UPDATE: Sunday, Oct 15, 2023 · 7:37:20 PM +00:00
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AlyoshaKaramazov
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The US House
In the House GOP battle to seat a new Speaker we have a critical development, which captures or perhaps recapitulates the nature of the battle itself. About 5% of the caucus unseated Kevin McCarthy. Then Steve Scalise won the caucus vote to be Speaker. But a good couple dozen members still wouldn’t vote for him and he quickly dropped out. Then Jim Jordan won the vote and faced the identical problem. But Jordan, his recent establishment turn notwithstanding, is of the Trumpist right. So his supporters are taking a different tack. As the Times reports they’re mobilizing a base-focused press campaign, enlisting right wing media and activists, publishing ‘hit lists’ of recalcitrant members’ phone numbers, threatening primary campaigns. As Trumpist capo Russell T. Vought puts it to the Times, with a lot of history to back him up, the ‘moderates’ will fold because they’re soft. They simply don’t have it in them to deny Jordan on the floor of the House the way Jordan’s strongest allies were ready to do it with McCarthy and Scalise.
Arrayed on the other side are some undetermined number of members claiming they’ll never vote for Jordan – not so much for ideological reasons as refusing to reward a faction which plays by heads I win, tails you lose rules. Some are awakening to the reality that the Jordanites are deploying against them the system they’ve been using to break the American republic for more than a decade, a system in which the rule-breakers have a built-in and basically insurmountable advantage against the rule-followers at all times.
We’re going to find out tomorrow what happens when these two sides collide.
The Gaetz Principle: Shoot (yourself) First (in the foot), and Ask Questions (of the dems) Later?
Yes, the love hate-child of Jack Nicholson and Ethel Merman has stepped on his own appendage again.
Matt Gaetz pulled the pin on his “Speaker-ousting Grenade” (patent-pending), before he realized it would explode his entire caucus.
We all knew that Mattie wasn’t the sharpest light-bulb in the drawer, but ousting your Speaker, without a plan for his replacement??
dumb…...dumber…………...dumbest.
Still, if the GOP House caucus won’t expel even a leper like Santos, they’re stuck with Mattie until at least his Ethics Committee returns their ugly verdict against him.
Anyway………….what next?
Ignore everyone else, and keep this mock shutdown going until after the 45-day Continuing Resolution Funding Bill runs out?
Or……….gulp………………………….ask Dems for help????
Josh, over at TPM ruminates on a possible (probable?) (likely??) (definite???) solution to the Speakerless House problem. Yes, it relies on disclosures from some “sane” GOP members, so grain shaker of salt, and all that……..
You’re starting to have pretty key members of the House saying the Republicans can’t elect a Speaker. Period.
Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas said last night that the effort is “hopeless” and that they’ll need Democrats help to end the “fiasco.”
“There’s not a person in our conference, not a person in American that can get 217 votes out of this group.”
I suggested that this might really be a possibility last night. But I’d been thinking that when this really comes under consideration and Republicans start considering what Democrats will require, they’ll sober up and elect a Speaker.
But maybe not?
I’m getting the sense that the events of the last three weeks have created genuinely new realities in the GOP caucus, taken existing tensions and elevated them to levels in which different groups or individuals simply can’t work with each other. I don’t have a close enough read of these people to know if that’s really the case. But I think it’s possible.
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Here’s what I wrote to a political-friend this morning:
So……..
Matt Gaetz ousts Kevin McCarthy without a plan to replace him.
He ousts him simply because Kevin negotiated with Dems to make that CR (Continuing Resolution) happen, to keep the government temporarily open for 45 days.
But Matt Gaetz didn’t want the government to stay open.
So, he finally pulled the pin on the trusty hand-grenade (that McCarthy GAVE HIM in January) to oust McCarthy.
But apparently, he couldn’t get that grenade out of his hand before it blew up in all the R’s faces.
Money-shot!
Well……..NOW, the R’s are staring down the barrel of the necessity of negotiating with Dems to actually replace McCarthy. Thus shifting the Speakership………….to the LEFT.
Which means that the Speaker that is likely in this scenario will be more to the liking of Dems, then McCarthy was.
Not hard to do, granted……...
Matt shot himself in the foot, while sitting on his own d*ck.
Irony within ironies within ironies within ironies.
A veritable Russian-doll of irony.
Stillness fell as the presiding officer gaveled the vote closed, 216-210, saying the office of the speaker “is hereby declared vacant.”
Moments later, a top McCarthy ally, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., took the gavel and, according to House rules, was named speaker pro tempore, to serve in the office until a new speaker is chosen.
The House then briskly recessed as lawmakers met privately to discuss the path forward.
Step #1 — Drop the Nuclear Bomb.
Step #2 — Recess, so you can figure out what the f*ck to do next
The Speakership is sinking fast…………..
Will Dems throw GOPers a life preserver, or another anchor?