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Coming to the end of our third week without a Speaker in the United States House of Representatives.
We started the day with something like nine Republican candidates in the running. Eventually this was narrowed down to one by internal Conference voting. Then a sufficient number of Reps said they would refuse to vote for the winner on the floor anyway so now we're back to... internal Conference voting! I seriously do not understand the point of these votes. If Reps won't honor the result in sufficient numbers such that the winner can't actually be elected what purpose is the internal vote serving? I thought it was a meme when I someone on Twitter say (paraphrasing): "There are only two results some GOP Reps accept: We win and try again." Apparently their may be some kind of discussion about a joint Speakership between McCarthy and Jordan? I'm pretty sure Speaker of the House is a constitutional position, it has to be one of them. Would each candidates opponents really trust whoever was actually the Speaker? I can feel Hakeem Jeffries odds rising in real time.
We're about 3 weeks out from the end of the current CR on 11/17. There's some dark comedy in Kevin McCarthy losing his Speakership to avoid a government shutdown and then we have a government shutdown anyway. At least it'll be after Virginia elections so maybe Republicans can do well there!
Can any republican supporters here or people who feel they can speak for republican supporters post their reactions to/opinions of this saga?
From the perspective of a moderate dem, basically pro-Biden guy, this really cements my view that the new crop of republicans are embarrassingly unserious clowns with no skill or interest in governing, and the people who elect them are just burn-it-to-the-ground sour grapes losers.
I know the “Russian interference” or “Chinese interference” is a dumb conspiracy theory but if I were a KGB guy this is exactly the kind of outcome I’d be aiming for.
Does anybody actually like what’s going on?
I must say this whole frame is very frustrating. Republicans see someone borrowing half a trillion in debt almost monthly to behave rejected governing. Or someone in charge of the border to have abandoned their post.
It seems like when Republican dysfunction is brought up it’s “they don’t take governance seriously” but when dem dysfunction is brought up it’s “policy differences.”
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Dems in safe seats (Biden+30) in congress are all ideologically on side with the base. The ones who make cross floor deals are in more marginal seats that they are afraid to lose.
The Reps in congress are very different. A lot of them in safe seats try to keep their public profile low and vote to keep the Rep DC power brokers happy in the hopes of lining up a lucrative job post office.
They form a decent chunk of the R congressional congress but their views have no electoral support. They lie at election time and they'll lose if they are exposed. However they are used to running things in DC (on the R side) without any questions from the base and expect that arrangement to continue.
So this is a precursor to cleaning up the house caucus. Ken Buck has upset local supporters so much that he lost his sweetheart deal for his congressional office and is being evicted.
I'm not particularly concerned about congress being locked up. When it's "functional" it's just going to dump billions into things I don't want it to while performing pantomime investigations so they can claim they are holding Biden accountable.
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The government is dysfunctional. Being efficiently dysfunctional is not a good thing.
The reasons that Matt Gaetz etc. ousted McCarthy was because some of the terms he agreed to to get their votes he ended up violating. The main one was that they wanted to split "omnibus" bills into specific limited scope spending bills.
I say good.
I think the Liz Cheny/Mitt Romney/GOP Neocon wing of the republican party are being childish.
I also find the Democrat language around this annoying. If they care so much about getting the government running, put together a few people to vote for Jim Jordan and be done with it.
The Approps committee passed all 12 of the spending bills like they were supposed and McCarthy was trying to hold votes on them like he was supposed to, the Freedom Caucus were the ones stopping him.
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This reads as hilarious to me. I've been reading some reviews and excerpts about the Mitt Romney book that came out recently that seems to be relatively unvarnished. And it's pretty clear based on what's described that a lot of right-wing senators aren't really being very honest about their true feelings. Contrast that with the dealmaking wing of the GOP. I don't understand how compromise became a dirty word for modern right wing Republicans. Suddenly making a deal is a betrayal and childish, which is not only ignorant of how politics with a slim majority literally must work, but is incredibly hypocritical because of the aforementioned pageantry on the far right while the middle literally just wants to get shit done.
I think Matt Gaetz is a performative blowhard, but also might have been totally within his rights to push to oust McCarthy. That's not really the issue. The issue is what came after, where by most accounts Jordan cynically tried to politically kneecap Scalise for his own benefit before the whipping even got started, and earned too much ill will in doing so. It wasn't even very ideological, though it could have been. And now no one has the political stature to be a replacement. This was all so, so predictable.
They're convinced that the GOP's problem is a lack of will, rather than that their political objectives are difficult, dubiously popular, and involve making tradeoffs their voters won't actually like. In fairness, in the context of intra-party negotiation, intransigence can be a benefit. Cutting a deal with the opposition is a lot more costly than cutting a deal with your own hardliners. They're also trapped by their own voters, to whom they have generally pitched the idea that there are an abundance of free lunches to be had if only the "establishment GOP" weren't too weak to eat them.
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Name a compromise in the last 30 years that secured anything you think a Republican should consider to be a positive outcome.
"Compromise" becomes a dirty word when it's used to describe you being relentlessly fucked without apology or mercy.
The Clinton-Gingrich welfare reform is the canonical example. I agree that is going to slip out of "last 30 years" soon.
The dealmaking around the 2013 sequestration got the Republicans 5 years of below-inflation discretionary spending growth and most of the Bush tax cuts made permanent - that was a better deal for Republicans than either constant law (and full expiration of the Bush tax cuts),constant policy (red ink as far as the eye can see), or implementation of the sequester as originally agreed (which would have cut defence more and other discretionary spending less).
I don't even know if MAGA conservatives want to cut Social Security and Medicare, so I don't think their failure to do so reflects bad dealmaking.
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It wouldn't be a few people voting for Jim Jordan. It would be the entire Dem caucus peeling off a few moderate Republicans to install the most liberal Republican in the House with the understanding he wouldn't block any bills or launch any investigations into Biden. But that's not going to happen, since Jeffries already has unanimous support and already gets a plurality of votes overall. Jim Jordan wouldn't accomplish the goal of getting the government running again because his supporters are voting for him under the premise that he'll prolong the gridlock. That's why there isn't a huge push to name anyone, and the current circus only benefits Democrats.
How does the circus benefit Democrats?
It makes Republicans look incompetent. Choosing a Speaker is supposed to be simple. So much so that the last time a Speaker election required more than a single ballot was in 1923. You have to go back to the 1800's to find a Speaker election that took as many ballots as McCarthy's. It also means Republicans aren't able to advance any conservative agenda, via either legislation or committee. Who are the independents, the moderates, the fence-sitters, looking at this Speaker fight and going "More of this please?"
Without the Senate and with an opposed executive, there's no way to advance a conservative agenda through legislation anyway. This is another reason the speaker fight is more contentious: actually getting a speaker is lower-stakes than usual.
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Yeah. The government establishment mainly does things I don't like, half or more of Congressional Republicans don't want to stop it, and I hope none of them can have their way. The current crop of Republicans are unserious? For the last 30 years serious Republicans have sold the base out on immigration while they debate which new countries to bomb. They've always been clowns. It's just now that the base has started to fight back that they're mad about it.
The smart move would have been to elect Jim Jordan, because it would please the base, and then MAGA would be left holding the bag when Republicans inevitably screw it up. ("We told you so!") But centrist establishment Reps couldn't stomach this and voted against Jordan, because they're all petty small-minds. (Aside: Democrats are largely also petty small-minds.) It's like when McCain stabbed Trump over healthcare, or when NeverTrump tried to throw the election, or when Romney and Cheney voted to indict. Did they think the base would never hit back?
The likeliest outcome here is this drags on until a Government shutdown is back on the table, at which point the "adults in the room" solemnly gather together so they can elect some milquetoast as Speaker and go back to funding wars. I'm not expecting anything particular or good out of this fight. But I'm happy they're fighting, and I imagine that some day soon the stakes will be higher and the odds will be better. One day soon it won't just be business as usual!
I don't really think that's a fair characterization. You mentioned for example distracting the base with empty immigration promises. But wait. Who killed the 2013 Gang of Eight immigration reform bill that passed the Senate and died in the House on Boehner's watch? A serious bipartisan effort that passed 68-32? A real, not-vaporware bill that both gave a path to citizenship alongside border security improvements and expanded employer verification? Yes, short sighted right wing House members under Boehner's weak speakership. Sound familiar? Meanwhile, I don't see a strong correlation between centrists and war hawks. Some prominent Iran hawks for example include a wide range of Democrats and Republicans both and of various polarities. You have Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton and McCain historically on the GOP side, to name a few. Hardly close allies.
The current feelings are largely, I think, largely a reaction to the Republican Congress largely sitting on its hands out of spite during the early Trump administration. The refusal to fund the border wall was especially egregious, in my opinion. This lack of accomplishment with a unified government firmly convinced a lot of people that the Congressional Republicans did not really support the things they claimed to.
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Blech 🤮
This is exactly what I don't want: Republicans who work with Democrats on sweetheart deals that include "path to amnesty" (now) and "border security improvement" (later!). But maybe you aren't familiar with the history of Congress's empty promises to fix the issue.
None of these guys are actually conservatives aligned with the base, they just play one on TV. Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton especially are the worst fakers. Ted Cruz is nominally more conservative, because he's so unlikeable that this is his only play. But otherwise all of these guys are the exact type I described: they will sell the base out on issues we care about so they can get another crack at bombing Iran, which is the serious, bipartisan compromise.
I don't want serious bipartisan deals. I want the right-wing Obamacare, where the whole party gives me what I voted for even if it's controversial. I want the right-wing Nancy Pelosi, who will hold half of Congress against a hostile President and Senate and not blink, and nobody goes on TV and says Pelosi is being irresponsible and needs to be adult in the room and give up every point. I don't want Repubublicans that appear serious to you, a centrist Moderate Biden-voting Dem -- not because I'm mad at you personally or acting out of angry animus, but because I'm tired of electing Republicans who appear more reasonable to the other guy than to me.
And that's why the Republicans can't win. If they set out a hard line against the Democrats, the TV will say they are irresponsible and intransigent. If the Democrats set out a hard line against the Republicans, the TV will say the Republicans are irresponsible and intransigent.
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Yep, from my perspective the longer Congress does nothing the better, I'd love to see the whole machine lurch to a messy stop. Daily entertaining updates is just icing on the cake.
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I listen to talk radio and the conservative hosts are calling it a clown show. Armstrong and Getty have repeatedly played whimsical clown music while describing Speakership updates.
Armstrong and Getty are somethin else. They are so incredibly unknown among any of the right people, but they've been doing their thing for 25 years or so.
I used to listen to them while delivering flowers in Sacramento in the mid-2000s. The effect of aging has not yet affected their voice/delivery. They haven't skipped a beat.
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I agree with you that, with a few exceptions, the current crop of Republicans are a bunch of clowns. But unfortunately my only alternative is voting for people who actively hate me for who I am and my beliefs. I say this as a white male who believes that racial disparities are primarily genetic and that many of the differences between men and women have a biological basis. These are scientific beliefs that in a sane world wouldn't be controversial. Sadly, in our world they mark me as scum to anyone on the left half of the country so I'm forced to throw my support to the other side. And if that other side is a bunch of clowns then I'm giving my support to a bunch of clowns because i sure as hell am not going to give it to the people who hate me.
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The countries that actually influence US policy prefer to direct the golem rather than render it inert.
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