Rep. Matt Gaetz is planning to attempt to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy from the role this week after the House leader worked with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown on Saturday.
Rep. Matt Gaetz is planning to attempt to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy from the role this week after the House leader worked with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown on Saturday.
House Republicans have only gotten more divided since they took the majority. It took them 15 rounds to agree on a Speaker the first time, how many votes is it going to take to elect the next one?
I can’t think of anything g in politics over the last decade that were as predictable as this situation. The moment we got a few votes in to his disastrous process of becoming the speaker, we all saw how a few right wingers basically had their hands around his throat for the foreseeable future. This was always gonna be the result. He was never going to finish two years as speaker.
Watch them pull some desperate Hail Mary like asking some Democrats to give him support lol
Gaetz already is rumored to have been doing that, just because he personally dislikes McCarthy so much.
The politically savvy move for the Dems will just be to watch them squirm. But it could prove really painful for the nation, and unlike the GOP the Dems will always basically back down and compromise when real people are about to get hurt. The right thing to do, but also part of how the Overton window keeps away from democracy.
Apparently, there's also a Republican effort to kick Gaetz out of the House due to "ethics violations." Basically, "we were willing to overlook the child sex trafficking, but your government shutdown stunt could have hurt us at the polls and that's serious!"
What I'd love to see happen: Gaetz kicks McCarthy out, but in one round of voting Democrats help McCarthy regain his position. Turns out that McCarthy made a long term deal with Democrats to not only keep the government open, but to save his skin. With their one trump card played, the Freedom Caucus suddenly finds they have no power. The Gaetz expulsion vote happens and Gaetz is expelled thanks to votes from Democrats and Republicans.
For real. The only option aside from McCarthy is someone moderate who can pull votes from Dems. These extremist nut jobs only have power because McCarthy is totally beholden to them. A bipartisan, moderate speaker just consigns them to the back row. If they're smart, no way they outst him, just sit back, shut up, and keep collecting those Russian paychecks. But you know, they're stupid.
This happens with everyone. Remember the “blue dog democrats?”
Once power is to be had, everyone wants their piece of it for their provincial agenda. And when a party is on the defensive, they all band together to survive.
This is frankly one of the healthy checks and balances that keeps any one group from achieving hegemony.
If the whole country went overwhelmingly red or blue for any period of time, we’d see a third party emerge to destabilize it. Exactly as happened with Perot after the Reagan Dynasty.
Some Democrats have suggested they could support McCarthy if an ouster attempt occurred at a turbulent time. Others have suggested they could back a moderate Republican willing to share the gavel with them < that wont happen >and allow power sharing within House committees. Others have shown no interest in helping any speaker candidate aside from House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries.
"That's his problem," Democratic Representative Jim McGovern said of McCarthy. "I vote for Hakeem Jeffries for speaker."