These are historic levels of dysfunction in Congress by one party. It's just nuts. I can't tell you how much time I have spent this year covering Republican self-inflicted gridlock, instead of covering their actions on legislation.
Agree with all that, but if you vote for a MAGA motion to vacate, you need to own it, not pretend like you weren't contributing. There are no heroes here.
Yes, there are no heroes. But the party in power should be able to pick a Speaker almost immediately, and not fall back into quicksand. The inability of the House GOP to rally behind a Speaker, the daily attacks on McCarthy, the inability to move legislation, the refusal to send House-passed bills to the Senate, and the haphazard patchwork of committee investigations speaks to a much deeper divide inside the GOP. "Mom, look what Johnny made me do," does not cut it on Capitol Hill.
Well, that's the way it's always been but we have a unique (in my experience) set of circumstances. There really is no majority "party" but a majority coalition (in a parliamentary/proportionate system there's probably a dozen nationalist party members coalescing with the Republicans). That's just the reality. So the question is "what do you do with it?"
Look what Johnny made me do does not fly, no.
But neither does "it's the minority's duty to oppose" in an environment when simply saying "no" to everything means a shutdown, which I think they'd welcome as evidence that the Republicans can't govern (as if we need more than what we've already seen).
You're conveniently overlooking that fact that it was the Dems siding with McCarthy the weekend before last that kept the government open, DCLawyer. And then he went on "Face the Nation" the very next morning and attempted to blame them for his own party's dysfunction. If you want to focus your ire, look at folks like Gaetz and MTG who, make no mistake, want to burn it all down.
I'm tired of this nonsensical whining about the Dems (the House minority party, mind you) not saving a guy who voted to overturn the 2020 election, a guy who then flew to Mar-a-Lago to kiss his mob boss's ring and the guy who has greenlit a tractionless, evidence-free impeachment inquiry into the current president. Walk me through the Dem motivation for saving that guy again?
And I'm tired of people who make excuses for childish behavior, so I guess we're even.
I'm not conveniently forgetting anything. He gave them pretty much what they wanted in the CR (all the controversial border stuff was out) and was willing to piss off his right wing. The blame for failure would have been entirely on them at that point.
In the motion to vacate, every Dem voted with Gaetz, MTG, et. al. The question wasn't whether Jeffries or McCarthy should be speaker, but whether there should be chaos.
So why vote "yes"? What do they get out of that?
Any new Speaker necessarily gets the message that working with Dems in the future will wind up on the street. Their vote empowered the MAGA wing. They're not dumb. They get it.
They get nothing out of Gaetz et al winning but Schadenfreude. Had they put country first, that would have been motivation enough.
"I'm not conveniently forgetting anything." LOL. Well, DC Lawyer, except for the reality that the only reason McCarthy went to the Dems on Saturday morning was because his own party was intent on shutting down our government. Your fan fiction isn't reality.
"His own party...". You're acting like he had a traditionally large majority, when in fact he is really the leader of the largest party in the coalition, and was held hostage by the leader of his coalition partners. If he had wanted the government shut, he wouldn't gone to the Dems. TBH I'd assumed they'd promised him enough support in a motion to vacate (at least some members conveniently gone home early). The fact that he faced the MTV with NO promises surprised me.
As for "fan fiction" please find and paste all of my pro Trump and/or pro Congressional comments.
The Dems didn't oppose McCarthy because they wanted to make the GOP look bad. They opposed him because he didn't negotiate in good faith. He made a debt limit deal with Biden and then ignored it. He depended on Dems to pass the CR he gave them zero time to read, and then said they had tried to tank the measure with their delaying tactics, which they only used to get time to read the darn thing. He can't be trusted, and there's no reason they should vote to keep him. If the GOP can't agree among themselves, they can present a candidate who will be a trustworthy negotiating partner and draw Democratic votes. They are in control of what happens here. If it's a fiasco, it's their fault.
I hope those who suffer from the next government shutdown take some comfort in knowing "he had it coming." This is schadenfreude, not responsible governance.
But again, the motion to vacate was NOT Jeffries vs. McCarthy but rather Gaetz vs McCarthy, and they voted to empower Gaetz and the very small group who are making it impossible to make the House even marginally functioning.
Here's the deal on that Saturday CR. McCarthy didn't go to the Dems and ask for them to vote for it. All signs now indicate that he thought the Democrats would defeat that clean CR, because there wasn't Ukraine money in it. The talking points the next day on Face the Nation only hammered that home.
"Democrats couldn't believe what they were watching..."
They enabled, and delight in, MAGA victories and House dysfunction. Makes for great talking points in the 2024 elections.
These are historic levels of dysfunction in Congress by one party. It's just nuts. I can't tell you how much time I have spent this year covering Republican self-inflicted gridlock, instead of covering their actions on legislation.
Agree with all that, but if you vote for a MAGA motion to vacate, you need to own it, not pretend like you weren't contributing. There are no heroes here.
Yes, there are no heroes. But the party in power should be able to pick a Speaker almost immediately, and not fall back into quicksand. The inability of the House GOP to rally behind a Speaker, the daily attacks on McCarthy, the inability to move legislation, the refusal to send House-passed bills to the Senate, and the haphazard patchwork of committee investigations speaks to a much deeper divide inside the GOP. "Mom, look what Johnny made me do," does not cut it on Capitol Hill.
Well, that's the way it's always been but we have a unique (in my experience) set of circumstances. There really is no majority "party" but a majority coalition (in a parliamentary/proportionate system there's probably a dozen nationalist party members coalescing with the Republicans). That's just the reality. So the question is "what do you do with it?"
Look what Johnny made me do does not fly, no.
But neither does "it's the minority's duty to oppose" in an environment when simply saying "no" to everything means a shutdown, which I think they'd welcome as evidence that the Republicans can't govern (as if we need more than what we've already seen).
You're conveniently overlooking that fact that it was the Dems siding with McCarthy the weekend before last that kept the government open, DCLawyer. And then he went on "Face the Nation" the very next morning and attempted to blame them for his own party's dysfunction. If you want to focus your ire, look at folks like Gaetz and MTG who, make no mistake, want to burn it all down.
I'm tired of this nonsensical whining about the Dems (the House minority party, mind you) not saving a guy who voted to overturn the 2020 election, a guy who then flew to Mar-a-Lago to kiss his mob boss's ring and the guy who has greenlit a tractionless, evidence-free impeachment inquiry into the current president. Walk me through the Dem motivation for saving that guy again?
And I'm tired of people who make excuses for childish behavior, so I guess we're even.
I'm not conveniently forgetting anything. He gave them pretty much what they wanted in the CR (all the controversial border stuff was out) and was willing to piss off his right wing. The blame for failure would have been entirely on them at that point.
In the motion to vacate, every Dem voted with Gaetz, MTG, et. al. The question wasn't whether Jeffries or McCarthy should be speaker, but whether there should be chaos.
So why vote "yes"? What do they get out of that?
Any new Speaker necessarily gets the message that working with Dems in the future will wind up on the street. Their vote empowered the MAGA wing. They're not dumb. They get it.
They get nothing out of Gaetz et al winning but Schadenfreude. Had they put country first, that would have been motivation enough.
"I'm not conveniently forgetting anything." LOL. Well, DC Lawyer, except for the reality that the only reason McCarthy went to the Dems on Saturday morning was because his own party was intent on shutting down our government. Your fan fiction isn't reality.
"His own party...". You're acting like he had a traditionally large majority, when in fact he is really the leader of the largest party in the coalition, and was held hostage by the leader of his coalition partners. If he had wanted the government shut, he wouldn't gone to the Dems. TBH I'd assumed they'd promised him enough support in a motion to vacate (at least some members conveniently gone home early). The fact that he faced the MTV with NO promises surprised me.
As for "fan fiction" please find and paste all of my pro Trump and/or pro Congressional comments.
The Dems didn't oppose McCarthy because they wanted to make the GOP look bad. They opposed him because he didn't negotiate in good faith. He made a debt limit deal with Biden and then ignored it. He depended on Dems to pass the CR he gave them zero time to read, and then said they had tried to tank the measure with their delaying tactics, which they only used to get time to read the darn thing. He can't be trusted, and there's no reason they should vote to keep him. If the GOP can't agree among themselves, they can present a candidate who will be a trustworthy negotiating partner and draw Democratic votes. They are in control of what happens here. If it's a fiasco, it's their fault.
I hope those who suffer from the next government shutdown take some comfort in knowing "he had it coming." This is schadenfreude, not responsible governance.
But again, the motion to vacate was NOT Jeffries vs. McCarthy but rather Gaetz vs McCarthy, and they voted to empower Gaetz and the very small group who are making it impossible to make the House even marginally functioning.
Here's the deal on that Saturday CR. McCarthy didn't go to the Dems and ask for them to vote for it. All signs now indicate that he thought the Democrats would defeat that clean CR, because there wasn't Ukraine money in it. The talking points the next day on Face the Nation only hammered that home.
Now Jaime, are you telling me that the press got it all wrong? ;-)