Democrats are sick of bailing the GOP out of their own messes, and boy, are Republicans whining about it
Anyone who has paid even the slightest attention to the events leading up to the historic ouster of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as speaker of the House knows exactly who is to blame here: McCarthy and his fellow Republicans. For years, they’ve rolled out the welcome mat to Donald Trump and his wrecking crew of MAGA camera hogs, foolishly believing that they could harness the chaotic villainy without getting burned in the process. They refused to listen to former Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen when he warned Republicans in 2019 that those who “follow Mr. Trump as I did, blindly, are going to suffer the same consequences that I’m suffering.”
Granted, McCarthy didn’t get hauled off to prison like Cohen. But he still faced a tasty comeuppance this week when the sadistic bullies he empowered in his caucus, led by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, vacated his seat for no other reason than the sheer satisfaction of taking out their leader. Now shellshocked Republicans know who they want to blame for everything that has happened, and — surprise! — it’s not themselves. Oh no, they’re mad at Democrats for refusing to swoop in and save McCarthy from his fate.
In the House, voting to support a speaker is not a one-and-done thing. The Speaker sets the agenda for the House sessions, but that agenda needs a majority to approve it, every single session. There is an underlying commitment that after the Speaker is elected, the members who elected him support his agenda moving forward.
Nestor’s “dad” tried this route first, after the Debt ceiling “deal” (which McCarthy eventually broke, but that’s besides the point). The next time the House met, the MAGAs started voting against McCarthy’s agenda, and since the opposition party always votes to oppose that the House was also paralyzed, because the agenda could not be approved so nothing could happen. McCarthy made even more crazy concessions to get their votes back.
So if any Democrats supported McCarthy in this, then McCarthy would have had to count on their support from that point forward. And let’s face it, even if McCarthy had promised stuff for those votes, who would trust him to deliver after the Debt ceiling bill went South?
I still think there’s room for Democrats in this, but only after Republicans keep twisting in the wind. After their fifteenth (or fiftieth?) vote with no resolution, some Democrats and Republicans may agree on a moderate Republican to support. (It will have to be a Republican, as long as they still have an overall majority). But from that point on, that person will need to rely on support from that entire bloc that voted for them to get shit done. If that does happen, though, expect Nestor’s “dad” to scream even louder about a Uniparty…
I understand the logic here, but I think it’s worth rethinking this assumption. Why does it have to be a Republican speaker? Why do several democrats need to be the ones to reach across the aisle? For many of the speakership votes in January, Jeffries (the minority leader) won the most votes. The democrats were united while the republicans were splintered. It seems just as reasonable to expect a handful of republicans to make a deal to support a democrat for speaker. It doesn’t matter how many republicans are in the house if they aren’t able to agree.
I understand your thinking, but elections do have consequences, and there are more Republicans in the chamber than Democrats.
I don’t think Democrats are at all interested in seizing the Speakership while in the minority, because they want to be in the majority in the next Congress and dont want to set the precedent that a minority member can squirm in to the Speakership. Not do the Republicans want to set a precedent that the majority party can cede a key post like that.
That’s a really good point - I didn’t think that Democrats voting for a new, Republican Speaker was realistic, but if they’re willing to do it then they can probably get someone a lot better than McCarthy.
Republicans have a majority in the chamber, even if they expel Gaetz because they are all sick of him and send him back home to be with his “son”. Both sides understand that. So as long as they all show up, I don’t think anyone expects a Democrat to end up as Speaker after all this.
Jeffries will be nominated, of course, and get all the Democratic votes, but will not become Speaker unless someone stages a Ted Nugent concert on the Capitol steps to lure all the MAGAs out of the chamber during the vote.
deleted by creator