House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) called for Republicans to “get their act together” and elect the next speaker while slamming the “extremists” within their party.
Traditional Republicans have a name.
Its called “Democrat”.
What used to be “the left” is now just a more moderate, reasonable right.
What used to be “the right” is not even on the spectrum anymore, its become a populist extremist reactionary fascism. It’s so far off the chart its on an entirely separate piece of paper.
Jeffries needs to just accept this fact and
walk across the floor. Liberals are now Conservatives, and Conservatives are now Nazis.Edit: Misread that Jeffries was a Republican, the fact he’s a Democrat changes the context a bit. He’s absolutely right but he’s basically just talking about what I re-iterated above, but its the republican “traditionals” that need to walk across the floor and stop associating with Nazis if they dont wanna go down with that ship.
The extremists they are associating with are just going to Crabs in the Bucket them, clawing them down with them when things go under. If they were smart they’d drop the screaming children and walk over to where all the adults have gone.
What do you mean by walk across the floor?
Sitting for too long is a problem for everyone. It’s good to get up and walk around at least every hour.
Lol
I think he means that Jeffries needs to stop pleading with the extremists (and walk back to his side of the house and stop even trying)
Ah, I thought it was walk across the aisle to save the people who can’t even sort their own damn house
Well I disagree vehemently with that; the only way to get things done is to talk.
You don’t get anything positive done by negotiating with fascists, paleoconservatives and some of the worst libertarians and liars of no fixed ideology in the world.
Listening to them at all inevitably leads to outcomes much worse than no change.
No, there’s genuinely no advantage to negotiating with the nutcase section of the GOP. The only thing that achieves, over the past 30 years I’ve been watching politics, is shifting the Overton Window further to the right.
Democrats are already center right Republicans, they don’t need to move further right
We’re going to dance. Don’t speak.
I know what you’re saying so please stop explaining. Don’t tell me 'cause it hurts!
I know you’re good. I know you’re real good.
Hush hush, DARLING!
Well, the political calculus suggests Jeffries only needs 5 Republicans to become speaker. That would be a wild display of incompetence by Republicans, which they have provided several examples recently, but that one would be a real gem. One for the history books
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Whether he is a Democrat or Republican doesnt really impact the overall point of my statement mate, it’s tangentially related but not foundation to what I said.
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Even ignoring the part where you didn’t realize Jeffries is a Democrat, this is just not a fair characterization of Democrats at all, as if they’re all the same.
Democrats in congress represent a broad spectrum from quite liberal to moderate conservative. Even by European standards.
I will just have to disagree. I think when you get down to brass tacks, basic stuff like human rights, freedoms, autonomy, etc are largely bipartisan.
For example, between traditional conservative and liberal discussion in a successful country where religion has been removed from the equation, they would both very much agree that women should be allowed to have bodily autonomy and be allowed to have abortions up to a reasonable limit, lots of countries typically go with 3 months. And thats just for healthy pregnancies, when it comes to physical problems usually the limit is removed.
The actual discourse between a liberal and conservative traditionally should be “who is going to pay for that abortion”, not if it can even happen at all.
The fact we havent even gotten that far in political discussion in the united states now means we are losing the ability to even benchmark how liberal vs conservative the Democrat party is, because we are no longer really debating “who is gonna pay for x/y/z”, its now being debated “should we even allow people to do x/y/z”
Which is no longer a Conservative vs Liberal discussion. It’s a traditional Authoritarian vs Libertarian discussion.
And if all the discussion has become purely Authoritarianism vs Libertarianism, we have gone completely off the rails because the United States is supposed to be a largely libertarian (within reason) government. It used to be the literal benchmark for Libertarianism, being extremely progressive in human rights. Letting your nation arm itself? Being one of the earliest countries to include women in voting? Every step of the way countries used to lag behind the US as it abolished slavery, brought it’s races and cultures together, women were walking topless down the street, people could own pretty much anything they wanted to via legal channels, you name it.
For the longest time whenever the discussions came up, it was more about $$$, who paid for what, what would vs wouldn’t be taxpayer funded. And a lot of stuff used to be taxpayer funded. The USPS used to be one of the shining examples of what a well oiled taxpayer funded system could look like.
But over time that has walked backwards and degraded, the Conservatives have largely completed their goal of slashing and hamstringing nearly every taxpayer public system of the US, the country is at best on life support now. Every single public system you can think of in the US is barely functioning at best, straight up privatized at worst.
Like the US has private prisons now, lol.
It stopped being a Conservative vs Liberal debate decades ago, it’s now pretty much entirely Authoritarian vs Libertarian now. The country stopped fighting for public funding and now the fight has shifted to fighting for basic human rights, the very principle the country was founded on hundreds of years ago.
The US has become the very precise thing the founding father’s explicitly tried to escape from.
with this explanation, the centrists’ mantra of both sides are the same hits the right spot.
It is absolutely wild to me that most major news organizations are completely ignoring the fact that the guy the GOP was trying to put into the speakership until a day or two ago is an overt white supremacist. Like… news anchors are straight up omitting that entire point. It’s not even being mentioned in passing comments.
he guy the GOP was trying to put into the speakership until a day or two ago is an overt white supremacist
Bruh I’m gonna need you to be more specific.
Scalise
Although I think your larger point is well made.
MSNBC reported that a few house members wouldn’t vote for Scalise because of the white nationalist bit. So it isn’t totally ignored, but then again MSNBC would never miss an opportunity like that.
I also haven’t seen much coverage of the fact that the other front runner for speaker, Jim Jordan, turned a blind eye to and likely helped cover up the sexual abuse of college athletes.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/06/politics/jordan-osu-wrestlers-strauss-invs/index.html
Goes to show what a problem Jim Jordan would be. I’d rather have the racist piece of shit
He checked his baggage at the gate, he’s clear to board now
Zero shot. But it’s a nice thought.
Liz Cheney was probably the last “traditional Republican” they had and they made an example of her. Kevin picked country over party and that led to his ousting. Who’s going to side with the Democrats now?
The craziest part about McCarthy is that (I would argue) he still choose party over country but the crazy members of the party couldn’t see that. He knew a shutdown would have been devastating for their image, but all the extremists could see was working with the enemy.
Good points. McCarthy thought he was picking party and country, but his insane coalition wouldn’t see that.
The crazies prefer hurting the other party to both party and country.
I agree, but so far the extremists have been proven right. Their way or the highway has, so far, worked for them to get them to where they are at: minority rulers within their party.
They are, but they’re also destabilizing their party with petty squabbles. They haven’t reached some kind of political equilibrium where they can keep doing this indefinitely.
The Soviet Union seemed like it was here to stay right up until the moment it suddenly wasn’t. Things happened very fast over the course of just a few days, and everyone was blindsided by it. I think the GOP might be heading for that same situation.
Definitely won’t last forever, but hard to say how long they have. Hoping things fall apart for them sooner vs later so we can actually have a functioning government.
That’s also why McCarthy took the very first opportunity he had to slam the democrats after the bipartisan vote to get the temporary funding bill through. He was trying to prove that he still hated the dems, but that wasn’t enough for his party.
Exactly. They made Liz fucking Cheney persona non grata in the Republican party. The patients are running the asylum now. There’s no one behind the wheel of that clown car.
It’s not hard to find five Republicans from a moderate district full of Never Trumpers. They would secure their seat voting for Jeffries and see their own legislation get pushed through.
If the moderates voted in the primary, perhaps.
They should, but I don’t think they do.
I would personally love to see that happen, but I think it’s unlikely. It would probably be more likely to get a more conservative compromise Democrat as speaker of the house, but only after the Republican party festers for another week or two.
Ok Charlie Brown, try and kick that football! I’m rooting for you.
So who are they and why hasn’t Jeffries been elected yet?
GOP House rules, they won’t vote until they have 217 votes.
I get the cynicism but I could see an outcome where Democrats provide support to a moderate (or Jeffries with 5 Republicans) in exchange for passing a few things with broad support. And then the speaker resigns and Republicans go back to beclowning themselves.
Something like a deal to elect a speaker for enough time to pass aid to Ukraine and Israel and another continuing resolution to keep the government open beyond the 45 days. Something like that. Then back to where we are now.
Excellent usage of the word beclowning.
Jeffries needs 5 more votes to win.
A Republican nomination needs 217.
To be fair, he seems pretty clear that the he is willing to direct the caucus to vote for an agreed upon republican, rather than seek the speakership himself.
Right. Republicans would never agree to a Democrat speaker. They would rather watch the country burn down than to do that.
Now there is an endless list of other things they may need to agree to for Democrats to partner.
Republicans would never agree to a Democrat speaker.
You don’t know that. Their entire house is broken. Dem’s need five. Its 100% on the table.
You think there are currently FIVE R’s in the House who are willing to put the well being of this country before their party?
HA HA.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Oh you mistake me.
I think there are 5 R’s who are dumb enough to make a show of things by voting for a Dem, just to spite their opponents within the party. Its always the dumbest people who think they are the smartest.
I quite literally think that some R’s would actually cut off their nose to spite their face to “own” their perceived opponents.
I put nothing past them and leave everything on the table.
Deal with each of them individually and don’t let them know that there are four more.
Well, when you put it that way, it sounds plausible.
The sad part of all of this is that traditional Republicans have handed the party reigns over to extremists for the illusion of maintaining power. Had they told their crazies to go pound sand and fallen behind Democrats they would likely be capable of course correcting to retain some level of competition with liberals. Instead they gave power to nut-bags who have pretty much ensured their eventual, permanent demise.
Instead they gave power to nut-bags who have pretty much ensured their eventual, permanent demise.
Which is what we can hope for, and it would be quite OK if it happens.
The only danger of a destruction of the GOP would be that the Democrats would eventually stay in power too long for their own good. This is not something against the Democrats, it is just pointing out human nature. Power simply corrupts, each and every time.
So one of the things the Democrats should do if they have sufficient pull is to get the voting system in order. Drop FPTP. Drop the way the president is elected and replace it by a more realistic one, one that actually represents the population. Remove the stupid “two senators per state” rule and replace it by one that actually represents the country - in the senate, a citizen from a flyover state has way more influence than those from the states with higher populace.
The fun thing here is that the US already had fixed these problems decades ago. Just not in their own country. When the Federal Republic of Germany (i.e. West Germany) was founded, they implemented a bicameral system and voting methods based on the known problems of the US voting system (and others, but primarily the US). Now the German system has it’s issues, too, but they are known, and a known problem usually can be fixed.
Who even are “traditional Republicans”?
“Traditional” meaning Republicans that feel the same way as the “extremists”, but with the common sense to not say it blatantly and bluntly.
Ugh you’re right
Republicans havnt fundamentally changed since Reagan pulled the republicans off the cliff, All that has changed is saying the quiet parts out loud and proud.
50 years ago they still wanted the same shit, They just hid it behind coded and colorful language and only whispered it bluntly behind closed doors with close, trusted compatriots.
Yeah you nailed it succinctly.
The challenge is finding 5 house GOP who actually care about the American people. My guess is there aren’t 5.
Well there’s Nebraska’s 2nd representative, and famous coward Don Bacon. Let it be known that when the time calls for a man to stand up for what’s right, Don Bacon will bravely turn tail and run back to whatever teet is drip feeding him table scraps.
Yup. Famous coward Don Bacon, ready to let you down.
I’m sorry what was the question?
Don Bacon is a coward
This is a little misleading. Famous coward Don Bacon? C’mon. Sure he is only known for being a spineless coward. But he isn’t that well known.
Yea I’ve never heard of him and he’s just a couple states over from me. I think.
What’s Nebraska again?
A corn wind tunnel
You say he is a pig that suckles huh? Hmm. Anyone know any famous pigs looking to shell out some cash for a suckling?
It is amazing to see those many levels of having no spine.
Poor old Republicans can’t even compromise with themselves
Maybe they should shut down the Republican party for a while to get their way.
Why would they compromise with a bunch of traitorous fascists?
Correct. Their extreme wing, the Chaos Caucus, has become too extreme even for them. Unfortunately for Republicans their majority in the House relies on the same bozos who are acting like an opposition party. So while Republicans have a technical majority they do not have a functional majority.
What’s crazy is that since the Freedumb Caucus is in such opposition to the wider body of Republicans that they’ve handed the Democrats a functional majority on several issues, including the Speakership.
The pack of idiots led by Matt Gaetz cut off their own nose (McCarthy) in order to spite their face so now the Speaker situation can only end with a candidate that has enough Bi-Partisan support to overcome them and after that happens the House is going to advance legislation that’s far more liberal than anything that would have been done under McCarthy.
Edit: It has begun.
Hope springs eternal.
Isn’t the point of the republican party to dismantle and shut down the government? Why would they “get their act together” when the literally platform on shutting down as much of the government down? This whole thing is going exactly the way republicans dream of. They have stopped any governing from happening which is the republican dream
They are ALL FOR big government. I don’t know where you are seeing them wanting the government shut down. They just don’t want a government that supports freedom for its citizens, but they’re all about ensuring governmental control.
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By making the government a disfunctional mess and blaming democrats and spreading misinformation while pushing everything to a corrupt supreme court. Which is what they are doing
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I guess I should have said ending democracy instead of ending the government by getting rid of any functions of the government that insure democracy is the goal.
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“But but … but then the Libs might win”
Better than being associated with those extremist white taliban, is it not?
You’re not thinking like a Republican.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) called for Republicans to “get their act together” and elect the next speaker while slamming the “extremists” within their party.
Jeffries joined PBS News Hour inside the Capitol Thursday night after Speaker-designate Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.)
“I know there are traditional Republicans who are good women and men who want to see government function, but they are unable to do it within the ranks of their own conference, which is dominated by the extremist wing,” Jeffries said.
Several far-right members who helped initiate former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ousting have continued to oppose solutions offered by the party.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), for example, said she voted for Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in the secret ballot, saying she likes Scalise but wants to see him focus on defeating cancer, which he announced as “very treatable” in August.
Democrats may nominate Jeffries as their pick for speaker, potentially placing him in a race to 217 votes against whoever the GOP ultimately decides to send to the House floor.
The original article contains 321 words, the summary contains 173 words. Saved 46%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
What world is he living in. There are none. This is the Republican Party now.
While I don’t hold out any hope for it, a splintering of one of the two parties would likely be a good thing regardless. We need more viable parties.
We need more viable parties.
Well, the only way to get there is to fix the US voting and representation systems. FPTP has to go, and all important points in the US legislative need to have proper, democratic representation instead of this “Two Senators per state, regardless how many they represent”. And while they are at it, make Gerrymandering impossible by removing the power to redrad the district maps at will. You will need an algorithmically method to draw district maps without any influence from race or political affiliation, simply based on the address of a person.
That will be a chance to stop the reduction of numbers of parties, as they suddenly get a voice for their concerns even when they “only” have e.g. 20% or just 5% of the voters. And this will also teach the parties the need to work together in a reliable way. Coalitions and stuff.
Look how other countries do it, learn what is good and what is bad with their voting systems, and implement the best solution that is acceptable.
That’s not how we’d get more parties with our voting system. If the GOP fractured because of this then there might be chaos for brief period of time, but sooner than later everything would get settled back to two parties. Our system is set up so that it just plain suboptimal to do otherwise.
That’s what he’s doing here. If Democrats calls on MAGA to unite with the GOP, they can’t do it or it’ll look like they’re following the Dems lead, and they must disagree with Dems at all costs. So by simply stating the obvious path forward for the extremists, he’s poisoning the well and making it more difficult for that to actually happen.
I would lay the blame at the feet of the extremists, not the person making a good suggestion.
Yes, but that will not please the idiots that form their base.
We wouldn’t get more parties. I’m expecting eventually the Democrat party ends up in position as the right wing party and we get a “Progressive” party (or maybe some other name) as the new left wing party. It wouldn’t be the first time this happens, but I don’t know if it’s actually possible with the way media works now and how hated the name of the Democrats is on the right.
The voting system is designed for tactical voting between two major parties. It can’t support more. That needs to change. Maybe we could see that as things shift around though. Who knows?
He needs to be finding those “rational republicans” and trying to find a handful to vote for a D…
But he won’t, because he’s a moderate trained by Peolisi. So before he even thinks of negotiating he already has to give up everything Dems want
This will end with Dems voting for a Republican speaker.
Give the current state of the Republican electorate, it would be political suicide if any of them voted for a Democrat for Speaker. They may as well announce they are leaving the party at the same time.
OTOH, A handful of Democrats steering the post to a much more moderate Republican Speaker won’t see nearly the same amount of blowback from their electorate, and it may even help them get reelected, since Democrats value a functioning government.
You act like there’s no House seats that will likely swap to D in the next election…
There’s enough Rs that are going to lose their seat regardless and them voting for a D speaker is the only thing that will keep them in office.
Don’t appeal to their good nature (they don’t have that) appeal to their personal greed and how much they crave power.
They can be the “Manchins” of the House.
Can you name a moderate republican in the house?
Someone without a history of bigotry, anti climate, or covid conspiracies? Someone that never supported Trump, or Russias invasion of Ukraine?
There are groups that claim to be moderate, such as the “Main Street Caucus” referred to here, which claims to have 70 members:
They may not tick all your boxes, but I suspect of they did, they couldn’t win any Republican primary these days.
They may not tick all your boxes
then no one should be considering them moderate anything. North Korea calls themselves democratic, doesnt make it the case. Im well aware a moderate republican couldnt win an election these days, that what makes your call to nominate a moderate republican as speaker is nonsense, one doesnt exist.
OTOH, A handful of Democrats steering the post to a much more moderate Republican Speaker won’t see nearly the same amount of blowback from their electorate, and it may even help them get reelected, since Democrats value a functioning government.
There is no possible way this will ever happen. And if it does, the Ds who vote for it should be thrown out on their asses.
First, there’s no way they’d be able to get the entire Democrat party to go along with this, as those who are in far left districts would be thrown out on their ass just as quickly as a GOP representative voting for a Dem speaker.
Second, you’d have to find someone in the GOP that’s (a) willing to take the job, and (b) palatable to both Democrats and moderate Republicans. Who the hell would the GOP even put up that would be palatable? Their 3 biggest candidates are a slimeball, a pedo, and a racist. You think there’s a chance that a single Democrat would be able to vote for someone with the baggage of McCarthy, Jordan, or Scalise while still being able to keep their own seat?
Third, because of the rule that any single person can push a motion to vacate, there would be nothing stopping Gaetz or anyone else from just filing another motion to vacate, knowing there are probably enough on both the extreme left and right that would vote to remove him and put us right back in the position we’re in now.
And even if you could get past all of that, there would be absolutely nothing stopping whoever the new speaker is from reneging on whatever promises he made to win the speakership and telling Democrats to go pound sand, as Democrats wouldn’t have the votes necessary to do anything about it.
In more “normal” times, this may have been a possibility. But the political realities and climate in this country have made this nothing more than an absurd fantasy for at least the past couple of decades. Democrats need to stop saving Republicans from thesmelves, moderate Republicans need to stop acting like its the Democrats’ sworn duty to bail them out every time one of their crazy stunts backfire, and Republican leadership needs to start taking a hard line against the most extreme wing. I mean yeah, their voting base may be pissed off, but what are they going to do? Vote for a Democrat in retaliation?
I agree with all your points, but assuming the GOP starts to pivot toward cleaving themselves from their radical fringe (which will take time), what’s the immediate next step? You’ve made a great case that there’s literally no GOP rep that can thread the needle, so are you suggesting that the only path forward is Speaker Jeffries?
Honestly, I don’t see a realistic path forward for anybody right now. Of course, at some point, somebody is going to have to fall on their sword, but there’s no real way of knowing who’s going to have to be the one to do that right now as everybody has their heels dug in. If you put a gun to my head and forced me to make a prediction, I’d say 5 Republicans voting for Jeffries is the “most likely” way to go, but when I say “most likely” in this case, I mean “has a slightly better chance of happening than me getting blown by every Dallas Cowboys cheerleader in alphabetical order”.
I’d love to see Vegas put odds on which side is going to cave first: Dems, GOP, or MAGA. I don’t even know what the result would be, outside of knowing that somebody would be making a fuckton of cash off it.
On one hand, I’m glad the chickens have come home to roost and that it’s come to be this fucking bad so the GOP finally has to deal with the monsters they and Fox News helped create. They spent decades feeding into hateful, unhinged hysteria, and they abandoned anything even approaching a semblance of rationality because it played well with a right wing whose allegiance they decided they couldn’t afford to lose. The Freedom Caucus scared the everloving shit out of them, and rather than spend their billions in dark money to put those dumb motherfuckers back in their holes, they gave them podiums and let them spew their bile across international airwaves. GOP donors overtly and covertly fueled (and funded) groups like Judicial Watch, Project Veritas, PragerU, CPAC, InfoWars, Gateway Pundit, among others. SCOTUS seats were all they cared about, and they were willing to do anything to get them, including ignoring the collateral damage that we warned would come from pandering to certifiable fucking nutcases. They decided it was better to build a brand ecosystem that could amplify conservative tropes at scale than it was to come up with viable and rational policy positions to help the American people. On that hand, I’m glad the hydra is now eating itself, and I hope it never, ever recovers until a new brand of decent human being can re-make something viable from the blood-soaked ashes of this Party.
On the other, gods help us all.
They decided it was better to build a brand ecosystem that could amplify conservative tropes at scale than it was to come up with viable and rational policy positions to help the American people.
Nitpick. They decided it was better to allow these nutjobs to spew their bile because it made them a fuckton of cash. When even people at Fox News started saying “Hey, you think we may be going just a wee bit too far here?”, the response was to continue doing it because they were making a fuckton of cash and becoming more moderate would cede viewers to Newsmax and OANN. CNN held that Trump Town Hall specifically to cater to these people (Granted, that backfired on them spectacularly). Even CNN now has started catering to a limited degree to these people because there’s just too much money to be made placating idiots and their conspiracy theories.
They know it’s all bullshit. They even knew this would happen. They just didn’t care because they were swimming in cash.
It’d be funny if it weren’t so goddamned depressing.
I think there are three key things you are missing here.
First, the Motion to Vacate is just a rule, and those rules can be changed my a majority of the House - conveniently the same threshold that is needed to elect a Speaker. It is quite possible that a bipartisan coalition to elect a Speaker would also negotiate a change to the rules for the Motion, similar to what Pelosi did when she was Speaker, and wanted to make sure her thim majority could be effective.
Second, I am assuming that any hypothetical support of a moderate Republican by Democrats would not be in conflict with Democratic leadership or a challenge to their authority. On the contrary, it would be done with their blessing, extracting concessions from the new Speaker that the Democratic Leadership would find acceptable. And there are ways to hold that Speaker accountable that stop short of firing him.
Third, I am assuming that any coalition support would be done in favor of a Speaker who is actually interested in governing, and not in burning the place down. So all they really need to fundamentally agree on is to not hold the government hostage every other vote. All the other stuff is noise compared to that. Once the “burn it all down” Caucus is relegated to the minority side in the House, there is much less damage they can do. (Compare this to the Senate, where one “Coach” can dictate the entire playbook.)
First, the Motion to Vacate is just a rule, and those rules can be changed my a majority of the House - conveniently the same threshold that is needed to elect a Speaker. It is quite possible that a bipartisan coalition to elect a Speaker would also negotiate a change to the rules for the Motion, similar to what Pelosi did when she was Speaker, and wanted to make sure her thim majority could be effective.
Remember, as I said in my original post, there are some Democrats who would be either unwilling or unable to actually go along with all this without themselves committing political suicide. If, for example, you have 5 Democrats who can’t go along with this, that means you now need 9 Republicans willing to put their own standing in the party at risk. The more Democrats that either can’t or won’t go through with it, the more Republicans you need, and therefore the less likely any of this is to actually happen.
Second, I am assuming that any hypothetical support of a moderate Republican by Democrats would not be in conflict with Democratic leadership or a challenge to their authority. On the contrary, it would be done with their blessing, extracting concessions from the new Speaker that the Democratic Leadership would find acceptable. And there are ways to hold that Speaker accountable that stop short of firing him.
And how do you go about doing that in any meaningful way that the GOP can’t just shut down with a majority vote? How do you do that without threatening to oust that speaker and putting us right back in this position, only without a bipartisan coalition next time as Democrats say “see? I told you this wouldn’t work.”
Third, I am assuming that any coalition support would be done in favor of a Speaker who is actually interested in governing,
The ones who might be willing/able to do it while still being palatable to Democrats wouldn’t want to be within 10 miles of that gavel right now. Notice how all the ones willing to step up to the plate are the ones that are just as bad or worse than McCarthy was.
So all they really need to fundamentally agree on is to not hold the government hostage every other vote.
And while we’re at it, we can ask serial killers to just not kill people every other day. Heck, can’t we just ask criminals to stop doing crime stuff? I’m sure doing so will be just as effective. These people are here specifically to hold the government hostage on every other vote. Why do you think no sane Republican (an oxymoron, I know) wants to go anywhere near that gavel right now? They’d be in the same position McCarthy was, if not worse.
If, for example, you have 5 Democrats who can’t go along with this, that means you now need 9 Republicans willing to put their own standing in the party at risk.
I think this is the main reason. Also, you don’t become speaker just to be speaker. You do it to advance further, either to higher elected positions or, more likely, to lucrative party fundraising, consulting, speaking engagements, writing books, and/or private sector positions. In today’s world no speaker who is elected with the help of Democrats has a future in the Republican party, anywhere. It’s career suicide. Not just losing elected office. They will be blacklisted everywhere. It won’t happen.
It all depends on how willing the rest of the Republican Caucus is to force out the Freedom Caucus nutters. I don’t believe a majority of their caucus is aligned with them, because if they were, they would have never moved the Debt Ceiling or CR votes forward. Both votes were overwhelmingly bipartisan, with a majority of Republicans specifically voting against burning it all down in both votes.
He needs to be finding those “rational republicans” and trying to find a handful to vote for a D…
Does he need to be finding a sasquatch, a unicorn, and the Loch Ness Monster too?
Pipe dreams aren’t a valid political strategy. The best way this ends is a power-sharing agreement where there’s a Republican Speaker but rules about things like equal representation on committees and the minority having some right to bring resolutions to the floor. The most realistic way this ends is the grenade throwers will relent and agree to coalesce around someone if a power sharing deal even gets close.
Oh yeah…
It’s waaaaay more likely all republican get their shit together than find 5 willing to vote D…
/S
I mean, if we’re talking about what’s likely, it seems to me the House will simply stay in Speaker-less gridlock and chaos for the entire 45 days until the government shuts down again.
Yes, I believe it’s significantly more likely that any four of Gaetz, Biggs, Buck, Burchett, Crane, Good, Mace, and Rosendale will agree to some McCarthy-like speaker rather than letting the Democrats win and get a more bipartisan House where the far-right would have less power to drive the agenda.
People forgot Obama compromised with the Republicans and got fucked over. Compromise after compromise on bills only for Republicans to vote no on absolutely gutted Dem bills. “Obamacare” was basically what Romney setup when he was governor. Republicans screamed socialism on a republican bill.
He needs to find a moderate R in an area that leans D and throw the entire Dem party behind them. Then with only a few R votes, they become a defensible SoH because the R crackpots won’t have the votes to axe them.
The time to do this was ages ago, it comes too late. The normal Republicans are the extremists, they took over the party.
