We're about to start the latest vote-a-thon for Speaker of the House, and it strikes me that the key question is:
Are there five Republicans who flatly won't vote for Kevin McCarthy no matter what? Deals don't matter, promises don't matter, ideology doesn't matter. They just won't do it.
Well, are there?
There only grasp on power is that to disrupt, so yes, they'll keep pulling that lever.
Are they sending out fundraising letters?
McCarthy has been negotiating with PAC's. Maybe if some of the national PACs' monies flowed into PAC's aligned with certain members....
(R) Dan Bishop on nominating Byron Donalds for Speaker: "Yesterday, we could have elected the first Black Speaker of the House..."
All Democrats stand up, chanting "Hakeem, Hakeem!"
Did this really happen??? Good for Democrats!
I suspect the resolution of this crisis will involve a deal with the Democrats who will provide the necessary votes to elect a speaker. Of course the Democrats will exact a price for this cooperation as well they might. So in the end these idiot hard liners will have damaged the cause they profess to believe in.
"Someday, and that day may never come, we will call upon you to do a service for us. But until that day, accept this speakership as a gift on your 10th try to vote one in."
I agree that at this point Democratic cooperation seems like a necessity--it will be fascinating to see whether that cooperation is a sin (?) of commission ["aye"] or of omission ["present"], based on the concession(s) extracted.
Also agree that any such deal, exalting socialists to spite RINOs, is a bargain that only a distilled Trumper could strike. Jordan Klepper, start your engines.
Yes, yea, we know: it's always the fault of "the Democrats."
Why not demand that several "sensible Republicans" either vote "Present" or actually switch their votes to Hakeem?
But the Freedom Caucus types will view that as having outed all the other Republicans for who they really are -- weak compromisers. Not sure they will think of that as damage to their cause. Right?
To my thinking, the fundamental problem here goes back to Gingrich: once you declare the enemy is evil, you can't negotiate or compromise with them. Or you lose the basis of your hourly fundraising emails.
Agreed. There are lots of starting points one can mention (McCarthy, Goldwater, Nixon's southern strategy, St. Ronnie ) but the sheer nihilism of Gingrich - my way or the highway - which is reminiscent of another certain southern movement is the beginning of the tactic of using the threat of chaos to get your way and it has only gotten worse in the ensuing 30 years.
Yes, I think there's ample evidence that even Nixon and Reagan were extremists in the streets, but compromisers in the sheets. To wit, EPA (Nixon) and talking to the USSR (Reagan).
It's Gingrich who realized declaring that the other side is evil (and worse, though I'm not gonna mention what they said about John Podesta etc) would be good for business, at least in the short term.
Trump seems a bit trapped by this problem, and he's just not savvy enough to find a way out. His support is from the insurrectionists, but he so desperately wants the respect and status he gets from the institutionalists (thus the kinda-sorta endorsement of McCarthy). It's pretty amazing watching these personality quirks at work.
I think it could go either way but I think that the Democrats are unlikely to rescue McCarthy, in part because he’s untrustworthy and partly because the concessions he’s already made would make the House ungovernable in any event. Better to start with a more trustworthy Republican who hasn’t yet sold his soul.
Alternatively, the Democrats could simply wait for McCarthy to desperately change the voting rules and then pay even less for the handful of Republicans (probably several of the 18 from Biden districts) who’d accept a deal with some chairmanships and equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats on all committees, plus the debt limit.
I don't see this happening. Any Republican who agrees to concessions that appeal to Dems will be targeted with a well-funded opponent next election. Many Republicans will refuse to go along with this. Plus, for nearly any Democrat voting for McCarthy is political suicide, so any compromise would require a more moderate Republican as speaker, which would siphon off even more GOP votes.
MTG, for example, has been promised committee appointments by McCarthy. What Dem would agree to keeping that in the deal? None, so her vote is gone, meaning you need even more Dems. That would repeat itself with many others, making it very hard to come up with a compromise candidate that can get enough votes.
If the Dems persuade a GOP Rep from a Biden District to accept, they can let the non crazy GOP reps vote ‘present’ And if a few Dems won’t go along with it, they won’t matter as long as enough Republicans don’t vote or vote ‘present’ or for anyone else. The 20 crazies think they hold the balance of power, but they only do if the Dems let them.
McCarthy made a deal with the lunatics to create a rule by which the rules committee would be able to block any and all legislation, effectively making the rules committee the Speaker, --and that's not good enough for them.
This is some really deep seated personal animus, where does it come from?
I think it's from when he refused to put forward any Republicans to serve on the January 6 committee.
Imagine the freak show it would have been if they had been there. They lost all of that.
I have actually often wondered if McCarthy did that purposefully, to screw back at Donald Trump while trying to do it in a way that seemed like he was standing on dingbat principles.
That committee only worked as well as it did because those idiots were absent.
"I think it's from when he refused to put forward any Republicans to serve on the January 6 committee." McCarthey submitted names. The problem was that two of the names he submitted were believe to have participated in the attempted coup d'etat.
Am I misremembering this? What was the point where he just refused to participate?
When Nancy Pelosi refused to seat 2 of the bomb-throwing wingnuts (Jordan & Banks) that McCarthy had appointed. McCarthy then pulled all the Republicans.
Pay attention to the lack of R votes. Gaetz just voted for DJT and it appears a bloc either won't vote or have walked out. At establishing quorum, there were less than a full house.
Walking out could through the vote to Hakeem Jeffries....if enough go along.
Reynolds already has 10 votes--it's over for McCarthy on this round...
Yes, I meant Donalds....sorry about that.
Math is hard!
Strategically, slapping Jeffres with speakership could be a good move for the GOP. This congress is going to be a total shit show, why not let the other guys take the heat for it?
The obvious answer to the question is yes. Which is why it is good that there exists the precedent that when this drags on for another week you got to win by plurality.
Donalds, you mean.
yes, thanks.
So was DJT nominated? Seems like that, and the prize-winning toadie who put him forward, would have been its own news item. Or can you do a verbal write-in?
Is quorum set when voting starts, or at the closing gavel? Just wanna be clear where the goalposts are, and how much theatrical latitude is before us.
i believe gaetz just threw trump's name out there during the roll call vote without formally nominating him.
Will McCarthy gamble and go with a plurality vote hoping to scare the holdouts into line?
Actually letting Jeffries "win" might be his and the Republicans best option. Jeffries might be speaker, but won't be able to do anything--then the Republicans could try to blame the Democrats for the dysfunction.
That outcome is at least as likely as McCarthy becoming Speaker.
I'm not sure McCarthy can win a game of chicken with the Freedom Caucus. They are pretty nuts. It is entirely possible that a half dozen would refuse to blink (destroying GOP control of the House would likely raise their media profiles, as they scream about how stupid McCarthy is...they care about themselves more than policy.) The GOP really can't risk handing it all to Jeffries.
One of the GOP's main goals is to spend the next two years investigating Biden. Jeffries will get in the way of that.
Plus, they'll lose useful leverage when the debt ceiling comes up. Dems can likely get a few Republans to vote with them with very few concessions. The GOP needs the threat of default to really get what it wants. They lose that if Dems hold the Speakership.
I do not want to give any credit to the incendiaries but the reality is that nobody trusts McCarthy for valid reasons. Even for a politician, the trail of lies and two facing that he has engaged in is a sight to behold. I suspect he will start hemorrhaging support pretty soon.
Willard: Hey, soldier, do you know who's in command here?
Soldier: Yeah.
https://youtu.be/f96p-IhcZhQ?t=136
All the usual assumptions about how a political impasse like this plays out is null and void. I doubt we get a Speaker this week. I don't see how we get one next week either. The pressure on the holdouts from the party doesn't matter. The pressure from their constituents, on balance, is to hold out. The idea that Dems can step in to resolve the situation doesn't seem likely to me. Any bipartisan compromise will probably make that candidate toxic to a larger group of GOPers.
Nothing's getting done, but so what? There's lots of grandstanding while the debacle gets more and more attention. Seems like that's a good incentive for the show to go on.
Call I can do is repeat how great this is.
When we started the week, Republicans had lost the last 3 votes. Now they've lost the last 10.
If they really work at it, we could be at 20 by Monday. I'm rooting for them, I know they can get there if they try.