House Republicans haven’t been terribly successful at many things this year. They struggled to keep the government open and to keep the United States from defaulting on its debt. They’ve even struggled at times on basic votes to keep the chamber functioning. But they have been very good at one thing: regicide.
On Friday, Republicans dethroned Jim Jordan as their designated Speaker, making him the third party leader to be ousted this month. First, there was Kevin McCarthy, who required 15 different ballots to even be elected Speaker and was removed from office by a right-wing rebellion at the beginning of October. Then, after a majority of Republicans voted to make McCarthy’s No. 2, Steve Scalise, his successor, a number of Republicans announced that they, too, would torpedo his candidacy and back Jordan instead. Finally, once Republicans finally turned to Jordan as their candidate, the largest rebellion yet blocked him from becoming Speaker. After losing three successive votes on the floor, the firebrand lost an internal vote to keep his position as Speaker designate on Friday.
“My vote counted less than everyone else’s vote,” said Don Bacon, an anti-Jordan moderate from Nebraska. “In America, all of our votes count the same.”
This is an ironic complaint coming from the Senator from Nebraska (population 2,000,000). His constituents enjoy Senatorial votes that are ten times more impactful than a resident of New York (population 20,000,000)
That, and generally republicans proudly support the electoral college, a system that intentionally weighs votes unequally, and destroys any chance of 3rd party candidates. So it is double ironic.
Which is exactly why the Senate is there, to be honest. The Federal government shouldn’t be legislating things that can change at a whim. They’re the element of temperance.
If anything is going to change it needs to start at the State level.
In my opinion virtually all governing should happen at the State level but there’s a lot of fascists that disagree with local governance.
His comment wasn’t irony, there’s no national referendum process for a very good reason.
The US is an outlier among our so-called peer democracies in having a functional (as opposed to purely ceremonial) upper house. Everyone else has done away with it and they seem to have improved for it. I don’t find any of the arguments in favor of keeping the Senate convincing. They all seem to amount to a version of institutional inertia, or, “it’s the way we’ve always done it and I’m scared of change!”.
They’re all much smaller, both area and population wise. Hence why I suggested those decisions happen at the State level.
The Republicans started an ill-advised conflict without an exit strategy? Who could’ve seen that coming!
Surprisingly (and I think this is the problem), none of them.
The ones who voted against McCarthy’s ouster might have seen this coming. (Though plenty just wanted to keep the shitty status quo that was keeping Ukraine unfunded).
I was really nervous that the Dems fucked up in voting him out, and that we’d end up with a worse speaker (like Jordan), but been pleasantly relieved by the holdouts who seem to want a slightly less insane speaker.
They’ve even struggled at times on basic votes to keep the chamber functioning.
You seem to be assuming that proper functioning was their goal. They were sent there to tear it all down, which is precisely what they did. Never forget that they play by an entirely different set of rules.
They didn’t care before, but now they have a new conflict in Israel. They tied the government’s shoelaces together at just the moment they needed it to function so they can help kill brown people and get their god to start the rapture (who is apparently too helpless to do it himself).
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Have we ever had a government shutdown during a general election?
With how clearly this lays at the feet of the gop, how bad will this make them suffer if the government isn’t open during the election? What happens to the election even?
With how clearly this lays at the feet of the gop
They were working the “It’s the Democrats (and eight republicans) fault” angle really hard on CNN the other day, and with how their base is like, I’m not quite sure even that would stick.
Since elections are administered by the states, I think there wouldn’t be an issue there. Ironically the push for states rights means federal gridlock can’t stop elections.
Republican leadership seems aware that when shutdowns and fuckery like this happens, they get the blame. Trump is making it worse for them by cheering for a shutdown.
I think the election would go very badly for them. We’ve seen Congressional gridlock for a long time, but never because the majority party can’t agree with itself. I believe the situation is proving unpopular even with Republican voters, who themselves are split. Gaetz has opened up fault lines that can’t be easily closed.
You know when magas have been promising another civil war, I didn’t predict it was going to be amongst themselves like this. But they did warn us it was coming.
The moment they aired the clip of Gym telling the reporter, “The American people don’t want us to work with the democrats” I laughed my motherfucking ass off. No, Gym. We want you to go away and some of you to go to jail for a long time because you broke your oath to the constitution and attempted to end it.
Republicans, being hoisted: “wtf, that’s MY petard!”
They do love to run their mouths
The House GOP is only 50.8%. It’s barely a majority. In the Senate when it’s 50/50 they read a compromise.
The media just needs to start reporting that it’s not effectively a majority and maybe this would begin peeling the resolve of a handful of blue state reps to support Jeffries.
the only solution: fight to the death. let C-SPAN air it
Republicans have shut down Congress, this was their only goal, and they’ve been 100% successful in achieving it.
epublicans
Are they generally rejecting their own “R” now as well?
Republicans: Drain the Swamp… into Congress?
I love watching their in-fighting and emasculating downvoting of each other. Of course, there are so many low cards in that hand - there’s none among them really fit to hold office, let alone be considered real human beings. I’m loving this disintegration of America and watching it sink into its own morass of lowly ignorance.
