Hump Day open thread: Are you not entertained?
The shenanigans on the floor of the House of Representatives did no favors to that august body.
Republicans hold a slim majority. But a majority nevertheless. Selecting their putative leader as the new Speaker should have been a pro forma affair.
Instead, the House adjourned after three ballots. In the first two ballots, so-called GOP Leader Kevin "Steve" McCarthy garnered 203 votes. Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries outpolled him by nine votes. Of course, that doesn't mean that Jeffries is now speaker. The successful candidate has to win 50%+1 of all votes cast. So what happened?
The anti-McCarthy bloc in the GOP caucus was true to its word, for as much as that counts, as they're all vile scum. According to Mark Levin:
There is a principle involved, though. The Dirty 19—now twenty, as McCarthy managed to lose a vote on the third ballot that had voted for him in the first two—do have an agenda. They want the party to fully and unabashedly embrace the new fascism. Of course, as with fascists everywhere, this involves blackmail and bribery. The most amazing thing is that McCarthy told them "no"; I would have expected him to sign in blood in order to secure that precious gavel. But, Steve wants to be el caudillo, and not beholden to his "lessers". He wants to be a real boy! So, here we stand.
As I wrote yesterday, the fact of the matter is that the GOP was supposed to have a far larger majority. But they managed to cock that up, and didn't regain the Senate. So McCarthy is at the mercy of Brownshirt backbenchers who show no signs of toeing the line and giving him the speakership any time soon, and he also faces the Senate and White House firmly in Democratic control. His room for maneuver is nil.
Now, a savvy politician would know how to work this into his or her advantage. After all, Nancy Pelosi operated with the same slim majority for the entirety of the 117th Congress. But Pelosi is actually a good politician. She knows how to cajole and herd cats. With McCarthy we get this:
He has burned bridges and lost any influence he has with either his putative supporters or the Gang of 20. The rebels know he's dead man walking. And his allies know they can't count on him to stand firm on anything in his desperate quest for power.
The electorate in districts Joe Biden won which sent Republicans to the House should be hanging their heads in shame and reconsidering all their life choices. Were they to have voted the way that they did in 2020, the House would have remained in Democratic hands, and we could be getting on with the business of governing. Instead, their petulance over inflation has saddled us with dysfunction for the next two years, unless a political miracle occurs and a "common sense caucus" emerges among the GOP—perhaps among those representing Biden districts—and they enter into coalition with the Democrats. (One of those is the cypher George Santos, so we can scratch him off. But he has other things to worry about, like being extradited to Brazil for fraud.)
Well, today should be equally edifying. Tune in at noon for the fun and frolic.
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