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Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s job is at risk after US House of Representatives votes to move ahead with hard-right effort to oust him
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- Title
- McCarthy to call vote Tuesday on effort to oust him and says he won't cut a deal with Democrats
- Published
- Oct 3 2023
- Word count
- 506 words
One thing that's stuck with me:
I have never known what a united congress looks like.
It struck me when I heard an NPR story about Newt Gingrich, and how he was the one to first weaponize shutdowns. Prior to that, the parties would work together to reach compromises, but he was the one who made it a weapon to get their way.
That was in 1995. Since then, it's gotten gradually worse and worse until the current time. The good of the country no longer matters as much as your party being right. I've seen people compare American political parties to sports teams, and it's true. People will vote someone they hate just because they swear it. At this point, politics isn't about voting for someone, but against the other.
And now, we're at this point where the Republican party is full of genuinely crazy people who would sooner destroy the country than work with Democrats.
I hate it. I feel like all the people who try to say "there are still good Republicans" are from the generations that did get to see the two parties cooperate.
That's not my experience. I and an entire generation have no idea what it's like to see Congress genuinely working together. By the time we got old enough to pay attention to politics, it was already well into this polarized state. We have only ever seen the two parties battling, treating each other as the greatest foes rather than colleagues aiming for the same goal: a greater America.
And I just.
I hate it.
This is, in large part, a consequence of malapportionment in Congress (in the house it's through gerrymandering and the limit on representation) and in the Senate by the indifference to state population.
It makes districts unrepresentative of the population as a whole and that skew starts to create a feedback loop where the crazies are more politically "activated" than the moderates. And the crazier the political system gets the people who do get activated are coming in pre-crazified.
There is a whole set of overlapping mechanisms that can skew power away from the population average in the US. And at the moment—possibly for the first time—all of them are aligned in a way that solidly benefits one party (the GOP) over the other. FiveThirtyEight's article “Advantage, GOP” goes over them in depth, but there's at least gerrymandering, population differences in the Senate, the Electoral College (effectively a combination of the House and Senate biases), unequal Supreme Court appointments⁰, and control of key state legislatures.
⁰At some point I plan to put together a write-up on this, but even before McConnell's deliberate manipulation of the Supreme Court Justice nomination process, Republican appointments to the Supreme Court were significantly over-represented relative to the frequency and margins with which Republican presidents have been elected since the party realignments in the 1960s.
I was watching the second GOP Debate last week on the online Fox News stream. Whenever the debate took like a 5-10min break, they cut to some talking heads. And at least one of those talking heads literally sounded like a sports commentator, as he was breaking down and analyzing each candidate's plays." All he needed was a board and marker with some X's, O's, and dotted lines.
And admittedly, this isn't just a Fox thing. At the risk of making a "both sides" argument, I'm pretty sure I've seen similar things on MSNBC and CNN. We really have sportified politics.
Though I do think wholeheartedly that one side has gone to the extreme with it. And that's obviously the Republicans.
I don't think we've sportified politics.
What happened is, first we engagified sports. The money was good, and could have been better, so the game rules started to change, the way the games were covered started to change. Because engagement. Eyeballs. Ad money, merch money and ticket money. Tuned in dollars per second.
Each entity tuned the knobs they controlled to optimize for $/s. The leagues, the networks, the teams and even the individual players. They all got very, very good at optimizing the way sports happened and were presented in order to maximize engagement and dollars per second, the common benchmark of success.
Politics was slower to follow, but it's the same mechanics at play. Sports was the an early implementation case, not the actual source.
This is basically enshittification, but across multiple mediums, and with no coordination except an agreement in the common, shared goalpost.
It's because it's a weak vs. powerful dynamic, not a right vs left dynamic, and the powerful run the media companies among everything else. They've learned to weaponize stupidity to turn the weak against each other because they know when the weak work together we are more powerful than the powerful.
I definitely feel as though people gave up a long time ago on actually trying to make people want to vote for them, and pivoted toward trying to make people feel like they have to vote for them, or else Team Bad is going to win and do bad things.
Its not like I have to pay that much attention to politics, I have been relegated to voting entirely with one party in pretty much every election regardless of what's going on. Most of the issues are too complicated for me to really wrap my head around, and the stuff I do kinda understand I don't feel like anyone is putting in serious effort to deal with.
I find it's much more fulfilling if I just focus on doing things to help the world that are within my control, and just show up to vote the way I was going to anyway when elections come up.
Maybe someone older can give better perspective, but as a 34 year old it seems as if there's no nuance anymore to politics in America. I would love to be able to look at issues and see where candidates stand and make decisions from there, but with the red vs blue attitude becoming much more game-ified now I'm stuck voting for "terrible but doesn't actively remove my rights" and "terrible and actively removes my rights".
And it's extra funny because I can say that statement and people on both sides are going to nod along with me because nobody can even agree on what things are "rights".
Vote was just concluded, Speaker of the House is now vacant after a 216-210 vote in favor of vacating the seat. 43 days for a new speaker to be elected, and a new budget bill to pass before a government shutdown. I am definitely not looking forward to what this means for this country.
I wish it was more funny than it is sad. Can I say, the majority of Republicans that are this far gone are fucking sore losers.
They are, but only 8 Republicans voted to remove him. 208 Democrats plus Biggs, Buck, Burchett, Crane, Gaetz, Good, Mace, and Rosendale.
Hmm. I guess the Democrats want to play kingmaker while the Republicans are at each other’s throats.
Why would the democrats have done anything differently? Mccarthy has done nothing lie repeatedly and attempt to stab them in the back. If they could find a republican willing to work with them, which is unlikely, then they absolutely should.
I'm sure the Dems thought over the possibility of staying with the evil they know, but considering that they couldn't get shit done with him in the chair, I can understand their willingness to roll the dice. Doubly so considering how the Wingnut Caucus has been driving a wedge in the GOP.
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2023/10/03/congress/mccarthy-fails-block-motion-to-vacate-speaker-00119665
I really wanted this to happen. A proper fracture in the Republican party between the absolutely insane and the moderately insane.
...Just so long as the absolutely insane don't win.
Well the coalition would be "moderately insane Republicans" + Democrats. That's like 90% of the house?
The concern is more along the lines of the "moderately insane" becoming or being replaced by the absolutely insane in order to win elections and such. I'm not worried in the near-term, but I'd rather be safe than sorry and keep an eye out.
I don't know what he expected. He can't get something for nothing.
And I'd be hesitant to trust any promises out of him, anyway, so this was probably for the best.
I'm wondering if he was at the point of wanting to quit already?
Doing the deal to prevent a shutdown first at least avoided some worse chaos.
For about a month. Make no mistake, Gaetz &co want to see the government shut down, permanently if possible. The only good they see in a federal government is in outlawing things that make them uncomfortable. Taxation and business regulation are anathema to them.
It's unwise of McCarthy to have done this. Yes, it would have inflamed tensions within the House Republicans to seem to have offered an olive branch to House Democrats - but the fractures are already present. He has refused to take the high road and that is that.
As a friendly observer of your country's politics, I hope that the United States can return to stable governance without the threat of a funding shutdown. Yet, I do not see this without a clean break between MAGA Republicans and the cowed, Main Street factions of the party. An interesting development to me in national-level American politics is how the Democratic Party has consolidated its factions and can present a united front, yet the Republican Party is increasingly in disarray. This reflects in how the 'not Trump' movement in the party is splitting four ways and is increasingly ideologically moribund.
A divided America is not good for Americans principally, but the western alliance and the stability of global politics too. (Ukraine, as an example, sticks out as a sore thumb.) Thus we take interest in your political developments over on this side of the Atlantic.
Democrats are just as big-tent as they've been since the 60s, they just look united in contrast to the present-day Republicans.
The Republicans have just realized that they are a coalition instead of a monolithic party, which they've been for 40+ years. Having a caucus that's willing to buck the party line is bewildering to them because it flies in the face of their tacit understanding of what conservatism is, i.e. unquestioning adherence to hierarchy. Now they have to deal with crusaders in their midst, and holy warriors are not known for paying obeisance to earthly powers.
We've always had a problem with corruption from big money, but now that's not enough to get everyone to the table. It's a strange situation, because on the one hand, good. Fuck the 60 assholes with more money than 300 million put together. On the other, it isn't likely to be them who suffer the most from collapse, and as you say, our government has outsized influence on the power structures of the rest of the world.
Isn't it ironic?
They voted McCarthy out, because he allowed a vote on a bipartisan bill.
And by they, I am referring to a bipartisan group of six Republicans and all the Democrats.
I mean the Democrats voted him out because he refused to make any concessions. The 6 republicans did so for the reasons you stated.
This is why bipartisanship is dead: it turns the extremists in your party against you, and the other party will never throw you a life raft. I thought leaving Ukraine funding undone would give him enough of a carrot to dangle before Democrats to keep him in power. But I think McCarthy sealed his fate with that impeachment inquiry though.
Had McCarthy allowed a bipartisan house, the Dems would have kept him in. They aren't stupid. They know they can't have it all, but McCarthy gave them nothing. He only did the most cowardly spending bill of 45 days in an attempt to save his political career. Then he went on a big kiss ass media tour about how mean the Dems were and how he's never going to work with them again.
So yeah, they booted his ass. Maybe the next guy will see reason and form a coalition with part of the moderates. I'm sure the Dems would join in if they were given concessions of co-governance. You know, bipartisanship.
Certainly not if you don't give them a reason to.
McCarthy probably could have saved himself by doing very little for Democrats.
I don't know the circumstances of his seat, but it's possible that conceding even very little to Democrats could open him up to more problems in the next election than losing speakership. His voters might be more inclined to vote for him to keep his seat this way rather than if he had taken different actions.
I'm curious about the political calculus of the Democrats here. While Kevin Mccarthy was no prize, it's key to remember that his ouster came about specifically because of his willingness to work with Democrats. My assumption would be that whomever succeeds him is going to be even less inclined to compromise, especially after seeing how this scenario played out.
It seems some Dems were on board with saving McCarthy, but then he gave that interview on Fox blaming Dems for everything, and Dems said "fuck him".
McCarthy wanted both the benefits of sticking it to the Dems and of running a functioning House. He couldn't have both.
My hunch? The Dems let the Freedom Caucus have its fun for a few weeks. By then, GOP Reps in swing districts will start to be getting nervous over another shutdown and the likelihood of being blamed for one by voters. Dems only need five votes or so to elect a speaker. Probably won’t be Jeffries (unless they play some 4D Chess), but they’d have a lot of leverage in the process. They’ll either pick the most moderate Republican, or a moderate Dem with some sort of pseudo-confidence and supply agreement.
If they're elected with the help of the Freedom Caucus then yes. But I could see the Democrats giving a moderate Republican candidate a few votes so that they can be elected Speaker without being chained to Matt Gaetz - and then being dependent on keeping those Democratic votes happy instead. Or of course they could angle for a few moderate Republican votes for Hakeem Jeffries.
And now he has stated he will not run again (sensible), going to be very chaotic
Running again would just be further humiliation. I doubt even his close supporters would vote for him again after this.
Feels like this is an interesting thing happening right now, and something I've been keeping an eye out during the work day today.
a related read that I enjoyed: Five thoughts on Karmic McCarthy
So who would replace him? Someone more right wing? Otherwise, the hardline right wing won’t vote for them.
That’s just going to cause even more of a stalemate between the Senate and House. It’s just going to make things even worse.
The funniest thing would be for five republicans to join democrats and vote for Hakeem Jefferies, red house with a blue majority leader would be unpredictable.
In seriousness, the democrat wing is aiming for someone more amenable or moderate in comparison that can help bridge the divides, which they will likely get as the other side needs a coalition that doesn't depend on the hardliners.
Do they though? I think the hardliners goal is government default
That or someone less conservative, I think this complete inability of their majority to do anything has been pretty embarassing to the GOP.
The hyper-extreme right side is so intractable on their demands that you might actually see the "moderate" GOP turn more towards dems, if for no other reason than to try and get back to business as usual. Most GOP and conservative dems aren't that ideological, they're there to work together for their corporate sponsors. Ideological extremists are bad for that business.
Even in the voting public, I've seen this with the college-educated Reganites of my parents' generation. They were former reliable Republican voters who either voted third-party or stayed home after Trump won the nomination in 2016 and were hardline Biden-riders in 2020. "Enough of the Trump show, business as usual please" is their ideology.
Earlier today I read that there was an effort to get Matt Gaetz there.
I want off of this timeline.
Gaetz declared that he will "absolutely not" put himself forward for the position. He's a coward who wants to sit in the corner and shriek. He doesn't want to actually be responsible for anything.
Ten bucks says it's Kevin McCarthy again, and an official motion is passed to give Matt Gaetz the stink eye for bringing this forward.
EDIT: Well now he won't run, so I guess we're in the "find out" portion of this Congress.
It's a result of a compromise continuing resolution to fund the government. I don't know that this stalemate is worse than a government shutdown, which was the other option on the table.
The government shutdown is still on the table, isn't it? I remember seeing that funding only lasts a month or so, so we're still staring down the barrel sooner rather than later.
Yeah, 45 days, but that's better than nothing. A majority of the House wants a very middle of the road funding bill to continue, so it's likely we'll see a similar one happen again regardless of who the Speaker is.
I agree that it was the choice McCarthy made right option given the far right Representatives unwillingness to compromise. I’m saying that moving forward there will be more stalemate because of that small group.
So did he ever get his dumb oil painting?
I think it's time for everyone as Tildes users to come together and nominate me as speaker of the house.
I promise to end tarrifs with Canada.