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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   25495 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023

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Here we are two weeks after Kevin McCarthy was first removed as Speaker for the United States House of Representatives. About to have our first vote on the House floor to try and select the next Speaker.

It's been a bit of a tumultuous two weeks. At the beginning of last week Steve Scalise (R-LA), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Kevin Hern (R-OK) announced their candidacy for Speaker. Hern subsequently dropped out before any internal polls of the conference had been done. Scalise won the initial round of internal Conference votes over Jordan on Wednesday 113-99. Over the course of Wednesday and Thursday around 20 Republicans came out as hard no's on Scalise, more than enough to deny him the Speakership. Scalise subsequently dropped out leaving Jordan as the presumptive candidate. On Friday, shortly before the internal Conference vote, Austin Scott (R-GA) declared his candidacy for Speakership though went on to lose the internal vote 124-81 to Jordan. While there have been subsequent developments indicating many of Jordan's critics have come around the margin in the House is so close there may still be enough to deny the Jordan the Speakership.

This is a presently ongoing event and I'll update as the situation develops and I am able.

ETA:

As of the time of this writing the first ballot is still being counted but five nine Republicans have voted for someone other than Jordan, meaning he will not be Speaker on the first ballot.

ETA2:

At the end of the first ballot the votes stand at:

212 - Jeffries

200 - Jordan

20 - Other

2 - NV

With 2 NV that means the total to win is only 216. House now in recess rather than another vote. This vote total is within a couple of votes of where McCarthy was for the first three days and eleven ballots in his Speaker campaign. Hopefully this one doesn't take so long.

ET3:

No more votes today, House has gone home.

At least a handful of reps said Jordan could count on their vote only for the first round, so we might see decreasing support. Then again, they're in recess so he can horse trade, cajole, threaten, whatever, so I've got no idea which direction it'll go.

After their internal ballot, 55 people people voted against him in what was supposed to be a secret vote. Freedom Caucus folks then published their numbers and encouraged people to call in and harass them, and most of them fell in line. According to a few sourcs, including Tim Burchett, Jordan allies were even threatening to support primaries against holdouts. So idk what's really at his disposal, but he's certainly not afraid to fight for it.

Once again I'm astounded the Republicans don't do the thing everyone else in the world does where they have an internal party vote and then everyone is bound to vote for the winner on the floor of Congress or they get expelled from the party.

Because unlike Westminster systems where the party as an apparatus actually matters Americans get politicians who only have to a win a primary to be their parties candidate and the election for the seat. At best, the regional party committees exercise some influence but no formal power over who can and cannot be the candidate. They cannot stop someone they absolutely do not want from running, becoming the candidate and then getting elected. It's gotten even more chaotic with the recent trend towards open primaries where the candidate for a party can be elected by any registered voter.

The problem is that, in this scenario as with McCarthy's ouster, the threat would be empty because carrying it out would not actually serve the interests of the people carrying it out. Maybe the threat of doing so would, but it's actual execution wouldn't. Either the 20 Representatives are just expelled from the Republican Conference, in which case they are still Representatives and much less likely to vote Jordan for Speaker, or they are expelled from Congress altogether, in which case Democrats would now have the majority.

Well you obviously have to accept the potential for losing a few members who call your bluff. That happens from time to time, and it theoretically can cost a government its majority. But the alternative is what we're seeing - the potential for half a dozen people in a party room of over 200 to completely derail your agenda and plunge you into a situation where you can't even elect a speaker. That's completely untenable.

Frankly I think the US has only just started to move towards getting serious about playing hardball politics in the last 10 years or so, and that's why they are only just now confronting issues that everyone else experienced and dealt with ages ago. The filibuster is still alive, for goodness sake - something like that doesn't ever survive in a genuinely ruthless political culture.

My impression is that Republicans would rather have the formal majority, and so be "in power", rather than actually be able to enact any particular agenda via legislation. There are lots of things (committees) you can operate even if you can't win a vote on the floor. I think there's also a perception that a substantial part of the Republican base support these holdouts and so there would be electoral backlash of unknown magnitude by expelling them. Maybe you get party discipline but if you lose the majority and potentially future majorities by doing so you definitely won't be enacting your agenda.

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Because everyone who didn’t want to go along would just be an independent who runs as a Republican in the next election.

How likely are they to win in that scenario though? E.g. in a world where Matt Gaetz can't put an R next to his name, does he beat the Republican candidate? Presumably the party brand is worth a lot, I don't see too many independents in US politics.

This is the wrong way to figure this out, but....

On August 30, 2016, Gaetz won the Republican primary with 35.7 percent of the vote to Greg Evers's 21.5 percent and Cris Dosev's 20.6 percent, along with five other candidates.[37] This virtually assured Gaetz of victory in the general election; with a Cook Partisan Voting Index of R+22, the 1st is Florida's most Republican district, and one of the most Republican in the nation.

In the November 8 general election, Gaetz defeated Democratic nominee Steven Specht with 69 percent of the vote.[38] He is only the seventh person to represent this district since 1933 (the district was numbered the 3rd before 1963).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Gaetz#U.S._House_of_Representatives

Just for spit balling, let say he keeps 35.7 % of the republican vote as a 3rd party candidate

.357 x .69 = .246 for Gaetz .643 x .69 = .444 for Republican Gaetz replacement 1 - .69 = .31 for Democratic Replacement

That looks like they should threaten to kick him out

running the numbers if he keeps 50% of the Republican vote

.5 x .69 = .345 for Gaetz and his Republican replacement .31 for his Democratic replacement

That looks like risking turning a safe district blue

I suspect the people whose careers are riding on these decisions, can get better data to run the math on if they want it

Gaetz would, presumably, run as a Republican and win the primary. Republicans in particular have a problem with non-establishment approved candidates winning primaries.

Could they, theoretically, ban him from a Republican primary? Sure, but the most likely result of that is that he runs as an independent, the Republican base in his district is split, and a democrat gets elected, so they won’t.

It really depends. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) won a write-in campaign for Alaska Senate in 2010 after losing the Republican primary. Depending on the particular makeup of their district "expelled from the Republican Conference for refusing to elect Jim Jordan" might actually be a good thing.

have an internal party vote and then everyone is bound to vote for the winner on the floor of Congress or they get expelled from the party.

I was under the impression that this was a specific trait of Leninist parties, which might contain the answer as to why the US Republicans don't do it.

No, this is how political parties work in many countries. In the UK, MPs can be expelled from their party for voting against the whip.

Precisely - the whole point of a party caucus is that everyone is expected to vote in line with the majority of the caucus, at least on important procedural votes like Speaker elections. You accept a degree of party discipline in order to get the benefits of being the majority. The details are different in Parliamentary systems, but the principle that anyone who votes against their party on a confidence motion (or who fails to show up for the vote without a good excuse) is kicked out of the caucus ("has the whip withdrawn") is utterly mundane. The last time this happened in the UK was to pro-European rebels against Johnson, and the time before that was to Eurosceptic rebels in the Major era. In both cases rebels were kicked out even though it left the government without a majority.

Right now there is no majority caucus in the House, because the Republicans lack the party discipline to be a real caucus, and neither the mainstream nor the MAGA factions are anywhere close to 218. The reason why this has become a clown show is that the Republicans are still acting like they are in the majority, even though they are not.

It's incredibly normal in parties on both the left and right around the world. Eg in 2018 the (right wing) Australian Liberal party changed PM following a 40-45 split in a leadership contest while they had a one-seat majority.

I just don't see how you can expect to control the floor in a finely balanced legislature unless you enforce some party discipline.

Or you could just have no say when you get whipped in the House of Commons in the UK.

Getting whipped in the house actually has a very different meaning in thr U.K. due to the English moral traditions.

The British sex scandal anthology series on Amazon is currently in production on season three, AFAIK.

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