The Corruption of the Republican Party

Not out of the Bs in the roll call and Kev has already lost four votes. Not looking good for him.

Fifth vote just lost (Cloud). Kev is toast.

Jeffries is actually leading. That could be a unexpected twist.

McCarthy has lost seven votes now.

The one candidate nobody is talking about is Trump. SOTH doesn’t have to be an elected Representative.

Second vote same as the first. Can you spell “clusterfuck”?

Third vote, Kevin lost one more vote (now 20). Going in the wrong direction.

Adjourned until tomorrow. Back-room deals start now. Promises will be made to the 20 far-right Representatives, causing the 202 moderate Republicans to rethink their support for McCarthy.

Chaos achieved.

Sahil Kapur and David Jolly (on Chris Hayes show) said Kevin McCarthy is done. There is no path to speakership, there is nothing he could promise the 20 Never Kevins because it’s not anything in particular that they want. What they want is No Kevin.

So they listed three options:
1.  McCarthy comes in tomorrow morning and withdraws his name. He reads the math on the bathroom wall and sees that there’s no way he's gonna win. The GOP would then have to float a new candidate, probably Steve Scalise, and the whole process starts over again. It's unclear if ANYONE has the 218 votes needed to win, as the 20 Freedom Caucus/NeverKevins have no interest in order or progress and no incentive to negotiate or compromise.  Jolly was clear Jordan certainly wouldn't have enough votes.

2.  GOP negotiates with House Dems to get a few of them (20 or so) to vote for a moderate Republican (not Scalise) as a way to get the House seated. He mentioned a couple names, all unfamiliar to me. Dems crossing the aisle to help the GOP out of their chaos seems extremely unlikely...

3.  McCarthy and NeverKevins both stand their ground and grind out another 5-10 votes tomorrow.  Running the same experiment over and over, expecting a different result.

It’s anyone's guess.

--------------------------
Earlier, during Joy Reid's show (I believe) another option was floated.  To become speaker the candidate only needs a majority of the VOTES CAST.  If members vote "present" rather than casting a vote, that lowers the threshold required to win. With 435 House members that number is 218.  If, say, ten Republicans abstained from voting, the winning threshold would drop to 213.  But here's the danger: Hakeem Jeffries has consistently received 212 votes (all Democratic) on each of the three ballots.  Republicans need to make sure they don't lower the threshold to 212.  So far, the BEST McCarthy has managed was 203.  Can he gain ten of the NeverKevins without losing a single other vote of the 203?  Seems pretty unlikely...

What SHOULD happen -- but probably won't -- is the Republican Governance Group should cross over to vote for Hakeem Jeffries.

He'd be a great speaker.  He's relatively non-partisan and would work with the Republican majority.

This would be a firm rebuke to the Insurrection Caucus, and would remove all their power as a vocal minority.  It would be a huge step forward for the GOP to heal itself of the cancer of Trump.  It would be a huge step forward in healing the divide in politics.

It would show the nation that there are adults in the room.

I could find no email address for the Republican Governance Group (RG2) but I did find a Facebook page for Dave Joyce their chair. I sent my proposal to him.

It makes a fuck of a lot of sense to me.

They don't necessarily even have to vote. If enough people vote "present", the required total goes down, and Jeffries might win with 212 votes.

After six votes with Kevin getting exactly the same, insufficient, number of votes each time, commentators are finally saying out loud that Kevin may have to withdraw his name.

And then following up with the inevitable question, would anyone else be able to muster the votes? If he or she did, would he or she have to make same promises to the Insurrection Caucus that the moderates can't abide, or that will hamstring the House permanently and prevent anything getting done?

It is STILL obvious to me that Hakeem Jeffries is the only option.

Still looking for six adults in the room.

Stoopid stoopid people. Same three candidates for the seventh vote, I’m sure it will be the same stoopid stoopid result.

Six members of the Insurrection Caucus have left the floor and adjourned to a conference room.

If they don’t come back... Jeffries will win. Maybe they’re too stoopid to realize that?

Nine votes, nine failures.

There are no adults in the room. The next two years will be an utter shambles.

OMG.  I don't think I've ever heard Lauren Bohbert speak before.

She sounds like a SNL parody of Sarah Palin, and I don't mean Tina Fey's good one.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lauren-boebert-stephanie-ruhle-kevin-mccarthy-house-speaker-fight_n_63b77574e4b0fe267caf0480

What.  A. Fucking. Moron.

Even Sean Hannity thinks so.

After THREE DAYS of abject failure, doing the same thing over and over and over (11 times), being told off by both Stephanie Ruhle and Sean Hannity, you'd like to think she'd have a moment of soul searching.  But after listening to her bark, I'm pretty sure her elevator doesn't go that high.

If Kevin wins on the 14th vote -- which is by no means guaranteed -- he will be so hobbled by concessions to the Insurrection Caucus that nothing will get done. He'll be fighting votes of no confidence almost every week, leading to non-stop chaos and lack of progress. The Insurrection Caucus will impede every piece of legislation, and endlessly spin the House's wheels investigating ghost controversies of the past two years.

And when he is removed as speaker, which he will be, there is no other candidate who can gain the necessary votes. We'll be right back to January 6 again.

Five morons are running the place. We should expect no less from the Insurrection Caucus, who are domestic terrorists in all but name. Putin has achieved his goal.

Okay, so it took 15 ballots but Kevin finally won the gavel.

It will be, as one MSNBC commentator pointed out, a Pyrrhic victory.  The 118th Congress will be ungovernable, and nothing of substance will get done.

Kevin won, but the prize is a steaming pile of shit.

Hilarious stuff.

Two lawmakers nearly come to blows — and other crazy moments from McCarthy’s final speaker votes

McCarthy has agreed to allow that a single member can introduce a motion to vacate. We can expect Gaetz  or somebody to introduce such a motion pretty much daily, and the 20 idiots voting in favor.

Suppose the Democrats also vote in favor? Immediately, McCarthy is gone, and we can have another interlude watching the monkeys flinging their shit around the House. How are they going to pick a replacement?

Putin strikes again:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/capital-brazil-bolsonaro-storm_n_63bb1573e4b0cbfd55e9fe60

First order of business: eliminate the Ethics Watchdog.  Don't want no ethics in the new Congress.

Quote :

Some of McCarthy’s concessions to conservatives are laid out in the House rules package, but some are part of less formal handshake agreements he has made. Here’s a running list of all the concessions he’s reportedly made in exchange for Freedom Caucus members helping him to become speaker.

   

• Any member can call for a vote to oust the speaker
     
  
• McCarthy’s leadership PAC won’t play in safe open primaries
     
  
• A debt ceiling hike must be paired with spending cuts
     
  
• Freedom Caucus members get three of the nine seats on the House Rules Committee, which controls what bills and amendments reach the floor
     
  
• The House will cap fiscal 2024 spending bills at fiscal 2022 levels, which translates to about $130 billion less than the recent omnibus spending bill
     
  
• A new point of order against unauthorized appropriations in a general appropriations bill in excess of the most recent enacted level.
     
  
• A new House Judiciary subcommittee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), to probe the “weaponization” of the federal government
     
  
• Votes on a border security plan by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a Freedom Caucus member, that calls for finishing the border wall and expelling migrants attempting to cross the border
     
  
• A promise to move 12 appropriations bills individually, not in an omnibus
     
  
• The House will only consider spending bills under open rules, meaning any member can offer amendments that could gut or kill the bills
     
  
• The House will remove metal detectors from outside the chamber and end proxy voting, both policies put in place by Pelosi
     
  
• Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), who conservatives wanted for speaker instead of McCarthy, is McCarthy’s chosen appointee for the House GOP Steering panel, which decides committee assignments
     
  
• A ban on taxpayer dollars going toward abortions, even though federal law already prohibits this.
  

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kevin-mccarthy-house-speaker-concessions_n_63bc6602e4b0fe267cb28d26

Recipe for disaster.  I hope the first Congressman killed by a gun on the floor is a Republican.

Quote :

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), who withheld his support from McCarthy through numerous rounds of votes last week, said that he and his Freedom Caucus colleagues only changed their votes to help McCarthy after he told them the House would follow a traditional budget process and “produce a budget that actually balances by cuts.”

No federal program will necessarily be spared, he told HuffPost, not even Social Security retirement benefits.

“The only way you’re going to get a balanced budget is [to] make cuts,” Norman said. “Everybody’s a fiscal conservative until it cuts a particular program that they like.”

Keep your hands off my Social Security. I worked 40 years for that. It's MY money not YOURS.