Should Democrats have provided Kevin McCarthy with the votes he needed to stay on as Speaker of the House? After all, it's not as if they're likely to get someone better in his place. I think Matt Yglesias has the right read on this:
My view on this is that Democrats should have been willing to bail McCarthy out in exchange for a very very very low price ... but he had to offer them *something* and as I understand it he didn't.
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 3, 2023
Not only did McCarthy offer them nothing, he explicitly said he didn't expect their help. Under the circumstances—and given the serial betrayals they've endured from him—it's hard to see why they'd break tradition and vote for him.
Nonetheless, apparently McCarthy's supporters in the House are furious at Nancy Pelosi for not doing more to help him out. Patrick McHenry is the new acting Speaker and he's already hard at work:
NEWS - As one of his first acts as the acting speaker, Rep. Patrick McHenry ordered former Speaker Nancy Pelosi to vacate her Capitol hideaway office by Wednesday
“Please vacate the space tomorrow, the room will be re-keyed"
w/ @DaniellaMicaela https://t.co/iRqbztb0Wu
— Nicholas Wu (@nicholaswu12) October 3, 2023
What a dick.
In other news, Steve Scalise, the #2 Republican in the House, has announced that he'll be running for Speaker. I fully support his candidacy. It's about time that people with multiple myeloma had some representation in our nation's highest offices.
Regarding Republican McHenry's desire to harm Democrat Pelosi, after his own Republican speaker suffered a setback, I'm reminded of one of the first jokes I ever heard as a child (and understood).
During a storm at night, a Russian farmer heard a loud "boom" and rushed outside to discover that his only cow had been hit by lightning, and was dead.
He got down on his knees and prayed to God.
He said, "God, all my life I've been an honest and devout man. I've honored you above everything else, above my parents, above my wife, and above my children. The loss of my cow will ruin me."
"I've never asked anything of you before, but I'm asking for something now."
"Please kill my neighbor's cow."
You beat me to commenting on this behavior, especially disrespectful given Pelosi's absence due to Feinstein's funeral.
Saw that the Daily Beast has an opinion that the Democrats aren't responsible adults because they didn't act to save McCarthy. I'm very glad they didn't, given how the speaker pro tem couldn't wait to inconvenience those of Jeffries' staff who had to move the contents of Pelosi's office. Nasty retribution for her saying that her party shouldn't bail McCarthy oit.
In fact, that is just further evidence of how petty & childish their motives & actions are - and a further reminder that McCarthy acted similarly when taking over her former office before he was actually elected speaker.
I'm wondering why anyone is listening to him about re-keying offices. That seems straight up violation of his trust, abuse of his position.
Not to insinuate anything other than jackassery about McHenry's move, but is there a chance its because now, Nancy Pelosi is no longer the "ex speaker" of the House, but McCarthy is?
I never heard of hideaway offices before today, nor have I bothered looking into how many ex speakers of the house there have ever been at any given moment (now we have two, at least when Pelosi took over for Ryan he was no longer in the house) , but it seems so totally assholeish that one wonders if there is actually some basis for it.
Republicans are going to shut down the federal gov't in 42 days, just in time to ruin the holidays for millions of Americans. Count on it.
LOL at the recognition of individuals with MM. It is a badge of honor.
This is just typical Republican horse shit. Everything is always Democrats' fault, even their own busted-ass incompetence.
Useless preening fools can't even manage their own affairs and whine that somehow Pelosi should have saved them?
Republicans get so emotional sometimes.
Any journalist who fails to ask what Republicans would have done if the situation were reversed is too stupid to keep their job. I mean, there's three paragraphs of copy, right there.
+1
The MSM's default assumption is that only Democrats have agency. After all, if a two year old sets a room on fire, who do you blame? The toddler, or the adult who was supposed to be supervising him?
Because Republicans themselves disavow any agency.
“The Democrats are forcing us to nominate Trump!”
MSM just recognize Republicans for the pathetic, whiny incompetents they are. But it would be sporting to remind us occasionally if that underlying truth.
One from the vaults,
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F7h8350XMAApQnt?format=jpg&name=medium
This is what they can't get past.
Still trying to figure out where the hole is, 'cause it sure looks like an ass.
There something about all this that smacks of predictable partisan behavior that paves the way for fascist takeover.
Strict partisan rules that make it costly to buck party leadership can make leadership susceptible to a tiny minority of their own party. These vulnerabilities make it easy to split a bipartisan majority against fascism and render it powerless.
I didn’t see the Democrats punish Manchin or Sinema.
The rule that the Republican House lives by is appropriately named after their longest serving Speaker—a serial child molester.
You know I do think Randy Rainbow should be president,
https://twitter.com/RandyRainbow/status/1709274563949768844
+1
Mmm, he's admitted he's not responsible enough.
https://www.advocate.com/comedy/2020/8/20/randy-rainbow-emmy-nom-and-resurfaced-racist-transphobic-tweets
Who else would admit that?
The perfect candidate.
I suppose... ugh.
The tyranny of the minority now is now subject to the tyranny of its own minority. While it is a welcome change in some ways to see that the Republicans are now the ones trying to find someone who can herd cats, it's unnerving when it occurs during a budget showdown & Ukraine's need for continuity of support
Not saying that the Democrats should have pulled McCarthy’s ass out of the crack, but if there is a long fight over filling the Speaker’s chair, it will play into the hands of the Chaos Caucus, who simply want to bring calamity on the country, in the hope that it will improve TFG’s chances in 2024*. They didn’t want concessions in return for raising the debt ceiling and voting for a CR; they wanted default and shutdown. In forty-odd days we’ll be going through this again, and the same perps will be trying to shut down government, and no Speaker will be able to negotiate them out of that.
*Yeah, there are various motives at work — some just want to get their faces on the teevee, some maybe are angling for Cabinet jobs. What they have in common is wanting your Mom to not get her SS check.
So far it seems like the only county we haven't been hearing from is money. When do Wall St, the big banks, the mortgagers, get nervous? When do even the natural-resources reactionaries get nervous? Really complete gridlock ultimately is a threat even to them, unless maybe they have secret survivalist modes to shift into.
In a semi-sane world the rational thing would be a deal between most or all of the Dem caucus and about 1/2 the gop caucus, which the big money interests would presumably be pushing hard for the closer we get to November 14, a kind of speakership of national unity that would be unthinkable in normal times.
It's impossible right now because of party loyalty-- just look at the so-called "problem solvers caucus" whose Rs pulled out because its Ds didn't vote for McCarthy, a real feat of up-is-down thinking.
But this hidden-hand Roman-Empire-style assassination-mongering inside the republican party is too dangerous to everybody not to be dealt with. And even if big-bucks interests are unmoved by constitutionalist concerns, they ought to be responding to threats to their own interests. As long as they don't wait too long.
The problem is that we've had so many shutdowns that the critical parts of government mostly manage to limp along under the assumption that the funding bills and backpay will show up later. All it would take is air traffic controllers saying "forget it, we aren't working without pay" to get a spending bill passed pronto.
I seem to recall during a previous shutdown that this resulting in a reduction of air service that inconvenienced Republicans. They denounced this inconvenience as a Democratic plot. I think they might have passed a special bill to fund the FAA, but I'm not sure about that.
Yesterday I said voting for any Republican reflected a complete failure of character --and somebody objected!
Like it was news to them.
Well, let him defend Patrick McHenry.
If you just overheard the term 'worthless little dirtbag' you would just naturally assume the person it was referring to was some kind of Republican, wouldn't you?
Well, Robert Menendez is one too.
Also RFK Jr.
Both of those guys are exceptions that prove the rule, and, at best, Democrats of convenience.
FFS.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸@RepMTG
The only candidate for Speaker I am currently supporting is President Donald J. Trump.
https://x.com/RepMTG/status/1709397608576266457?s=20
She's not the only one apparently. Hannity sources say T is "open" to the idea.
Hard to see how GOPers ever agree to a replacement. Odds are, it'll be someone orders of magnitude worse than McC. Very doubtful it'd be T (hope I'm right on that), but I can't imagine a bigger shitshow.
What I care about, and what Dems should care about, is:
1. Getting a budget passed
2. Getting aid to Ukraine
I think this week's events make both much harder to achieve.
Maybe a few R reps will get sick enough of the crazies they'll work with D's to get a new speaker installed. I'm not holding my breath.
The circus might be mildly entertaining but I think we're entering a dangerous time.
Regarding the dick move by McHenry:
First, keep in mind he is not speaker. He is not speaker pro tem. He is acting speaker pro tem. He has, as I understand, no authority to do diddly other than oversee the business of electing a new speaker. (Not entirely sure about that but his authority was described that way on TV earlier today.)
Second, the rule for vacating the speaker's chair remains on the books. A Democrat ought to file a motion to vacate McHenry's chair and get him the hell out of there.
Maybe Pelosi, on her return?
But I think she's too classy - & smart - to do that.
I wouldn't want to give them that much of an excuse to get distracted from what they should be paying attention to. Imagine the pettifoggery possibilities over whether the rule on vacating applies to the secretly-designated-(secret)-successor-but-now-Acting-Speaker-Pro-Tem-but-not-in-the-presidential-line-of-succession whose only authority is to oversee selection of an actual speaker of the House.
A guy who's proven himself to be a real class act, and to top it off I expect he'll have pictures taken with his boots up on Nancy Pelosi's old desk in the actual speaker's office, just to show the world what a Real Man he is.
The world is an open book if you have an open mind,
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F7hpwFpXYAApGkS?format=jpg&name=medium
They will put Donnie in because they think it means he'll be able to threaten judges with impunity.
Kevin M. was worse than useless. Backing out on a budget deal, starting an empty impeachment of Biden, his specialty was cutting a deal with Dems, then backing out and giving the freedumb caucus whatever they wanted. Let him spend his last days of public life hunkered down in his office rereading “Young Guns”.
I'm thinking of buying "Young Guns" if only to get a good laugh from it. "Young Guns?" more like squirt guns. All three done in by their own party.
"but he had to offer them *something* and as I understand it he didn't."
If this is true then it basically shows the incompetence of McCarthy (on top of a lot of other things) and quite honestly that faction of the party in the House not aligned with insanity. The offer is there to run a coalition government and if this faction continues refuses it then it deserves what it gets: continued disfunction for all the nation to witness. Why should the Dems bail them out if their reward for it if an impeachment vote as McCarthy again tries to appease the very that want him gone? They can all go to the Devil for all; I care...if he'd take them.
And then of course there's the ultimate schedenfreude, "My Kev" basically abandoned by the man he sucked up to for so long in order to the Speaker. Know Trump long enough and you find out he has no friends, only interests, useful interests to himself. That's the way he operates. It's business. You're only his buddy so long as he finds you useful. When you're not, well, you wind up like Kevin McCarthy, ousted by your own party, first time that's ever happened. At least he can say he made history.
There are two problems with this. The first is that there probably isn't a majority to be put together on that basis. Passing a continuing resolution is one thing; as we saw, an overwhelming number of House members were for it. That wouldn't be true governing in general. Democrats and Republicans really aren't that close to each other in terms of policy preferences.
That's especially true of their voters. By the time McCarthy is offering enough to Democrats to get enough of them on board, he'd be leaking Republicans faster. Aside from it offending their personal policy preferences, any Republican that signed on to this deal would by signing their own death warrant in next year's primaries. Their career would be over.
The second problem also relates to someone's career being over. Right now, Kevin McCarthy can probably expect a lucrative career somewhere in the right wing media/lobbying machine when he leaves the House. If he agreed to some sort of Grand Coalition, those opportunities would evaporate.
Just no.
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2023/10/03/congress/jordan-mulls-it-00119832
Since one of the longest serving Republican speakers, Dennis Hastert, is a convicted pedophile, it would make sense to elevate "Gym" Jordan, who is at least molestation adjacent, to that role.
It blows my mind that Republican House members continue to refer to "The Hastert Rule", and that Democrats don't reciprocate by calling it the "Pedophile Principle".
The Nutjob caucus wasn't even holding McCarthy to the Hastert Rule -- namely that no bill advances w/o majority support in the GOP caucus. The reason McCarthy couldn't get anything done is that they were insisting everything had to have unanimous approval. Which of course gave them a veto over everything. Which is why we're here.
They're just lords of chaos, nothing more.
"Lords" vastly overstates their competence and nobility. They're the Chaos Clowns.
You should be speaker, Kevin!
I've had enough Kevins as Speaker for a while.
Adam Schiff made the point on MSNBC tonight that McCarthy's word could not be relied on. If I understood him correctly, Schiff was saying that that alone was good reason to remove McCarthy, because the job requires making deals, and you aren't going to be an effective deal maker if people don't trust you to honor your agreements.
True enough, but no successor is going to be any better, because the nutjob right wing will undermine any agreement. They aren’t there to get stuff done; they want gridlock, default and/or shutdown.
Who wants to bet me that the next Speaker will be settled by cage match?
We're getting the government we deserve.
Welcome to "Idiocracy." Although President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho was pretty cool.
"We're getting the government we deserve."
I dunno, I think that America deserves better.
Americans voted these yahoos into office. Americans kept voting for them while they gave the family farm over to corporate interests. Americans kept voting for them while they stood by and let 99% of the people who caused the last financial crisis go free and they kept voting for them after they'd lost their homes and their wages kept getting cut as unionization faded.
Americans are going to vote their way into an authoritarian regime in the name of crime and immigration control. Team MAGA didn't know what they were doing in round 1, they won't make that mistake again.
Right now the top story at Fox News .com is, in big bold letters:
Pelosi evicted from her private office in the Capitol by interim House speaker
With a pic of McHenry looking stern, and a pic of Pelosi looking startled/haggard
Classy.
She wasn't even in town.
He didn't have the authorization to do that.
Why wpuld the Capitol staff violate pretty much any ethics if the Speaker tells them to?
Partial aside, but why is anyone listening to Matt Y on anything?
Because he is smart and well informed and he makes sense.
You're missing the /s.
And I have movie star good looks.
You have a problem with that? I prefer my commentary from people who know what they're talking about.
If the Republicans want to be a functional party again, they need to immediately take a baseball bat to the eight mofos who betrayed the party and punish them to the max for refusing to be team players. No committee assignments, no campaign money, recruit and support primary challengers, denounce them on Fox at every hour of the day. Teach them a lesson and make examples of all of them. That's the only way to make sure this doesn't happen again.
If they had a 20-seat majority they might start by expelling them from the caucus. But then again, if they had a 20-seat majority, these bozos would have had no leverage and none of this would have happened. As it is, the speaker would have to be involved in these punishments and the bozos will control who the next speaker is, unless something changes bigly over the next week. Somebody should be getting the Borgia books locked up over at the Library of Congress. Or checking them out . . .
If Republicans were interested in being a functional political party, they'd exile Trump and his people to the outer rim of the galaxy and reaffirm their loyalty to the concept of liberal democracy and the rule of law. Unfortunately, none of them want that -- they want to be a bugfuck crazy cult of personality built around Trump and racist demagoguery. They will never get better until they are so destroyed electorally, socially, and culturally that the only option is to start rebuilding from scratch.
I doubt I will see that in my lifetime, but we can always hope.
Why do you think any of the things you list would be considered a punishment for these clowns? You can get good media face time in just the right committee hearing, but they're mostly just sitting around listening to boring minutiae, wasting time that could be better spent owning the libs.
Cutting them off from campaign funds wouldn't hurt them at all. What they lose would be more than made up by crowing about how they're standing up to the hated Establishment RINOs. I'm hard pressed to come up with anything more likely to ensure their re-election.
Ditto supporting primary challengers.
I have no idea why you think the Fox audience wouldn't be more titillated by their rebuttals than the accusations.
In short, thanks to the weak nature of American political parties, there isn't any effective way for the Republican establishment to discipline the chaos clowns.
I didn't think Scalise would run. "In other news, Steve Scalise, the #2 Republican in the House, has announced that he'll be running for Speaker. I fully support his candidacy. It's about time that people with multiple myeloma had some representation in our nation's highest offices." LOL
We are a gerontocracy.
The guy is 57.
As I think about, if the shoe was on the other foot, and there was a vote to vacate Pelosi, the MAGA crowd would be giggling as they all voted her out.
I never expected the Democrats to "save" McCarthy. In raw crass political terms, why should they? It's popcorn time for them. The Republicans sabotaged themselves and have only themselves to blame.
Quite right. McCarthy couldn't offer them anything and whenever he previously agreed to something, he could never follow through. In retrospect, he could have gone to Jeffries at the very outset and told him if he could count on some Democratic votes in any motion to vacate brought by the nutjobs, he'd sideline those idiots for the term and make sure business got done. But of course he couldn't do that because 1., it would require him to not be a lying sack of shit and 2. cooperating with Democrats like that would end his career.
Well, Barely Speaker McCarthy's political career is over now anyway and it couldn't happen to a more deserving Kevin McCarthy. Hopefully in a few years, the Kevin McCarthy we'll remember is not this spineless liar but the fine character whose career lasted from the '30s until his death in 2010.He's best know as the lead in the 1956 original Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Well, I'm sure this will teach 'em and next time the Democrats will be far nicer to Republicans.
And the repulsives wonder why the Dems don't "support" them. Here it all is in a nutshell. What a bunch of dumb guano heads.
Ha, I knew Scalise would run. And all this time I thought he was Kevin's friend. Ha, they eat their own.
So the leading contenders are Scalise, who is described as David Duke without the baggage, and Gym Jordan (this peace of shit needs no additional descriptions). Some are calling for Orange Jesus to apply even though they have some rule in the house about not allowing indicted felons to be Speaker.
MTG (aka Ms Jewish Space Laser) would be perfect for this group IMHO.
From what I can tell, Scalise is terrible, but probably no worse than McCarthy and he may even have a slightly better working relationship with some of the people on the other side of the aisle than McCarthy did. Jordan is a radical, corrupt sack of shit and shouldn't be allowed within a parsec of the Speaker's chair.
Welp, I was sure wrong about how this turned out. I was pretty sure Gaetz was the one who couldn't count votes, but here we are. Goes to show that nobody ever went broke betting on how low Republicans can go.
I'll admit, my optimistic, naive inner child at first thought the Democrats should have helped McCarthy in exchange for some concessions that might build a coalition party and lock out the MAGA wing for the rest of the term, actually get some bipartisan sh*t done for the next year, and maybe set a good example for the future.
But then I read a summary of how many times McCarthy has broken his work to people on all sides of the aisle. Plus his decision to start this "impeachment inquiry" knowing full well there's no basis. The man just can't be trusted to do what's best or what's right.
The next few months at least are going to be a royal mess, but the alternative wouldn't have been any better, and this is all Republican's doing.
Democrats should have helped McCarthy in exchange for some concessions that might build a coalition party and lock out the MAGA wing for the rest of the term,
Let me rephrase that: McCarthy could have gone to the Democrats and offered some concessions in exchange for their support and freezing out the crazy wing of his party (no shutdowns, power-sharing on committees, etc.). Unfortunately that kind of bipartisan negotiation is simply not possible in today's Republican party. You either go MAGA or go home.
Which is why Democrats should have voted for him, without any agreement. The MAGA would have exploded.
The only way it would have failed is if Gaetz & co as a result would have decided to cooperate with Qevin, which looks to me of negligible probably. Much more likely, they would have gone ballistic in their attacks on him, which would make both of them look bad.
The Democrats really missed an opportunity in this case.
"The MAGA would have exploded."
What does this even mean? And how does that help Democrats?
That means they would have started to use offensive language against him, much more offensive that they already do, and much more often.
That would make both them and McCarthy look bad for undecided voters.
Probably also more threatening language.
To be clear, that was my naive inner child phrasing that, not my pragmatic rational self. 😉 And yeah, it should have been something McCarthy asked that they could agree to, not a blanket "Awww, poor fellow, let's give you a hand" from the Democrats.
In fact, as I've said earlier, if McCarthy were any kind of human being, he could have continued to denounce Trump after Jan.6, formed a coalition between moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats early on, and push MAGA out of the spotlight. We wouldn't get any extremely progressive reform out of that, but at least the House would have been functional and capable of cranking out bipartisan bills for the past nine months, and McCarthy would get to be Speaker. But of course he didn't do that, because he's McCarthy.
I have no love for McCarthy. My questions or concerns are:
1. Are the Dems confident that the new GOP speaker (yes it will be a GOP speaker) will be better for the Democrats? It seems, while imperfect, Biden was working with McCarthy. The next person MIGHT be more Trump like...
2. Near near, I assume, that Republicans looking disorganized and more likely closing down the government is good for the Democrats. I must admit, I am not certain on this...
3. In the future, does this make it easier for the GOP, to try to help rebel Dems replace a Democratic speaker? Does it matter?
Normally the party with the majority elects a speaker from its ranks and that's that. The problem this time around is that the Republican majority is extremely narrow, so a small group of radical nutjobs could effectively hold the Speakership hostage. And given how partisan things are, there weren't any other GOP reps courageous enough to reach across the aisle and work with Dems to elect a consensus candidate who *wasn't* going to be a Nutjob Caucus hostage. For this to be a problem with Dems, they'd have to have a super-slim majority in a future Congress, *plus* a rump of completely unmanageable, poop-flinging radicals willing to burn everything down to get their way.
Horsefeathers. This was entirely on the Republicans. They are the majority party. If McCarthy had wanted Democratic help to maintain his office, he could have made an offer of power-sharing. He didn’t, and Democrats had zero incentive to do him a favor.
Given the makeup of the GOP, I doubt Democrats have the slightest expectation of getting much from the next Speaker.
McCarthy worked hard as minority leader to make Democrats despise and mistrust him, then did more of the same as speaker. More than that, he betrayed and stabbed in the back everybody he's ever dealt with, except trump. He did do two things that mitigated his party's damage to the country-- the debt ceiling and the CR-- but both times betrayed his nutjob faction and then turned his back on the deals.
IOW, he was a serial betrayer and that's how he ran the House. The bulk of his caucus picked him because he was the person least likely to cause them electoral trouble in 2024.
The bulk of the party will now be looking for somebody like that-- they hate the 8 who torpedoed McCarthy (would gladly line up to stab them one by one), and they won't go for any of the other notorious flakes. But whoever they eventually pick, if they do, would not be any more able than McCarthy was to make and keep a deal with the Ds at any level. And will probably also end up ruling by betrayal. I think everybody knows this already-- they should have no illusions.
The House is a majoritarian body. The majority party picks the speaker, as jte21 says, and controls the floor and all committees. That's the Rs' job and they don't want to give up any of that control. So it's their problem to solve. There just aren't enough Ds to make up a majority this term.
At some point, if Rs can't solve their problem, it will become the country's problem too. But not yet-- cooperating with Ds is still the cardinal sin of sins. So it's too early for Ds to make any serious moves. That can only happen if there's a lot of outside pressure on both them and the Rs.
And trump has been doing his level best to inoculate against that possibility with his continuous demonizing of Dems, so there's that-- he makes every situation into a binary drama of lining up with him or against him. Lots of inertia against any kind of accommodation. That's why there needs to be overwhelming outside pressure.
Re #3, the next time Dems get a majority, I can't imagine any of them asking for or agreeing to the current motion-to-vacate rule. No Republican would agree to it either if they had the choice-- it's only there because McCarthy had to do this self-gelding in order to achieve his heart's desire. Seeing these results, no successor will put up with it who has any other choice.
You all remember that it took 15 rounds of voting and haggling in order for McCarthy to become speaker in the first place. One of the conditions that Gaetz & co. demanded and got was that a motion to vacate could be initiated by a single representative. In the past it has always taken a majority of the caucus, not just one. There's the reason McCarthy is the first speaker in US history to get vacated.
if any democrat thinks the party should have rescued charley, they should be reminded of mccarthy's words words post jan. 6, then take a look at the photo of mccarthy with tfg take at mar a logo weeks later. that photo concisely tells everything you need to know about mccarthy.