GOP Offers Women an Olive Branch By Appointing Men to Chair Every Important House Committee

The Republican Party might as well rename itself The Sausage Party. After a series of very important meetings, House of Representatives’ majority party has chosen the legislators who will occupy the all-important roles of committee chairs during the next session. And, to the surprise of no one, every person they picked to lead is the sort of person Tina Fey might call a “grey faced man with a $2 haircut.”

The GOP’s big tent continued to embiggen this week, naming men to chair all 12 of the lower chamber’s most important committees during closed-door meetings, according to Politico. Everything from Agriculture to Ways & Means will be led by a dude, including the House Science Committee, who will be led by a dude who isn’t sure he believes in global warming.

It would be unfair to rag on the GOP without giving them props for elevating at least a few women to positions where actual men have to listen to them sometimes. As newly-appointed chair of the House Republican Conference, Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington is now among the most powerful members of the House, and is joined by Conference vice chairwoman Lynn Jenkins of Kansas and Conference secretary and actual crazy person Virginia Foxx of North Carolina. But the House Republican Conference doesn’t have the power to directly influence legislation that the committee chairmen have; chairmen can control the agenda of the committee and can actively block a bill from reaching the floor of the House.

House Democrats are doing slightly better than the Republicans at including women, but that’s sort of like saying that a person is doing a slightly better job than Chris Brown at reacting to Twitter trolling. Politico notes that New York’s Nita Lowey, Louise Slaughter, and Nydia Velazquez, Ohio’s Marcy Kaptur, California’s Maxine Waters, and Texas’ Vernice Johnson will all likely have ranking positions on committees this session.

Two less important committee chair positions have yet to be filled, so there’s a chance that a lady Republican might take one of those slots. But, ugh, you know what happens when you hire women — they’re always taking time off to get pregnant and go shoe shopping. Too much hassle, I say!