On Leverage
Archimedes is said to have to have said, “Give me a place to stand and a lever and I shall move the earth.” They say, “Give us a seat and we will screw up The House of Representatives, the Nation.” They proved it.
NRA said, “Here’s some cash.”
There is no distance between the Freedom Caucus and the NRA.
Forty-two current, give or take, with six of seven from southern states, nine of ten from red states, with noted alumni that include Mulvaney, Meadows, Gohmert, DeSantis, Rohrabacher, and Sanford; all are more motley than representative.
Poor Kevin. Not really – none more deserving. Poor America. We deserve better than this.
In politics, leverage means tyranny. In Republican politics, primaries are used as leverage. From business, Trump knew well the art of leveraging. As a developer; the art of using someone else’s money to do it. The lessons from The NRA, Tea Party and Freedom Caucus weren’t wasted on Trump, Bannon, et al. Easy leap for him to lever his way into control of the Republican party, from there, the Nation.
From business to politics, of late, we’ve been all too leveraged.
The process of nominating and electing a House Speaker is such that a person must be nominated in both Party caucuses. Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that Liz Cheney will be nominated by either one. Otherwise, a handful for rogue moderate GOP Reps could vote for her, and if all Dem Reps in their caucus did so also, she would replace Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. I am ever hopeful.
Kevin McCarthy Loses 2nd Vote for Speaker
NY Times – just in
(Earlier he lost the first vote.)
Nineteen Republicans consolidated their votes behind Jim Jordan of Ohio, while Mr. McCarthy fell short again. Members will take successive votes until someone secures the majority needed to prevail. …
McCarthy’s Republican opponents coalesced around Jim Jordan even though Jordan gave the speech nominating McCarthy for the second round of voting. …
(Jordan voted for McCarthy.)
How Far Right Are the 20 Republicans Who Voted Against McCarthy
NY Times – Jan 4
The Republicans who blocked Representative Kevin McCarthy of California from becoming speaker on Tuesday include some of the most hard-right lawmakers in the House; most denied the 2020 election, are members of the Freedom Caucus, or both. …
12 denied the results of the 2020 election.
19 are associated with the Freedom Caucus.
Almost all of the incumbents were “objectors.”
Fourteen of the 15 incumbents who voted against Mr. McCarthy were among the 139 House Republicans who, on Jan. 6, 2021, voted to overturn the 2020 Electoral College results.
17 were endorsed by Trump in 2022.
The House held three votes on Tuesday for the speakership. Nineteen Republicans did not support Mr. McCarthy on the first two votes, casting their ballots for others, including Mr. Biggs and Mr. Jordan. Representative Byron Donalds of Florida joined the group on the third vote, throwing his support to Mr. Jordan after voting for Mr. McCarthy on the first two ballots.
(Dertails at the link.)
As the circus resumes today in the House, keep an eye on Elise Stefanik. Sam Houston once said about Jefferson Davis that he was “as cold as a lizard and as ambitious as Lucifer.” I think that sums up Stefanik as well.
Jeffries and the dems could make a deal with the 203 republicans to let Kevin be Speaker if he and they agreed to not put any members of the Freedom Caucus on any committee. This lot is badly in need of having a knot jerked.
@Ken,
The word “could” is doing all the work in that first sentence. It will happen coterminus with the first verified report of porcine aviation.
Kevin knows that such a deal would result in a speakership whose half life would be measured in nanoseconds.
Hmmm. I was wondering when the GOP (i.e. McCarthy) would get around to decididing that a plurality would be sufficient. Looks like he’s headed that way, but since Hakeem Jeffries has more votes than McCarthy at this point, he’s thinking as long as he has one vote more than Jeffries, he’s the winner, maybe. Except there already is a plurality, and it ain’t McCarthy.
McCarthy floats path to Speakership with lower vote threshold | The Hill
House GOP Speaker nominee Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) expressed optimism about winning the gavel Tuesday night as he emerged from meetings with allied members following three failed ballots, floating the possibility of winning the post with fewer than 218 votes.
“You’re sitting at 202 votes, so you need technically just 11 more votes to win,” McCarthy said.
“Democrats have 212 votes. You get 213 votes, and the others don’t say another name, that’s how you can win. You can win with 218. You could win with 222. But if you want to look at how you have to go about doing it,” McCarthy said. …
(Jeffries has 212.)
If 12 of the recalicitrant GOP Reps vote present, that would mean that Hakeen Jeffries is elected Speaker of the House. Otherwise, the House keeps voting.
He is, after all, far ahead of McCarthy.
On Wednesday (4th ballot), McCarthy’s total slipped to 201.
The nation’s legislative process is at a standstill: Members cannot be sworn in, adopt rules or vote on bills until a speaker is chosen.
Far-right Republicans on Wednesday (nominated) Byron Donalds, the party’s first Black nominee for speaker. Mr. Donalds, of Florida, drew 20 votes. The lawmakers do not expect their candidates to win but wish to register their displeasure with Mr. McCarthy.
The Democrats are united behind their leader, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who earned the most votes, 212, on all four ballots …
McCarthy on Track to Lose 5th Vote
4th, 5th & 6th ballots: same results.
And one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.
Joel:
I popped some popcorn, added a bit of butter, and grabbed a beer. Gotta enjoy the show of them blowing themselves up. Hopefully, they weaken themselves so much, they will not be much of a force going forward.
D’accord.
Why does America deserve better than this? There are many arrogant assumptions in that question including the beliefs that America is better than other nations and Americans are better than other people. Both assumptions are, of course, wrong by most standards.
America showed what it wants and deserves at the polls. The GOP fronted someone who was arguably the worst candidate in over one hundred years and still almost won the presidential election. The GOP and all their crazies took over the House and barely lost the Senate. Half of America (at least) is violent, racist, xenophobic and willfully ignorant.
Poor America? Nah, America deserves this and more.
‘Frankenstein created a bunch of mini-Frankensteins’
Boston Globe – Jan 4 – not a free link
With GOP speaker battle, Trump loses control of Trumpism
When former president Donald Trump on Wednesday morning urged Republicans to save Representative Kevin McCarthy’s flailing bid for House speaker, Florida GOP Representative Matt Gaetz quickly defied him.
“Supporting McCarthy is the worst Human Resources decision President Trump has ever made,” Gaetz wrote on Twitter, adding a Trump-style coda for dramatic effect. “Sad!”
As the day wore on, Gaetz and 19 other rebels ignored Trump and handed McCarthy another series of humiliating defeats, depriving the top Republican in the House of the full complement of votes he needs to claim the speakership and fulfill the chamber’s basic functions.
The protracted fight lays bare both the power of the hard right and the depth of its disdain for the transactional political style of McCarthy, a California Republican. But the battle is also revealing the limitations of Trump’s ability to reel in his allies and the burn-it-all-down political style he nurtured as his party’s standard bearer. It’s an indication that, following his own defeat in 2020 and those of key candidates he endorsed in last year’s midterms, he has lost control of the forces he unleashed.
… Trump’s brand of bomb-throwing, grievance-fueled politics was an accelerant that rewarded the headline-grabbing defiance of members like Gaetz, Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, and Pennsylvania Representative Scott Perry .
“If Donald Trump taught these people anything, it’s that fighting is rewarded,” Buck said.
Trump himself endorsed and embraced many of the rebels, cheering on election deniers like Perry and standing by Gaetz even as he faced a federal investigation over sex trafficking (he has not been charged). Others come from a distinctly Trumpy ecosystem, including freshman Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who used to work for the Trump-aligned political group Turning Point USA.
And they have used Trump’s own language and tactics, railing about the “swamp” in Washington and all but openly celebrating the fact that they have managed to grind Congress to a halt.
That made the rebels’ brazen defiance of Trump’s McCarthy endorsement all the more remarkable, because it shows how the former president’s brand of politics — Trumpism — has transcended the man himself.
“You can be so Trumpy,” said Republican strategist Doug Heye, “that you don’t need Trump.”
In one particularly topsy-turvy moment on the House floor Wednesday afternoon, Boebert, an ultra-MAGA Republican whose profile page on Twitter shows a gun and a hat honoring Trump, took it upon herself to tell the former president what to do. …
McCarthy Offers New Concessions to Try to Win Speaker Post
NY Times – just in
The California Republican signaled he would give in to more demands from hard-right rebels in a frenzied effort to win enough votes for the speakership, after losing a sixth consecutive vote. …
Representative Kevin McCarthy of California offered fresh concessions to a hard-right band of rebels in a desperate effort to lock down the votes to become speaker, as a historic Republican deadlock that has paralyzed Congress entered its third day on Thursday with no resolution.
… Mr. McCarthy privately agreed to more demands from the right-wing rebels that he had previously refused to countenance, including allowing a single lawmaker to force a snap vote at any time to oust him from the speakership, according to three people familiar with the negotiations who described them on the condition of anonymity, noting that they were ongoing and that no final deal had been reached.
The Republican leader had also committed to allowing the right-wing faction to handpick a third of the party’s members on the powerful Rules Committee, which controls what legislation reaches the floor and in what form, according to one of the people, who has been involved in the talks, as well as to opening spending bills to a freewheeling debate in which any lawmaker could propose changes, including those designed to scuttle or sink the measure.
Taken together, the concessions would weaken the speaker’s power considerably and make for an unwieldy environment in the House, where the slim Republican majority already promised to make it difficult to govern. And it was not clear the offer would be enough to corral the votes for Mr. McCarthy to prevail.
The House was scheduled to return at noon and plunge back into the fight …
It has been said that the hard-core ‘No-Kevin’ group of 5 is not susceptible to any of these machinations, but the other dozen+ anti-Kevins may be. It would seem he doesn’t get the number he needs under these circumstances.
‘Frankenstein created a bunch of mini-Frankensteins’:
With GOP speaker battle, Trump loses control of Trumpism
Boston Globe – Jan 4
… former representative Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican: “Frankenstein created a bunch of mini-Frankensteins and they are all grown up and independent now.”
… “This has been a long time building and a long time coming, the tension on the far right with leadership,” said Brendan Buck, a Republican strategist who was an aide to (former Speaker John) Boehner and his successor, former House speaker Paul Ryan, who also struggled to keep the Freedom Caucus in line.
But Trump’s brand of bomb-throwing, grievance-fueled politics was an accelerant that rewarded the headline-grabbing defiance of members like Gaetz, Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, and Pennsylvania Representative Scott Perry .
“If Donald Trump taught these people anything, it’s that fighting is rewarded,” Buck said.
Trump himself endorsed and embraced many of the rebels, cheering on election deniers like Perry and standing by Gaetz even as he faced a federal investigation over sex trafficking (he has not been charged). Others come from a distinctly Trumpy ecosystem, including freshman Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who used to work for the Trump-aligned political group Turning Point USA. …
Kevin McCarthy pressured to ‘figure out’ House speaker race
Boston Globe – just in
(AP) … McCarthy is under growing pressure from restless Republicans, and Democrats, to find the votes he needs or step aside, so the House can open fully and get on with the business of governing. His right-flank detractors appear intent on waiting him out, as long as it takes. …
The House, which is one-half of Congress, is essentially at a standstill as McCarthy has failed, one vote after another, to win the speaker’s gavel in a grueling spectacle for all the world to see. The ballots have produced almost the same outcome, 20 conservative holdouts still refusing to support him and leaving him far short of the 218 typically needed to win the gavel.
(Next week, the admin staff of the House stops getting paid. Bring in the National Guard?)
AP: … If McCarthy could win 213 votes, and then persuade (some/most of) the remaining naysayers to simply vote present, he would be able to lower the threshold required under the rules to have the majority. …
Nine naysayers need to change their votes to present.
It’s critical to get at least 213, because Dem leader Hakeem Jeffries has 212.
Incredible orchestration would be required on this final ballot, or the GOP inadvertently elects a Speaker from the Dem party. How cool would that be.