Some day, I hope to be invited to attend the daily morning meeting of the Republican congressional caucus so that I can observe the ping-pong ball lottery by which they choose who will be the most colossal dick that day. Last week, when everybody was heading for the beach, the winner apparently was Congressman Chip Roy of Texas.

After five months of wrangling, the House was ready to pass by unanimous consent a $19.1-billion aid package aimed at making semi-whole the victims of every sort of natural disaster from wildfires and floods to lava flow and typhoons. Unfortunately, the consent was not unanimous. Roy objected and the aid bill went dormant again. (Roy's objections included his disappointment that the package didn't contain any money for the president*'s big, stupid wall.) On Tuesday, Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky did the same thing. From Politico:

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who objected to the bill's passage during a voice vote, demanded that the vote be held after the House returns from recess next week — making it all but impossible that President Donald Trump can sign the package before early June.

"If the Speaker of this House felt that this was must-pass legislation, the speaker of this House should have called a vote on this legislation before sending its members on recess for 10 days," Massie said on the floor, flanked by fellow conservative, Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.V.), who also objected to the bill's passage.

Of course, it was before the Memorial Day recess that Roy did his thing, so what Massie is saying there is an insult to the intelligence of a dust bunny. He held up this aid because he wanted to take a shot at Nancy Pelosi and the current House majority. Georgia Republican Senator David Perdue leapt to the electric Twitter machine to call Massie's action "pathetic."

Chip Roy exemplifies the conservative movement that led inevitably to Donald Trump. Bill Clark Getty Images

Massie and Roy are both exemplary products of the kind of legislator produced by the modern conservative movement, and of the partisan dynamic that made someone like the current president* inevitable. Massie was last seen gobsmacking John Kerry at a congressional hearing in which Massie went long on climate denial. And Roy enlivened a recent hearing into Big Pharma by going completely up the wall in defense of the pharmaceutical industry's price-gouging. From Elle:

I just cannot understand why we are spending time sitting here listening to people lecturing companies about making money. I hope you make a lot of money...But can we dispense with the ridiculousness of hostility toward profit? To sit here an attack the capitalistic system that produces and distributes medicine that is saving lives around the world? I mean it is just offensive...

So now, if you're a Nebraska farmer, and your barn floated off in the general direction of Oklahoma City five months ago, you have to wait at least another couple of weeks before you get any help from your national government, and that of course depends on whose ping-pong ball pops up in the morning. Jesus, these people...

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io