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US Politics: the McCarthy Trials

Kalbear

By Kalbear,
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Maithanet Council Member

Maithanet

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If the Speaker deadlock continues, then eventually we'll get a government shutdown basically by default, because no further funding can be passed.  There is a segment of the Republican party that wants that shutdown, and probably aren't afraid to continue the leadership impasse in order to get it.  So there's a few possible avenues out of this mess that I see:

1.  The "moderates" cave and elect someone that is acceptable and beholden to the far right.  Could be Jordan or someone else. 

2.  The "moderates" stay unified and negotiate with Democrats on some concessions in exchange for electing a Republican that is acceptable to most Republicans, but not the far right.  This would presumably mean a bunch of Democrats voting Present rather than no.  Most likely this would be in exchange for some spending priorities in the upcoming budget fight. 

3.  The far right caves and elects someone that the moderates can also support (possibly McCarthy).  This probably requires an agreement to give some power back to the speaker (raise the threshold to vacate to 5 or 10 votes maybe).  This would really only happen if the far right gets sufficiently worried about option #2.

 

By far the most likely is #1.  This is exactly what "moderate" Fitzpatrick (from a Biden seat outside Philly) said when he agreed to endorse Jordan, that he was angry about "extremists" ousting McCarthy, but the Republicans need to get back to work.  But given how pissed off much of the Republican caucus is, it will take some time before the moderates are willing to just fold.  They are upset about the disproportionate power that the freedom caucus had under McCarthy, and if they go down this path, that will only get worse. 

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Zorral Council Member

Zorral

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Like McCarthy was a total asshole to the Dems in the House, and absolutely believed they'd pull his ass out the fire when the leopards went for him -- and was shocked they didn't.

I do no understand these people -- they are as far from being politicians as I've always known them as you can get, so how in hell did they get elected?  Politicians as I'd always known them were always very nice to your face -- what they said/did behind your back might be different, and probably was different, because politicians always ... lie -- but in public politicians did their best to offend no one and get everyone to like them.

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Martell Spy Council Member

Martell Spy

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1 hour ago, Mindwalker said:

Well, before the first vote, Jordan had Fox/ Hannity mail Republican congressmen, extorting them for the vote... They really do send their finest to Congress, don't they?

There was also claims of them doing things like texting spouses. And it was said that all these hardball tactics actually backfired.

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Zorral Council Member

Zorral

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1 minute ago, Martell Spy said:

There was also claims of them doing things like texting spouses. And it was said that all these hardball tactics actually backfired.

I linked to that above -- people on the receiving end speaking of this threat, intimidation and warning.

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Fez Council Member

Fez

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2 hours ago, Maithanet said:

If the Speaker deadlock continues, then eventually we'll get a government shutdown basically by default, because no further funding can be passed.  There is a segment of the Republican party that wants that shutdown, and probably aren't afraid to continue the leadership impasse in order to get it.  So there's a few possible avenues out of this mess that I see:

1.  The "moderates" cave and elect someone that is acceptable and beholden to the far right.  Could be Jordan or someone else. 

2.  The "moderates" stay unified and negotiate with Democrats on some concessions in exchange for electing a Republican that is acceptable to most Republicans, but not the far right.  This would presumably mean a bunch of Democrats voting Present rather than no.  Most likely this would be in exchange for some spending priorities in the upcoming budget fight. 

3.  The far right caves and elects someone that the moderates can also support (possibly McCarthy).  This probably requires an agreement to give some power back to the speaker (raise the threshold to vacate to 5 or 10 votes maybe).  This would really only happen if the far right gets sufficiently worried about option #2.

 

By far the most likely is #1.  This is exactly what "moderate" Fitzpatrick (from a Biden seat outside Philly) said when he agreed to endorse Jordan, that he was angry about "extremists" ousting McCarthy, but the Republicans need to get back to work.  But given how pissed off much of the Republican caucus is, it will take some time before the moderates are willing to just fold.  They are upset about the disproportionate power that the freedom caucus had under McCarthy, and if they go down this path, that will only get worse. 

#4. Tom Emmer gets empowered while still being only Speaker Pro Tem, which almost certainly requires affirmative Dem votes and therefore is a different thing than #2. It also probably will be in short-term increments that require further votes every X days for the rest of the congress.

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Zorral Council Member

Zorral

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"Keep her legs closed!": Republicans are mad one of them said the quiet part out loud
Republicans definitely want to punish women for having sex — but they don't want voters to figure that out

https://www.salon.com/2023/10/16/keep-her-legs-closed-angry-that-one-of-them-said-the-quiet-part-out-loud/

Quote

 

... most Republicans most of the time are on board with the lying-through-our-teeth strategy. But not all! Meet New Jersey state Sen. Edward Durr, a truck driver-turned-politician who has a habit of saying the quiet parts out loud. 

"A woman does have a choice! Keep her legs closed," Durr wrote in a 2020 Facebook post, in which he also called a pro-choice woman an "idiot." He also "liked" a post that called for "spaying women like dogs." 

Democrats in New Jersey are pouring a lot of money into making sure that voters know about these Facebook comments. One Democratic PAC spent more than $500,000 on a TV ad tying Durr to other New Jersey Republicans by name. Another sent out a mailer highlighting his comments. 

Republicans in New Jersey are crying foul, claiming that this is oh, so unfair. State Sen. Vince Polistina, who's named in the Democratic ads, called them "political hack jobs" and claimed they're "lying to voters." Another group of Republicans issued a joint statement saying that Durr's statements were "offensive and unacceptable" and "don’t represent us or what we believe in any way.

It's true that New Jersey Republicans have the luxury of mostly avoiding the issue, which doesn't come up too often in their largely Democratic state. But their claims that they're miles away Durr's views don't measure up to the evidence. Polistina, for instance, voted against two bills that would protect New Jersey abortion providers from legal persecution if they serve patients from out of state. The other Garden State Republicans complaining about this are tougher to pin down — no doubt on purpose — but would only commit to saying that they support exceptions from a possible abortion ban "for victims of rape or incest, or in case of a serious health risk."

The difference between Durr and most other Republicans is about surface-level rhetoric, not actual substance. That's demonstrated by the routine invocation of "rape exceptions." Making an exception for rape is just a more polite way of saying "shut your legs," since the implication is any woman who consents to sex deserves to run the risk of forced childbirth. And as reproductive health experts routinely point out, these "exceptions" are often meaningless in practice. Even if you're legally entitled to an abortion under those circumstances, you can't get one if all the competent providers have been run out of the state. 

Durr's viewpoint may not be uttered in public very often, but it's at the foundation of the entire anti-abortion movement. Former Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell admitted as much about his state's abortion ban, which he played a major role in writing. In a 2021 Supreme Court brief defending that law, Mitchell wrote, "Women can 'control their reproductive lives' without access to abortion; they can do so by refraining from sexual intercourse." He condemned pro-choice court decisions for accepting the view that "women (and men) should have the right to freely engage to sexual intercourse."

Mitchell included that parenthetical "and men" to put a pseudo-egalitarian gloss on this puritanical crackdown, but his actual behavior suggests he's a big fan of the sexual double standard, or worse. Right now, he's representing a man named Marcus Silva, who is using the Texas abortion ban to sue friends of his former wife, apparently because they helped her leave him. Court filings suggest that Silva threatened to report his wife to police for having an abortion if she didn't submit to him "mind, body and soul." Other documents indicate that Silva tried to coerce her into having sex with him and doing his laundry, saying he'd drop the lawsuit in exchange. It sure sounds like Jonathan Mitchell believes women have no right to control their own bodies. ....

 

 

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Mindwalker Council Member

Mindwalker

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Posted (edited)

Barf to the above.

In other news, Trump just doxxed Letitia James' home address. I'm sure nobody will try to do any harm to the "black racist" (quote). The main thing is he's not put into pre-trial jail like everyone else would have been long ago.

Edited by Mindwalker
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TrackerNeil Council Member

TrackerNeil

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16 hours ago, Maithanet said:

They are upset about the disproportionate power that the freedom caucus had under McCarthy, and if they go down this path, that will only get worse. 

But isn't the story of the GOP for the last twenty years them going down roads that take them from bad to worse? Sure, some of them will squawk about the need to improve, be adults, blah blah, but nobody wants to do anything about it.

We've seen this twice in terms of Donald Trump. Lots of Republican opinion leaders want him stopped, but very few of them are willing to try to, you know, stop him. Each Republican is hoping that his/her colleague will be the brave one, the one to jump on the grendate, but there are almost none of those Republicans left, now that Cheney and Kinzinger are gone. So they just do today what they did yesterday, hoping that, somehow, it will all work out. That hope has failed, again and again.

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Phylum of Alexandria Council Member

Phylum of Alexandria

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1 hour ago, TrackerNeil said:

We've seen this twice in terms of Donald Trump. Lots of Republican opinion leaders want him stopped, but very few of them are willing to try to, you know, stop him. Each Republican is hoping that his/her colleague will be the brave one, the one to jump on the grendate, but there are almost none of those Republicans left, now that Cheney and Kinzinger are gone. So they just do today what they did yesterday, hoping that, somehow, it will all work out. That hope has failed, again and again.

It's a cowardice that's so absolute it almost seems...steadfast? It's one thing we can have faith in: the "adults in the room" don't deliver anything beyond words and capitulation. 

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Maithanet Council Member

Maithanet

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1 hour ago, TrackerNeil said:

But isn't the story of the GOP for the last twenty years them going down roads that take them from bad to worse? Sure, some of them will squawk about the need to improve, be adults, blah blah, but nobody wants to do anything about it.

Yes, the story for the past 20 years at least has been the moderates capitulating to the right.  Then those moderates lose elections and a new crop of formerly mainstream Republicans become the moderates and they start complaining about the far right, and we do another cycle.  We are in the middle of that right now, which is why I think the most likely result is that no matter how angry the "moderates" are, they will eventually cave and we'll get a Speaker even more cozy with the freedom caucus than McCarthy. 

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TrackerNeil Council Member

TrackerNeil

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Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Yes, the story for the past 20 years at least has been the moderates capitulating to the right.  Then those moderates lose elections and a new crop of formerly mainstream Republicans become the moderates and they start complaining about the far right, and we do another cycle.  We are in the middle of that right now, which is why I think the most likely result is that no matter how angry the "moderates" are, they will eventually cave and we'll get a Speaker even more cozy with the freedom caucus than McCarthy. 

I think so, too. It's not as if there is some strong alternative to Jordan making their ambitions known. Sure, it's embarrassing to have multiple rounds of votes, but if Jordn secures the job at the end of it, does he care? 

I remember when George W. Bush was declared the winner in 2000, and pundits were saying he would have a "modest presidency", because he had not won the popular vote. Then he went on the deliver the worst foreign policy disaster since I don't know when. Republicans learned a long time ago that winning with 50.1% of the vote still gives you 100% of the power.

Edited by TrackerNeil
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A Horse Named Stranger Council Member

A Horse Named Stranger

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5 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Sidney Powell has agreed to plead guilty to the charges against her.  I really wonder if she has turned on Trump.  The deal is very generous to Powell…

https://x.com/ap/status/1715006888889192798?s=46

Must have. She agreed to testify in future trials as part of the deal. Looks like Hall was the first domino to fall (no, not Dominion, Ty. Yes, that's related, nevermind...). Hall was bad news for Powell, and Powell is bad news for quite a few, I assume Rudy is really screwed now.

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Matrim Fox Cauthon Council Member

Matrim Fox Cauthon

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11 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Sidney Powell has agreed to plead guilty to the charges against her.  I really wonder if she has turned on Trump.  The deal is very generous to Powell…

https://x.com/ap/status/1715006888889192798?s=46

Or she is falling on the sword for Trump. 

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