Democrats are sick of bailing the GOP out of their own messes, and boy, are Republicans whining about it
Anyone who has paid even the slightest attention to the events leading up to the historic ouster of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as speaker of the House knows exactly who is to blame here: McCarthy and his fellow Republicans. For years, they’ve rolled out the welcome mat to Donald Trump and his wrecking crew of MAGA camera hogs, foolishly believing that they could harness the chaotic villainy without getting burned in the process. They refused to listen to former Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen when he warned Republicans in 2019 that those who “follow Mr. Trump as I did, blindly, are going to suffer the same consequences that I’m suffering.”
Granted, McCarthy didn’t get hauled off to prison like Cohen. But he still faced a tasty comeuppance this week when the sadistic bullies he empowered in his caucus, led by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, vacated his seat for no other reason than the sheer satisfaction of taking out their leader. Now shellshocked Republicans know who they want to blame for everything that has happened, and — surprise! — it’s not themselves. Oh no, they’re mad at Democrats for refusing to swoop in and save McCarthy from his fate.
Hilariously, nobody can explain why it would be in Democrat interests to save McCarthy. He could have negotiated with them, but he refused to do so.
He was already reneging on the agreement he made with Biden. He unilaterally started pointless impeachment hearings on Biden, instead.
McCarthy reportedly told his own caucus that if he remained Speaker, he’d go against the Democrats even more.
All the Republicans have to do is to elect a new Speaker. Every single Congress has been able to elect a Speaker so far.
Oh and by the way, it seems that Trump cannot be elected Speaker due to some rules of the House that Republicans put in place about electing someone with felony indictments.
Oh and by the way, it seems that Trump cannot be elected Speaker due to some rules of the House that Republicans put in place about electing someone with felony indictments.
Not saying that’s untrue, but source? I’d like to look it over for myself.
Edit: Found this.
Yes, the GOP has Rule 26(a) and the Democrats have Rule 4, both of which say the speaker can’t hold the seat while under indictment. However, these rules aren’t legally binding and aren’t always followed.
Despite my pointing out the rule, I do actually agree with your research.
If you saw parts of the Impeachment investigation clown show that the House GOP put on, you’ll see the GOP repeatedly flouting the rules, and Democrats calling them out for it. For example, IIRC Jamie Raskin pointed out that it goes against House rules to impugn the president’s character, for example, they were calling him a liar, on the floor of the House, except in an impeachment inquiry. And that they weren’t allowed to have an actual impeachment inquiry without a vote. These are both House rules. He was overruled by the chair with an explanation along the lines of “This meeting is to investigate Biden, so those comments can be allowed.” Which obviously goes against the rules of the House.
My real, true hope for the rule is that it gives everybody an excuse to do what they want to do, anyways. I think very few people actually want Trump to be Speaker. I think even Trump doesn’t really actually want the job. It’s similar to the Presidency. He probably wants to be chosen, but in reality, he doesn’t want to do the work. And he’s happiest if he doesn’t get the job, and can whine and complain that the system has been rigged against him.
The position of Speaker is all procedure. You have to attend these long boring meetings. You have to know the rules. You have to read the rules and procedures aloud from a book in front of you. Let’s not forget that Trump is functionally illiterate. If he tried to actually perform that role, it might be massively embarrassing for him. He also wouldn’t have time to perform the role. So if he was elected Speaker, I think he would basically hold the role in absentia.
So I agree it’s possible that Trump is the next Speaker, but my hope is that the rule gives everybody a reason not to choose Trump.
Conspiracy theorists will claim that it was all determined long ago and they started indicting Trump to prevent him from becoming Speaker.
This is what happens when self-entitled children get elected to office and why I hate half of my fellow citizens with such vitriol.
They shit on the floor, smeared paint on the walls and then burned down the entire house.
Their take on it?
“I can’t believe you let me do that. Whats wrong with you?!?!?!”
There’s a junior Congressman from NC, Jeff Jackson (D) who offers really candid views of the House floor. He sent out a newsletter after the vote which provided some insight on what Dems were thinking about the vote.
The Speaker knew he was going to lose those folks, but he was hoping to peel off a few votes from the minority party.
Some folks in the minority were expecting him to reach out and say, “Hey, let’s make a deal. I’ll offer you this, and I want your vote.”
But instead, he went on TV the day before and basically said, “Here is my offer to the other party: Nothing.”
The minority party heard that from him and said, “Well, ok then, best of luck.”
That said, I’m not sure the Speaker could offer anything to the minority party. If he did, and his party found out, they’d be furious, and then he wouldn’t need six votes anymore - he would need 20 or 30 or 50.
…
My sense is that if he had felt it were at all possible for him to stay in power by working with the minority party, he absolutely would have done it - he just knew it wasn’t.
Reading that summary just tells me that everything is for sale in congress. Votes. Elected officials. Bills. Citizens. Everyone is constantly trying to get leverage to get what they want, and the country is caught in between them.
I mean yeah, that’s kinda the whole point of how a representative democracy is supposed to work, minus outside lobbying.
The whole crusade folks went on against pork barrel legislation basically just trashed a full half of the tools politicians can use to negotiate a consensus. Probably not a coincidence that infrastructure integrity has taken a nosedive ever since it became taboo to ask for bridge repairs to sign on for a bill.
Really? They’re supposed to sell each other and/or us out to get wha they want?
The process I described is literally the complete opposite of that. It’s frustrating when it obstructs needed legislation but if it means the average rep and/or senator is more able to be negotiated into supporting a given measure then what the fuck ever!
I’d encourage you to check out some of the other content Jeff Jackson has put out. I originally followed him on reddit, but it looks like he also uploads to Youtube. He obviously has a progressive bias, but to hear him say it, most Congress reps (both sides) will wind up the media until the doors close, then their rhetoric tones down and they get to work. The far right are the exception in that they are NOT there to be productive, and the shouting and clickbait are as deep as they go.
The GOP is a political mafia whose donors believed they had whipped the Democrats into servitude. Good for democracy… down with the Grand Old Pedophiles
My sense is that if he had felt it were at all possible for him to stay in power by working with the minority party, he absolutely would have done it - he just knew it wasn’t.
aye, i think he saw the wind was blowing against him either way, so he decided to get up and lambaste the Dems on the way out
Jeff is awesome. I hope he sticks around for a while.
I know this should provoke… I don’t know… sadness? Resignation? Concern? Righteous indignation?
But I literally cannot stop laughing. Everything is the Democrats’ fault, including Republicans’ own egos. Oh the schadenfreude!
“Now look what you’ve made me do!”
It’s like a weight lifter who only works their biceps. They have one trick, and they’re discovering the limitations therein.
They got voted out by their own party and still went for that bicep curl of “blame Democrats;” It just exposes their withering weakness when it comes to actually trying to negotiate in good-faith.
Now this is a meme worth reviving!
I think the straw that absolutely broke the camels back – preventing Dems from even thinking of voting Present or of simply voting to table the bill – was McCarthy’s shit-slinging over the weekend about Democrats delaying the CR. He’s repeatedly said “they didn’t want the bill, they tried to stop it” etc etc when all they wanted was some fucking time to read goddamn bill so they knew what they were voting on.
Yeah, it get that politics is politics, and to work together you need to sometimes separate a little bit what is said in an interview and what you can hash out on legislation on a personal level.
But damn did McCarthy go all out calling out the Democrats that weekend after ambushing them with a 70 page bill and an hour to read it. If he hoped to get Democrats support he should have put forward a better bill or kept his mouth shut over weekend.
Not only that, but he promised earlier in the year that any bill would have 72 hours for people to read through before a vote happened. So that’s another promise he blew off.
“Look what you made me do” is the language of abusers.
McCarthy lied, so his Speakership died.
Simple as.
Reminds me of the JASTA mess from a few years back when Obama vetoed JASTA, explained why he vetoed it, then it got passed over his veto then they realized, “Oh wait this could be bad for us.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_Against_Sponsors_of_Terrorism_Act
https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/29/politics/obama-911-veto-congressional-concerns/index.html
You left out the most relevant part where they them blamed Obamq
This is what happens when you have a party with no apparent goals or platform beyond opposing the other sides goals. Infighting!
they very clearly have a set of goals and a platform, and that platform is pander to the hyper-weathy donors who drive their politics.
and thanks to Citizens United (or the NRA) many of those are foreign
Save a idiot that wanted to overturn the election? Yeah, fuck off.
He already went back on the previous deal that had been made, then specifically said he wasn’t going to give any concessions in exchange for the Speakership vote. I’m not sure what was expected. Everything in Congress is very transactional or based on previous good relations, McCarthy has neither of those going for him, soooo… oh well?
What is always surprising to me, but shouldn’t be, is that the GOP consistently displays behavior of toddlers that most parents would not tolerate in their kids. Then they turn a blind eye when our elected officials behave that way. It’s strange and sad.
If you look at it from another angle, that of using any tactic necessary to destabilize the work of government and to bring it to a publicly screeching halt as unpredictably, insanely, and often as possible, AND you look at it from the POV of who would benefit from seeing that happen, it makes a lot more sense.
But the strange thing here is not that the GOP outed its own speaker (they did it to Boehner in 2015) nor that they made a clown show of it, nor even that McCarthy seemed to go out of his way to renege on enough deals to make it happen.
To me, the truly strange thing is that part of McCarthy’s election, one of the things he agreed to in order to be elected as speaker, was the specific change in the rules that allowed him to be ousted with Just One Vote.
House rules change every session; in and of itself a rule change is to be expected. But not this one.
Yet this particular rule change was demanded of McCarthy before he could get enough votes to be elected, AND he agreed to it . . . AND lately, seemed to want to ensure it would work. He went to Nancy Pelosi privately asking her advice before blasting her in the press; he did everything in his power to ensure he got NO Dem assistance in keeping his seat when it would have been nothing for him to at least keep from shitting on them publicly, and he made sure to piss off even his own side throughout.
Another thing. Speakers come and go, and many Speakers leave and become Speaker again, like Sam Rayburn and Tip O’Neill. But with the Pelosi/Hoyer office evictions it’s like McCarthy is not only burning his election down now, but making absolutely sure no one will ever suggest him for Speaker again.
All this is is to say that whoever/whatever was behind that highly irregular change in the rules regarding ousting the Speaker was planning this from the beginning of the session, and when the time came, McCarthy wanted out badly enough to force it to happen, and in such a way that he will never be Speaker again.
And now there are just 44 more days before the next shutdown, with aid to Ukraine up in the air, and a next-to-useless pro tempore speaker who really can’t do shit in terms of directing his party or getting legislation to the floor: for most intents and purposes, the US House of Representatives right now is leaderless.
EDITED to add links
He gave up the speakership when he gave in to the rule that any random child rapist could put forth a motion to vacate. We all know which child rapist it was gonna be, and that child rapist didn’t disappoint.
Just once I’d love in passing on the floor of the House from a Dem, “blah blah blah, for example child raper Matt Goetz, blah blah” with a casual hand gesture in that monster’s direction
Not just Republicans. But also “centrists”.
Who on the house floor actually occupies this position. It’s only rhetoric used in debate netween regular people.
It’s fake, all part of their plan to get Gym Jordan in as speaker
Nothing like Jordan seeking the spotlight to give journos a reason to look into why his nickname is “Gym”.
This couldn’t possibly backfire, could it?
That should be quite the circus.
McCarthy helped create the environment in which he got motion-to-vacated but the trigger for it happening now was his willingness to work with Democrats in order to avoid shutting down the government. I don’t agree with him on most issues but I recognize that some non-zero amount of bipartisan cooperation is essential for actually running the country, and in this case McCarthy did cooperate and the Democrats did not. I think that was both a moral error and a strategic blunder: US government dysfunction is visible to the entire world, the House is crippled until McCarthy is replaced, and whoever does replace him is probably going to be less cooperative than he was.
The thing is, McCarthy also broke promises to the Democrats. He cooperated one time to keep the stock market happy, but otherwise reneged on half a dozen other deals. The only way for someone to be less cooperative would be if they let the government shutdown.
McCarthy also tried his best to cause the government to shutdown. He brought the CR to a vote with no notice, Dems had to stall the vote just to get to the floor in time to prevent its failure. Then McCarthy went on the Sunday talk shows and blames Dems for almost shutting down the gov by not getting to the vote in time. McCarthy intentionally brought the CR to a vote the way it did thinking that if it failed he could then blame Dems for missing the vote. He just got unlucky that they got there in time to save the government.
Lots of the Republicans would have let the government shut down, and I think one of them is likely to be the next Speaker unless Democrats vote for a moderate Republican.
“Democrats need to be the adults in the room” has been the argument that allowed the GOP to get so many crazies. It’s essentially an appeasement doctrine, and appeasement only works if there’s some other process actively working to diminish the extortionist so they won’t be able to do it again. GOP hasn’t done any policing of their own candidates, even bolstering the whackadoos, where putting forward good candidates is the one thing a party is for.
The GOP won’t keep their own house clean; Democrats are fully justified in letting the voters see exactly what a mess the place is. Maybe the voters will clean it up - nobody else seems ready.
Then the #GOP will shut the government down again, which historically they greatly regret the very next election.
Maybe we can even get some non-fascists from the Red States eventually.
McCarthy reneged on a spending deal he made with Biden, and then refused to even allow a vote on a bipartisan spending bill proposed by the Senate. The only reason he worked with Democrats in the first place (at the eleventh hour, I would add) is because the alternative would have been a government shutdown entirely caused by the GOP – and he probably still would have lost his job in the end. He’s shown himself to be untrustworthy, uncooperative, and spineless when it comes to the MAGA wackos in his party; honestly, the only reasonable choice was to give him the boot.
That’s all true, but the Republicans still have a majority - one of them is going to be the next speaker. Is there a Republican who is better than McCarthy? Does he have the support of his party? If not, are Democrats going to vote for a Republican?
Sounds like a problem Republicans caused for themselves. Why are they allowed to act like children?
Is there a Republican who is better than McCarthy?
IMHO the bar has to at least be someone who is not on this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Caucus
Also, just about any of the Republicans on this list would be better than McCarthy. The ones who haven’t been ousted since, at least. https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/19/politics/house-republicans-january-6-commission/index.html
No, McCarthy did not cooperate with the Democrats.
• He and the GOP hammered out a deal with Biden months ago that would have avoided all this mess. He didn’t even let that get voted on. It would have, at any point, completely prevented this, and when Gaetz pulled this stunt it would have backfired completely because the Dems would have supported him.
• The first “compromise” bill he tried to ram through had a number of completely insane GOP riders in it, and he tried to prevent the Democrats from merely reading what they were voting on.
• The second one, likewise, had the insane concept of stripping out Ukraine funding, with the Dems again stalling just to be able to read the damn thing before they voted on it.
Then, after being fucking saved by the Democratic members of congress, he has the gall to run to the news networks and decry them as trying to shut down the government.
The crazy thing is why the hell did he or any of his people think that the Dems would deign to support him after he screwed them over multiple times.
He damn well made his bed, and now he’s sleeping in it.
McCarthy allowing the CR to be voted on was at the end of a long attempt to do everything he could to go back on the deal he made with Democrats to pass the bill to raise the debt ceiling and didn’t fulfill his side of the bargain. There’s no both sidesing this mess. The Republicans have decided that they would rather be held hostage by an extremist minority in their party than negotiate in good faith with Democrats so McCarthy was running between the extremists and Democrats making and breaking deals with both trying to string them both along so that he could remain in power. If he had kept his debt ceiling deal and/or made a real attempt to build a bipartisan coalition he might have gotten some support from Democrats.
McCarthy deliberately said he knows he’s supposed to compromise. That’s how the chamber is supposed to work. He said he just doesn’t want to, because he’s the majority leader and the majority should just be able to do everything they want. He explicitly said this shortly before he got the boot.
In the House, voting to support a speaker is not a one-and-done thing. The Speaker sets the agenda for the House sessions, but that agenda needs a majority to approve it, every single session. There is an underlying commitment that after the Speaker is elected, the members who elected him support his agenda moving forward.
Nestor’s “dad” tried this route first, after the Debt ceiling “deal” (which McCarthy eventually broke, but that’s besides the point). The next time the House met, the MAGAs started voting against McCarthy’s agenda, and since the opposition party always votes to oppose that the House was also paralyzed, because the agenda could not be approved so nothing could happen. McCarthy made even more crazy concessions to get their votes back.
So if any Democrats supported McCarthy in this, then McCarthy would have had to count on their support from that point forward. And let’s face it, even if McCarthy had promised stuff for those votes, who would trust him to deliver after the Debt ceiling bill went South?
I still think there’s room for Democrats in this, but only after Republicans keep twisting in the wind. After their fifteenth (or fiftieth?) vote with no resolution, some Democrats and Republicans may agree on a moderate Republican to support. (It will have to be a Republican, as long as they still have an overall majority). But from that point on, that person will need to rely on support from that entire bloc that voted for them to get shit done. If that does happen, though, expect Nestor’s “dad” to scream even louder about a Uniparty…
I still think there’s room for Democrats in this, but only after Republicans keep twisting in the wind. After their fifteenth (or fiftieth?) vote with no resolution, some Democrats and Republicans may agree on a moderate Republican to support. (It will have to be a Republican, as long as they still have an overall majority).
I understand the logic here, but I think it’s worth rethinking this assumption. Why does it have to be a Republican speaker? Why do several democrats need to be the ones to reach across the aisle? For many of the speakership votes in January, Jeffries (the minority leader) won the most votes. The democrats were united while the republicans were splintered. It seems just as reasonable to expect a handful of republicans to make a deal to support a democrat for speaker. It doesn’t matter how many republicans are in the house if they aren’t able to agree.
I understand your thinking, but elections do have consequences, and there are more Republicans in the chamber than Democrats.
I don’t think Democrats are at all interested in seizing the Speakership while in the minority, because they want to be in the majority in the next Congress and dont want to set the precedent that a minority member can squirm in to the Speakership. Not do the Republicans want to set a precedent that the majority party can cede a key post like that.
That’s a really good point - I didn’t think that Democrats voting for a new, Republican Speaker was realistic, but if they’re willing to do it then they can probably get someone a lot better than McCarthy.
Republicans have a majority in the chamber, even if they expel Gaetz because they are all sick of him and send him back home to be with his “son”. Both sides understand that. So as long as they all show up, I don’t think anyone expects a Democrat to end up as Speaker after all this.
Jeffries will be nominated, of course, and get all the Democratic votes, but will not become Speaker unless someone stages a Ted Nugent concert on the Capitol steps to lure all the MAGAs out of the chamber during the vote.
unless someone stages a Ted Nugent concert on the Capitol steps to lure all the MAGAs out of the chamber during the vote.
Nothing like a song of wang dang sweet poontang to get the GOP up and at 'em.
(I’m typing this and realizing how blessedly few times I have heard that term since the 1970s, lol)
Well from the non-fascists point of view, one lying #GOP scumbag is pretty much the same as the next.
