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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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Welcome to day three in the United States House of Representatives quest to choose a speaker. Previous thread here. Yesterday ended a little abruptly, with the House reconvening at 8 pm only to immediately adjourn until noon today. Word on the street is the Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was worried someone was going to nominate Steve Scalise (R-LA) for the Speakership and that Scalise would be a compromise candidate who could defeat McCarthy. Allegedly a deal was reached overnight that will bring some 10 or so dissenters to McCarthy's side but, unfortunately for him, that will still not be enough for him to win. In order to get an outright majority (assuming all members vote) McCarthy needs to get 17 of the 21 Republicans not currently voting for him.

Interestingly it seems some of these Republicans are not even looking for rule changes, they are just Never-McCarthy. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), for example, told the news yesterday that he was prepared to vote "every hour, every day, every week, but never for [McCarthy]". If four other Republicans feel similarly I believe that will be enough to deny McCarthy the Speakership in perpetuity. Having other McCarthy supporters vote "Present" to decrease the total needed doesn't work because McCarthy loses votes faster than the threshold decreases. The "Present" voters would need to either be among the five opposed to McCarthy or among Democrats, both of which seem unlikely to me.

ETA:

At the end of the seventh ballot the results stand at:

Jeffries - 212

McCarthy - 201

Donalds - 19

Other - 1

Present - 1

Matt Gaetz was the Other vote and cast his vote for Donald John Trump. It seems the alleged compromise failed to actually move any of the dissenters against McCarthy, including Victoria Spartz (R-IN) who has voted Present in the last few ballots. Nor has anyone nominated Scalise yet. We're now looking at 4 ballots across two days with basically identical results. Well and truly in a stalemate.

ETA 2:

At the end of the eighth ballot the results stand at:

Jeffries - 212

McCarthy - 201

Donalds - 17

Other - 3

Present - 1

Few more Other votes this time. Two for Kevin Hern (R-OK) and one for Trump again. Seems holdouts may not be sold on Donalds but aren't coming around to McCarthy. Wish we could skip the nominating speeches (who are not convincing anyone) and move to a speedier method of voting than this call and response. Heard rumors after the first vote that McCarthy wanted to adjourn but the Dems + holdouts probably wouldn't let them (need a majority to adjourn).

ETA 3:

According to a CNN reporter quoting Rep-Elect Michael Lawler (R-NY) the 18 Republican Members of the House that were elected in districts Biden won in 2020 are not moving from Kevin McCarthy as Speaker. So if these 18 won't vote for anyone other than McCarthy and at least 5 other members will never vote for McCarthy then it's impossible for the Republicans to get anyone over the majority line.

ETA 4:

At the end of the ninth ballot the results stand at:

Jeffries - 212

McCarthy - 200

Donalds - 17

Hern - 3

Other - 0

Present - 1

Ken Buck (R-CO) did not vote. We've now passed the number of ballots the last time there were multiple ballots in a Speaker election. This is officially the longest Speaker selection by ballot count since 1859. That election took 44 ballots. Probably see adjournment after this though I'm unsure until when. Pretty convinced at this point there is nothing McCarthy can offer that's going to get the holdouts to vote for him and I'm unclear if there's a non-McCarthy candidate that could get a sufficient number of votes unless McCarthy himself drops out. Probably House adjourns after this for dinner although until when I could not say.

ETA 5:

At the end of the tenth ballot the results stand at:

Jeffries - 212

McCarthy - 200

Donalds - 13

Hern - 7

Other - 0

Present - 1

Ken Buck (R-CO) did not vote. Kevin McCarthy fails to secure the Speakership for the 10th time. Looks like Republican dissenters might be migrating from Donaldson to Hern. No movement between any of the three coalitions (Dems/McCarthy/Other). Might be more votes depending on where the votes stand for adjournment.

ETA 6:

At the end of the eleventh ballot the results stand at:

Jeffries - 212

McCarthy - 200

Hern - 7

Trump - 1

Other - 12

Present - 1

I think just about all the Other votes were for Donalds, not sure why no one re-nominated him. Something darkly amusing about back room deals going while these votes are counted because members need to be on the floor to vote and don't have the votes to adjourn, so they have to retire to their private meeting rooms in the brief period when they can.

ETA 7:

On a 219-213 vote, with one Republican joining the Democrats, the House is adjourned until noon tomorrow.

Really wish the GOP would adopt a strategy of being the “adults in the room” as a counter to the woke excess side of the Dems. Unfortunately there seems to be much more money to made by being an attention whore like Gaetz than attempting to govern.

What major right-wing goals do you think the House could achieve with a Democrat Senate and President if they were to adopt the strategy of being the "adults in the room" and why is it important that they be done without a couple days of protests votes regarding McCarthy?

It’s a consistency thing. I’d like the GOP to consistently show that they are serious about governing. It’s been difficult for me to take the republicans serious since Trump and the midterms.

Honestly this just sounds like “boo outgroup” to me. The other side isn’t “serious” because they aren’t behaving how I want them too.

The GOP is my in group! It shows how far gone parts of the GOP base has gone (the part that is responsible for losing the senate majority) that my criticism is making me out to be a liberal. Matt Gaetz voting Trump for speaker is just another example of him and his followers not being serious people.

What would "serious people" be attempting to accomplish at this juncture?

What does "serious about governing" mean? Does it mean "doing everything possible to ensure that law enforcement is not interfering in politics?" Because that's what some of the holdouts are demanding with regard to the FBI and J-6 committees. Does it mean "do everything possible to ensure that major policy choices are publicy debated and openly voted on, as opposed to smuggled out the back door as riders on unrelated bills, as just happened with the water bill and omnibus?" Becuase the holdouts are demanding that too.

It really seems to me that many calls for "seriousness" or being "the adult in the room," unless tied to specifics, are just about aesthetics, and displeasure with anything unruly or that breaks with current practice in a way that displeases anyone with a megaphone.

Can you explain why this is unserious? Listen to Chip Roy. He doesn’t seem like a non-adult. Yes it is different compared to what has come before but adding 20 trillion in debt over 10’years doesn’t seem like an adult move. Waiting until a week before the end of the session to pass an omnibus doesn’t seem like an adult action. Maybe throwing sand in the start to try to prevent the temptation of those things later on is in fact the adult thing. The siren song is strong.

I don't know if "they are serious" is false because of the word "serious", but it's at least false because of the word "they" (with "GOP" as the antecedent). If the Republicans were voting as a block to try to prevent the things you're describing from happening, and if they actually meant it, that would be impressive. But even if we assume for the sake of argument that McCarthy is a traitor to the responsible anti-spendthrift prompt-budgeting causes, he's only got 19 or 20 Republicans trying to stop him, not 219. In a favorable interpretation of their actions we would have to say that only 10% of GOP House members are serious about governing, but they're being thwarted by the other 90%!

And that "being thwarted" is a bit embarrassing too. Maybe I'll be more optimistic after we find out what juicy concessions they extract or what compromise speaker they get instead, but for now, I'd be more sanguine about Republican improvements to the future of non-last-minute budget negotiations if they could at least negotiate with each other without a stalemate.

OK, but what are the specific goals you'd like to obtain if they're serious about governing? My perspective has been almost the polar opposite of yours; I agree that Trump and friends come off as clownishly incompetent, but the reality of their policy positions and pre-Covid outcomes was preferable to what I'd expect to get with more of the very serious people in charge. I'm just not clear what I should find appealing about the very serious people continuing to increase the concentration of wealth and power in the federal government.

Republicans have a different set of priorities to democrats, and democrats are less willing to compromise on Republican priorities, which include ineffectual border pork, social media laws that do nothing except increase legal costs, and grandstanding in the name of Covid accountability than republicans are on the de facto democrat priorities, which include bombing things, making upper class tax cuts more complicated, and smearing money around to their political friends’ nephews’ fraternity brothers.

Both-sidesing low-effort and uncharitable group criticism does not really cure the low-effort and uncharitable nature of your criticism. Please remember that

We want to engage with the best ideas on either side of any issue, not the worst.

If the House Republicans could present a similarly united front,

But the Republicans aren't a united front on many issues, and haven't been for nearly a decade. The parties are different.

That's only because the Republican congressional leadership are such sell-outs toward their base, desperate to curry favor with Washington, D.C. elites and the left-aligned mainstream media. Democrats will never be so generous, because they get those things for free. Unfortunately for the GOP, they may have sold out too much this time.

I don't think I'm following - sure, Democrats were able to get a bunch of increased spending passed by Trump, but I don't think this implies that Republicans will be able to get a bunch of decreased spending passed by Biden. If, instead, the suggestion is that they should just figure out which things they'd like to increase spending on, then we're back to there being a couple dozen "extremists" that are against increased spending and are serving their constituents by rejecting the promise to compromise by spending more on slightly different things.

The sort of claim made in that Wiki really chaps my hide:

The sequester lowered spending by a total of approximately $1.1 trillion versus pre-sequester levels over the approximately 8-year period from 2013 to 2021.

Let's cut things a bit short so we don't bump into the Covid spending and just look at 2013 up through 2020. Federal outlays increased from $3.72 trillion to $4.87 trillion over that 7-year period. Only in government could this be considered a budget cut and only among Republicans could this be considered a negotiated victory.

Spending increased between Q1 2013 to Q1 2015, going from $3.72 to trillion to $3.97 trillion. There were no "cuts", just a slowdown in the planned rate of growth. My position is that a Republican Congress that is led by the "adults in the room" will continue to increase federal spending. I do not see any prior experience that suggests that they will actually decrease the federal budget or even make meaningful cuts to the worst sectors of federal government. You referred to the sequestration deal as "doing well" and I regard it as a perfect example of how Republican wins tend to be conservative losses.

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