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I guess Gaetz is gambling that (a) if McCarthy is re-elected then he gets a lot of TV time and can grandstand again, which is his favorite activity (it’s unclear what the goal is in this case, he’s too unlikeable to be president and he doesn’t really seem like someone Trump would hire for a good cabinet job) and (b) if abstentions lead to the Dems/Jeffries winning, he won’t face any personal blowback. Gaetz is personally very shady even by Florida politician standards, but I don’t think he intends to spend much more of his career in Washington.
Can you explain, please? Gaetz was never charged in that sex trafficking probe a couple of years ago, and indeed the Justice Department’s main informant was himself sentenced to 11 years in prison for those crimes alleged against Gaetz.
Is that what makes him shady—being accused of a crime and then subsequently cleared of it? Or that the House Ethics Committee is taking another bite at the same apple following his opposition to the House leadership?
Seems more like the uniparty wants people to believe he’s a shady character. We’ll see how the evidence shakes out, rather than innuendo.
Menendez got away with a lot of stuff for a very long time too, the fact that Gaetz hasn’t been charged doesn’t mean a lot. Someone more conspiratorial might say that it’s always better for the ‘deep state’ to have things on those in positions of nominal power than it is for them to immediately push them out of office.
In any case, there are details around the case, specifically the Bahamas (?) trip in question, that suggest to me that it’s very unlikely Gaetz wasn’t involved. The case stalled, allegedly, because two witnesses (almost certainly young escorts) were deemed non credible. This is common in high profile prostitution cases and was part of the reason Epstein got away for so long, so it doesn’t particularly surprise me.
I mean real question- assuming the most lurid details aren’t true, why do we care that much that some escorts he took on vacation happened to be 17 instead of 18? I doubt very much he called the escort agency and asked ‘you got any minors?’, and while it’s reasonable to expect your politicians not to take escorts on vacation and reasonable to go after escort agencies for employing underaged women, it doesn’t seem like it’s a particularly big deal that he(probably unknowingly) got one who was underaged.
I would not let my daughter spend time with Gaetz if I had one, but he’s no Roy Moore. My assumption is that most politicians have mistresses or escorts and if he gets one who lied about her age, it isn’t pedophilia here.
This is definitely a tangent, but I haven’t kept up with political scandals. What do you mean? My recollection is that Moore was accused of some things that were really serious and some things that were merely weird; then, when some of the weird accusations were proved, people spoke as if the grave ones were too, mostly without evidence. But I am fully prepared to have missed some developments in the mean time.
While some of the really serious accusations against Roy Moore were never proven, he did admit to having a series of mistresses he knew to be underaged when he was in his thirties.
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I agree, I’m just saying that it’s still somewhat shady. Like if I found out my boss went on vacations with 17/18 year old escorts I’d consider it “pretty shady” even if not illegal. Maybe sleazy would have been a better term, in hindsight.
Absolutely. It’s shady, it doesn’t make me like him, but it isn’t child sex trafficking.
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If somehow the Democrats ended up in control of the house as a result of this (shutting down among other thing ers the impeachment process) Gaetz would be DOA.
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I know it shouldn't be my first go-to explanation for a Congressman, but I think it's actually possible that he actually thinks it's bad that our massive deficits come from a budget process that doesn't even follow the basics of a budget process. Now, I'm sure expressing that with such vigor and grandstanding about it has additional motives tied to it, but if I were in his seat and thought the status quo was somewhere in the ballpark of absolutely, ridiculously, beyond-any-reasonable argument fucking preposterous, I would conduct myself as he currently is.
By all means, speculate about Gaetz's ulterior motives, I agree that he seems like a slimy character, but just as a data point, there's at least one person watching him and saying, "yeah, fuck these guys" when he stands up and grandstands.
Drafting a budget that reflects the terms of the debt ceiling deal and taking it through the legislative process would be following a budget process. This whole row kicked off because Gaetz and the Freedom Caucus didn't want to do that - it isn't clear from the press coverage how much of the issue is that they want even larger cuts than the ones Biden and McCarthy negotiated, and how much is that they want to use the budget process as a lever to change policy on other issues (like the Trump prosecutions and immigration enforcement) rather than to pass a budget that reflects their spending priorities. But in the FY 2024 budget cycle, the reason why the budget isn't the result of a budget process is because the Freedom Caucus don't want it to be.
that's not what was agreed to by McCarthy to win his speakership; he agreed to abandon CRs and Omnibus bills and have appropriations go through the normal process
not "a budget process," but the normal process described in the 1974? law which sets out how budgets will be passed
to win the speakership, McCarthy agreed to move 12 appropriations bills individually which would go through the "normal process" to pass bills
he agreed to give members 72 hours to read bills, he agreed to not put any bill which spends more than $100m to go on the suspension agenda which prohibits open amendment
there is a longer list of procedural changes which the caucus was able to extract out of McCarthy in order for him to get speakership, all of which reduce the power of the speaker and leadership
instead of doing that, McCarthy attempted to slam through a continuing resolution for 45 days, threw all of these procedure changes he promised out the window, had the CR back up to another holiday which would likely result in another omnibus bill and crunch down on his caucus essentially blackmailing them with shutdown
that failed, so he threw some opposition people from his caucus on the group who crafted the CR and they put in some funding they had whined about and attempted to pass it; that failed, so he joined Democrats in passing the CR over the objections of his own caucus after violating most of the promises he made to get speakership
as usual, press coverage is garbage with an agenda and you shouldn't rely on it for information about pretty much anything
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Considering he was enthusiastically in favor a tax cut (without attendant spending cuts) that increased the deficit a few years ago, I think we can safely dismiss the possibility that Gaetz is a principled deficit hawk.
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