I thought the Speaker vote in the House was supposed to happen at noon EST. I think they are in the preliminary stages of the procedure now, just past noon. I’ve been cruising through commentaries about what could happen. Even right-wing pundits are using terms like “train wreck” and “sh*t show.”
If Kevin McCarthy isn’t elected on the first vote, this will make him a weaker speaker even if he is elected on the second vote, the pundits say. But the hard right caucus in the House seems to want to weaken Kevin McCarthy for the sake of weakening Kevin McCarthy. Brendan Buck writes in the New York Times,
A small band of Republican misfits has vowed to vote against Kevin McCarthy, the party’s nominee for speaker. With a razor-thin majority, just five Republicans voting against him could deny Mr. McCarthy the gavel. This would be no small event. The House last failed to elect a speaker on the first ballot in 1923, and it’s only happened once since the Civil War. …
… A failed vote would badly weaken Mr. McCarthy or whoever the new speaker will be. The House is a majoritarian institution, and a speaker’s power is ultimately derived from the ability to produce the 218 minimum votes needed to do business. If Republicans are unable to muster the votes for a speaker, it will make very clear from the outset they cannot be counted on to fulfill the body’s basic responsibilities, such as funding the government and preventing a credit default by lifting the debt ceiling, both of which will be required this year.
It’s supposed to be a big embarrassment for the Republicans if they fail to elect a speaker on the first vote. I doubt they care. Brendan Buck concludes,
But the agitators’ objective isn’t to win the speakership for one of their own; it is to weaken Mr. McCarthy or whoever emerges as the next speaker of the House. The embarrassment indeed may be the point.
Going back to my proposal that one can best understand the Right if one imagines them all to be ten-year-old boys … yeah, pretty much. They’re all in a state of pubescent rebellion.
Well, the votes have begun. I’ll comment more when there’s a result.
Update: They’re still in the Hs, and there have been ten Republican votes for someone other than McCarthy. I think this means McCarthy doesn’t have a prayer.
Update: Yeah, McCarthy is way short of the votes.
Update: Rolling Stone has the list of Republicans who voted against McCarthy.
- Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.)
- Dan Bishop (R-N.C.)
- Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)
- Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.)
- Michael Cloud (R-Texas)
- Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.)
- Eli Crane (R-Ariz.)
- Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.)
- Bob Good (R-Va.)
- Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.)
- Andy Harris (R-Md.)
- Ana Paulina Luna (R-Fla.)
- Mary Miller (R-Ill.)
- Ralph Norman (R-S.C.)
- Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.)
- Scott Perry (R-Pa.)
- Matt Rosendale (R-Mt.)
- Chip Roy (R-Texas)
- Keith Self (R-Texas).
Rolling Stone continues,
Biggs received several votes, as did Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who himself voted for McCarthy. Reps. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) and Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) each received a vote, as did former Rep. Zee Zeldin. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) received 212 votes. McCarthy finished with 203.
The opposition to McCarthy is centered in the far-right Freedom Caucus, whose chair, Rep. Scott Perry, bashed McCarthy in a statement just hours before the voting was slated to commence.
Update: I understand they’ll have another vote soon.
Update: Second vote is underway.
Update: McCarthy is going to lose the second vote also. The anti-McCarthy vote is coalescing around Gym Jordan.
Update: Off topic, but here’s a tidbit from the January 6 committee transcripts. Kellyanne Conway told the committee that the only person Trump fears is Melania.
Update: The anti-McCarthy voters all voted for Gym Jordan this time. Jordan himself voted for McCarthy and Jordan gave the speech nominating McCarthy for the second round of voting. Maybe Jordan can work out a deal between his voters and McCarthy that would break the impasse. Otherwise this could go on for days.
Update: They’re about to start a third vote. I’ll check back in later.
Update: Still no sale. This could go on a while. From what I am reading the holdouts are being difficult purely for the sake of being difficult. Ten year old boys, etc. Democrats could step in and give McCarthy the votes he needs, but from what I’m hearing they aren’t planning to do that anytime soon. The House is adjourned, and there will be more votes tomorrow.
If you want to understand…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGhJ5FuxUZU
It looks to me that Matt Gaetz and Gym Jordan are working a good cop/bad cop routine on McCarthy. There's nothing like a good neutering campaign to keep McCarthy on his toes.
Don't you need to have some balls to get neutered?
The majority of republicans don't believe in democracy or the institution of government. In fact most of them hate this country, the flags they wave is for a country in their minds, one where white folks and Christianity rule, it's not actually America. Most of them will play along with McCarthy just because they need some semblance of order so they can pay back their owners (dark money campaign donors). But a sizable number of them, thirty or so have bought the lies about America hook line and sinker. They hate this country, they hate the institution of government just like most Republicans but they have totally bought into Anarchy for the sake of Anarchy. Good luck with those assholes GOP, you get what you deserve!
I've always been amazed that the GQP stuck with this idiot McCarty. I mean after he spilled the beans on live tee-vee that the Benghazi hearings where nothing more than a taxpayer funded hit job on the presumed democratic nominee for president ("she's untrustable") you would think the GOP would have shunned this asshole?
If the GOP shunned assholes there wouldn't be anybody left.
They seem to have forgotten why they are there, perhaps it would renew their sense of unity and common purpose by exiting the chamber and then bursting back in through locked doors?
Third failure in the books and adjourned until noon Wednesday. McCarthy is NOT going to be Speaker. The FreeDumb Caucasians win their "Never Kevin" battle and they will run roughshod over whoever they eventually elect.
Kevin McCarthy has earned the crap sandwich he is soon to finish eating. Odds are that he will resign sometime this year and not finish his congressional term.
In the second ballot, Jim Jordan of Ohio received all 19 non-McCarthy votes after nominating McCarthy and urging his party to vote for the Californian.
There's the game. It's a powerplay by Gym Jordan to cast himself as the reluctant nominee who will be willing to serve as speaker only out of a sense of duty. I think Paul Ryan used the same ploy to gain his speakership. The sacrifice that these repug's make for the good of the country just gives me patriotic tingles. In a sense it's sorta like Trump threw Kevin to the wolves via an endorsement so that the MAGA banner can be carried to victory. Kevin's speakership dreams died so that MAGA might live!
Gym Jordan has less of a prayer of being elected by the whole caucus than McCarthy has.
Between Gingrinch, Livingston (lasted only a few days) and Hastert, Republicans have a recent history of sleazy and/or sex-criminal Speakers, so Gym Jordan would fit right in.
Kev,
The old saying goes that it's "THIRD time's the charm," and you weren't charming enough to win the third time.
Tomorrow at noon will be your FOURTH attempt, Kev!
I don't know any old saying about the fourth, or fifth, or any other chances.
So I'll make one for you, Kev:
After the third time, Kev, you're f*cked!
That sounds about right, no?
Btw, and also too: Democrat Hakeem Jeffries is the leading vote getter for SotH.
A Democrat!
LOL & ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!
The news media is treating politics as "normal" as if the rules of the last 50 years or so apply to the last election and the new Congress. The GOP got clobbered, even if they did take the House by a narrow margin. They lost a seat in the Senate, which gave Democrats control of all committees in the Senate.
The press seems to expect gridlock. The Senate will be in no mood to pass anything the House writes, and vice-versa. Republicans have made no secret of the circus of "investigations" they plan to conduct. I don't think the insurrectionist GOP members of the House are just gonna provide a clown show. A minority of extremists in the House intend to dominate the House and leverage the chaos they can create through a shutdown(s) to either back down the opposition in the Senate and the Administration OR plunge the country into bedlam which they think they can exploit by force. They aren't gearing up for the next election. (They've lost ground in the last three.)
The configuration is similar to 2013 – Obama was president and the Democrats has the Senate while the House was led by Boehner, who changed the rules so that only he or his designee could bring a motion to consider the continuing resolution. Previous SOP allowed any member of the House to call for a vote.
This was early in Obama's second term – the GOP had passed a series of meaningless votes in opposition to the ACA (2011, 2012) – they could not possibly repeal it so they planned to defund it by shutting down government to extort. the Senate and White House. (Read the article on Wikipedia – the plan was supported by Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, and Newt Gingrich.)
The shutdown lasted 16 days. Voters disapproved and mostly blamed Republicans. When the polls clearly showed that the GOP would take a bath in the next election if the shutdown continued, Boehner caved, brought it up for a vote, and passed the funding bill with the complete support of Democrats and a minority of Republicans.
I call your attention to the heroic efforts of McCarthy to stop the passage of a budget by the lame-duck Congress. He went so far as to try to whip up GOP opposition in the Senate the day before the vote. Which passed – McConnell took a shutdown away from McCarthy until the Fall. (The debt ceiling will come up before that – July.)
IMO, McCarthy is viewed as a political opportunist. (Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows are full-blown crazy.) If/when the shutdown generates blowback for the GOP, the anarchists want to tank the country rather than back off (as Boehner did.) So I think it's about taking the power to call off a shutdown away from McCarthy and putting that power in the hands of a true Kamakazi.
This is what I referenced in my link to Alfred, "Some men want to see the world burn." The true zealot will create misery and pure pandemonium in the hope of extracting personal power from the chaos.
Way cool if Hakeem Jeffries had a shot.
It sounds like Kevin's ship has sailed, but I read, to even get this far, he had to concede to allowing a vote of no confidence, should the extremists decide against him.
Kevin is an opportunist, an empty suit who goes where the wind is blowing, always following power.
Republicans are organized (or disorganized) crime, and their voters are accomplices.
The more time they spend jacking around with stuff like this, the less time they have to screw up the country.
And the longer we remain oppressed by the Murica-destroying evil of Obamacare. (I'm old enough to remember when repealing Obamacare was their top priority.)
Reee-eally should'na made "sh*t show" my drinking game phrase.
I think many commenters have almost said this, but this wording I think has a better clarity. You can take all a person's power away but for one power. That is the power destroy. In the present situation, we have a handful of republicans trying to wield that power even after negotiating for many concessions. They seem quite willing to destroy the republican party rather than vote for McCarthy. In a way they already have.
By holding the majority of republicans "hostage" they are showing extreme power of a minority of members to dominate the majority of their own party. One has only to look at the members of this cabal to understand this group is very willing and able to destroy not only their party but the democracy itself. They appear to ascribe to the notion that they have to make things a lot worse before they can make things better.
I have been in those situations before in smaller organizations. When these types get control things do get worse, sometimes lots worse. Never, in my experience, do things ever get better. If the problem now is a swamp as they claim, expect a larger more rancid swamp if they prevail.
I suspect that embarrassing others is just a cheap path toward the true motivation of the crazy Trumpists: a *feeling* of "winning". The right-wing Noise Machine has spent decades convincing them that they are "victims" of the success of others (Blacks, Jews, Queers, Immigrants, etc), to distract them from the GOP policies which have actually degraded the income, wealth, and prospects of the American Middle Class (regardless of color/etc).
It's the same thing – a quick jolt of "winning" (adrenaline? endorphins?) – that makes "owning the Libs" so important.
The New Crazy Trumpist bloc in the House isn't actually *wrong* when they point to the "normal" Republicans as "the problem", though their "reasoning" is way off base (and of course, any "solutions" they propose are useless at best, and more likely dangerous).
I hope the Crazies succeed in destroying the Republican Party; I just hope they don't destroy the USA and the World in the process.
Sorry for all the words in Scare Quotes, but it's the only way I can communicate how twisted things have gotten. I hate having to use the word "normal" to describe such a screwed up world, so I throw quotes around it.