperwork to change his voter registration to Independent because he's so upset that Donald Trump is orchestrating the election of a House Speaker single-handedly.
On the other hand, he likes Mike Johnson just fine.
CALLER: ...without Trump, they're not going to elect a speaker, meaning to me that Trump is controlling this whole thing, and that's very upsetting to me that one person would wield that kind of power. That being said, I think I like Mike Johnson, fresh blood up on the, up on the dais, and I think we might be pretty good with him, but that's not changing my opinion.
And it's not like the CSpan caller is going to go so far as to consider a Democrat for his House district. He just doesn't want responsibility for Trump's fascism, to which the entire Republican caucus in the House of Representatives, including the new Speaker, have genuflected.
As one colleague here noted, consistency isn't their strong suit.
