Rep. Matt Gaetz is planning to attempt to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy from the role this week after the House leader worked with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown on Saturday.
Rep. Matt Gaetz is planning to attempt to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy from the role this week after the House leader worked with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown on Saturday.
House Republicans have only gotten more divided since they took the majority. It took them 15 rounds to agree on a Speaker the first time, how many votes is it going to take to elect the next one?
I can’t think of anything g in politics over the last decade that were as predictable as this situation. The moment we got a few votes in to his disastrous process of becoming the speaker, we all saw how a few right wingers basically had their hands around his throat for the foreseeable future. This was always gonna be the result. He was never going to finish two years as speaker.
Watch them pull some desperate Hail Mary like asking some Democrats to give him support lol
Gaetz already is rumored to have been doing that, just because he personally dislikes McCarthy so much. Though the idea that any Dem will do something that benefits Gaetz is pretty hilarious on its face.
The politically savvy move for the Dems will just be to watch them squirm. But it could prove really painful for the nation, and unlike the GOP the Dems will always basically back down and compromise when real people are about to get hurt. The right thing to do, but also part of how the Overton window keeps away from democracy.
Oh, they will definitely let Republicans squirm for a few days, but nothing gets done in the House without a Speaker, and Nestor’s “dad” is right about one thing: nobody trusts Kevin.
If McCarthy had stuck to the deal he made with Biden, then it would be an entirely different story. I bet Democrats would have blocked the motion to vacate in that case. Kevin only screwed himself over by feeding the trolls on his Right. He got nothing (except less money for Ukraine), and lost any support he might have gotten from any Democrats.
I predict that Democrats will wait for a few days, and see how Republicans are organizing. If the only candidates are the nut jobs and Kevin, but no one can win that vote, they might throw Kevin a bone, but only after getting some concessions out of him (with ways to keep him honest, since nobody trusts him). But if any more centrist candidates out themselves up and get 20 or 30 R votes, I expect that guy to cut a deal with Democrats to go over the top. Then Democrats will protect that guy.
Remember, nobody trusts Kevin.
Dems support in his keeping the speakership may have been part of a deal for the funding extension.
But why would they make a deal with Kevin, when he has already reneged on a deal with Joe Biden?
If they do make a deal with Kevin, they will need to get immediate concessions, because they can’t rely on him to live up to any future part of any deal.
If they found a moderate R to deal with, though, they can restart the trust form scratch…
Honestly, if McCarthy has to stand at a podium and admit to pundits and such that he is asking the Democrats for help and that they gave it to him, that could be very useful for the Democrats if they know how to use it. Especially if they can get McConnell or someone praising the bipartisan action.
McConnel doesn’t even know where he is anymore half the time. Wouldn’t count on him.
Isn’t there anyone else, less on deaths door, that could do this?
The only reason I brought him up is that he has been very vocal about the dysfunction in the house, and was working on the bipartisan senate agreement. So he’s always shown some capacity for common sense here.
I can’t stand the dude but yeah. The most likely outcome is McCarthy is just going to be left twisting in the wind.
Because McCarthy is about 42 years too old for Gaetz.
Don’t you believe it. America is almost 250 years old, and that is still not too old for Gaetz to try and fuck us.
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Apparently, there’s also a Republican effort to kick Gaetz out of the House due to “ethics violations.” Basically, “we were willing to overlook the child sex trafficking, but your government shutdown stunt could have hurt us at the polls and that’s serious!”
What I’d love to see happen: Gaetz kicks McCarthy out, but in one round of voting Democrats help McCarthy regain his position. Turns out that McCarthy made a long term deal with Democrats to not only keep the government open, but to save his skin. With their one trump card played, the Freedom Caucus suddenly finds they have no power. The Gaetz expulsion vote happens and Gaetz is expelled thanks to votes from Democrats and Republicans.
Or just to re-elect Kevin.
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For real. The only option aside from McCarthy is someone moderate who can pull votes from Dems. These extremist nut jobs only have power because McCarthy is totally beholden to them. A bipartisan, moderate speaker just consigns them to the back row. If they’re smart, no way they outst him, just sit back, shut up, and keep collecting those Russian paychecks. But you know, they’re stupid.
Who is a moderate Republican?
Better luck finding Bigfoot.
This happens with everyone. Remember the “blue dog democrats?”
Once power is to be had, everyone wants their piece of it for their provincial agenda. And when a party is on the defensive, they all band together to survive.
This is frankly one of the healthy checks and balances that keeps any one group from achieving hegemony.
If the whole country went overwhelmingly red or blue for any period of time, we’d see a third party emerge to destabilize it. Exactly as happened with Perot after the Reagan Dynasty.