Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

And it's equally true that he clearly attends mainly to media voices that support his existing ideas and eschews those that don't.

That HCR piece is as excellent as it gets!

Anyone else notice how, when the party of the conservatives is comically bogged down in a quagmire of their own invention that it’s staunchest A2K champions get quiet as a wee mouse?

Re: blatham (Post 7294217)
It was very good and helped answer a few questions about what the hell is going on right now. I have another question - why is McCarthy the only candidate? I know the extreme 20 have voted for I-forget-his-name (Jordan?), but is that just to thwart McCarthy?

You mean the people that were voted into office by the people? You understand what a Representative is supposed to do, right? Represent the people at home? Ring any bells?

Quote:

blatham wrote:
And it's equally true that he clearly attends mainly to media voices that support his existing ideas and eschews those that don't.

Quote:

blatham wrote:
That HCR piece is as excellent as it gets!

Irony at its finest

What I am wondering is why McCarthy is the only option and how he got there. Why was there no election for this position?

Is an outside Republican is a likely option, and if so, who could that be?

This is about power....

The People are tired of the government operating the way it does.

The 1.7 Trillion dollar Omnibus spending bill was a final straw for some.

Some House members care about how the country is run and not about lining their pockets (I hope).

The People are tired of the government operating the way it does.

The 1.7 Trillion dollar Omnibus spending bill was a final straw for some.

For you, it is merely a spectacle and you can come here and make witty comments about the party you don't like and the echo chamber will provide you with some good oo-mox.

A Fatuous Rebellion

Watching the messy filleting of Representative Kevin McCarthy’s career (and ego) over the past 24 hours has been undeniably entertaining, not least because the representative from California deserves it. McCarthy, a dull creature of the Beltway, tried to pander his way to power. Much like his lieutenant, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, he sold his soul to Donald Trump’s movement and expected loyalty in return. (Trump endorsed him for the job, but for a moment seemed to have second thoughts about backing a loser.) Ambition and opportunism are common among politicians, but McCarthy took it to new levels. He even sorted Trump’s favorite Starburst candies so that the “Toddler in Chief” could avoid the icky yellows and oranges. (I am not making this up.)

Maybe Stefanik and other grovelers deserve such a comeuppance even more, but McCarthy has built up a serious karmic debt. He once preened as one of the self-appointed GOP “Young Guns,” the trio of conservative up-and-comers that included Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan, who were going to lead a practical and policy-oriented Republican Party to a governing majority. Reality quickly intervened: Cantor was turfed in a 2014 primary by a Tea Party flash in the pan named Dave Brat, who was defeated in 2018 by an actual centrist Democrat, Abigail Spanberger. Ryan suffered through two terms as speaker before boarding the John Boehner Emergency-Exit Pod and bailing out of politics. McCarthy stayed and made the compromises he thought he had to make, which is how he ended up sorting candy with his staff.

As I said to my friend Charlie Sykes yesterday, if there is such a thing as Narcan for schadenfreude, I’ll need to keep it handy if McCarthy is actually defeated once and for all in his quest for the House’s top job. But McCarthy’s misery is secondary to the real story behind the hijinks of the Republican defectors tormenting their own leader. McCarthy and others have asked what the rebels want—but they do not understand that the rebels have no tangible goals. A significant part of the Republican Party, and especially its base, now lives in a post-policy world. Governing is nothing. The show is everything.

As I was writing this, Representative Chip Roy of Texas proved that the play’s the thing by nominating Byron Donalds for the speakership. Who? Donalds is a 44-year-old Republican first elected to the House in 2020. I’m guessing Roy nominated him simply to counter the nomination of Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the Democratic caucus, with that of another Black legislator. Roy even made a cringe-inducing speech, complete with a Martin Luther King Jr. quote, about the wondrousness of two young Black men vying for the speakership. It’s great television, right?

Unfortunately for McCarthy, it’s also great television to see the GOP leader lose his fourth vote for speaker, which he did in short order, with the same 20 votes for Jordan moving over to Donalds. The fifth and sixth defeats followed in quick succession.

The inane Kabuki taking place around McCarthy’s job isn’t really about debt ceilings or abortion or Ukraine—or anything else. If you think Lauren Boebert or Matt Gaetz or Andy Biggs are possessed of deep thoughts about any of these issues, you have already made the same mistake that brought McCarthy to this impasse. Gaetz’s big idea in politics is that—according to a Trump aide’s testimony to the House Select Committee on January 6—he should be given a blanket pardon for things he swears he didn’t do. (Gaetz has denied asking for the pardon.) Biggs is the high-minded Cincinnatus who suggested that the January 6 riots could be blamed on the FBI; Boebert ran a gun-themed restaurant back in Colorado and often says things that lead to debates not over policy, but over whether she is the most ignorant person currently sitting in Congress.

What all of these GOP members do seem to have in common is a shared belief that they should be in Congress in order to make other people miserable. Usually, those “other people” are Democrats and various people on the generic right-wing enemies list, but lately, the targets include the few remaining Republicans who think their job in Washington is to legislate and pass bills and other boring twaddle that has nothing to do with keeping the hometown folks in a lather, getting on television, and getting reelected.