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BigRed0427 posted:Yiiikes. He's an openly ambitious political weathervane who, by all accounts, will do drat near anything to gain power. He happily went MAGA went the Freedom Caucus was on the rise and Trump went up that escalator, but they're not convinced he'll be a reliable ally now that Trump's power has been shaken. And before Trump rose to power, he was heavily aligned with the old GOP leadership - including John Boehner, who was driven out of the speakership by the Freedom Caucus. And like others said, there's some value in thwarting the party's leading pick just to prove that they can. Even though they're a small faction, they intend to frequently present all sorts of demands and red lines. Showing that they're willing to openly buck the party like this makes it clear that their threats won't be empty and that their demands can't be ignored so easily.
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Jan 4, 2023 03:00
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slurm posted:So can they actually do anything without a speaker? Or can an obstructionist party with a slim majority use something like the Freedom caucus crowd as an excuse to keep the US without a Congress indefinitely, which with a Dem in the White House seems to their advantage Literally nothing else can be done until they have a Speaker. And since the GOP controls the House, there's not really any point in denying themselves the ability to use it. Even the Freedom Caucus wants the House operating so they can start up House investigations of everything the Dems have done in the last two years. That's ultimately what this is all about : positioning themselves to have maximum influence in the House so they can do whatever dumb bullshit they want.
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Jan 4, 2023 07:26
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Mooseontheloose posted:I mean, the mainstream Republican party is hoping to force a default and think Biden will cave into their demands to (regressive insanity goes here). Even in the House, there's only a few people crazy enough to actually want a default. The wealthy megadonors generally don't want the entire economy utterly destroyed. I severely doubt this is gonna drag on into summer. But if it does, we'll absolutely see some kind of drastic move to clear this impasse.
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Jan 4, 2023 18:10
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Seth Pecksniff posted:Kevin is never going to give this up and the HFC is never going to back down so again, I ask my friends on the other side: what in God's name is the endgame gonna be? At some point, the moderates will get sick of this and dump McCarthy in favor of someone else, and the Freedom Caucus will probably put a mark in their win column and fall in line. Youth Decay posted:So did McCarthy actually try to do anything to help himself between yesterday and today or were the cuckoo caucus the only ones with any sort of strategy to increase their vote numbers? There's not really much more he can do. He's basically been begging the Freedom Caucus to give him more demands he can fulfill. They don't really have any, because their true demand is "No Kevin McCarthy".
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Jan 4, 2023 19:14
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Alctel posted:So basically the leader of the house party can't get the confidence of the house which in a parliamentary system would lead to another election or a different party getting a stab at it but instead you can just keep trying forever? This isn't like coalition formation. There's effectively two parties in the House. The Dems are voting too, but they don't have enough votes. And we can't just redo the House elections. Aside from resignations and deaths, this is the House we're going to have for the next two years. They have to keep trying forever, because there is no other resolution. Until someone, R or D, gets a majority of votes, there's no Speaker. And without a Speaker, the House can't do anything.
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Jan 4, 2023 20:35
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Charliegrs posted:Between McCarthy, Scalise, Jordan, Biggs, and Donalds who would the house Dems "prefer"? I mean I know they are all terrible but the least terrible from the Dem perspective is probably McCarthy right? McCarthy and Scalise are less likely to do something ridiculous like actually blocking the debt ceiling. That's about all I can say for them.
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Jan 5, 2023 02:32
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YggiDee posted:Okay I'm not on top of US politics, are they just nominating the same dweeb over and over and nobody is voting for him? Can they pick someone less objectionable? There's only ~20 people objecting to that dweeb, and the other ~190 people aren't necessarily interested in immediately tossing their favorite overboard just to please a small and extremely demanding faction. Also, they needed a majority vote just to adjourn the House so they can stop rerunning the vote and go spend a couple days wheeling and dealing. The small faction blocked that for a while just to humiliate that one dweeb.
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Jan 5, 2023 14:27
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Raenir Salazar posted:Could they get a procedural ruling from the clerk to attempt to switch the vote to some kind of Ranked Voting with Instant Runoff? That might still not get to 218 but might speed up the process. Nope. While the voting rules can be changed, doing so requires a majority vote of the House. And given that more than half the House is interested in keeping the current clusterfuck going for a while yet, we can expect any voting rule change proposals to be dead in the water.
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Jan 5, 2023 15:22
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Raenir Salazar posted:I wonder if McCarthy can try a gamble and call their bluff, announce everyone can freely vote for who they want and if this end up with someone having more votes than McCarthy he'll support them as Speaker, if not then everyone should support him and get it over with? I don't really see why anyone in the GOP would agree to either of those things. The Freedom Caucus folks blocking McCarthy wouldn't take the first deal, and if they're not playing ball then that deal is all downsides for McCarthy. Persuading five Republicans to switch parties all at once at the very start of the term would be extremely unlikely.
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Jan 5, 2023 19:57
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In fairness, he doesn't have much choice but to put on this sort of bravado. This is a game of chicken. If he admits there's even the slightest chance that he might back down, that just tells the HFC that their scheme is working and that they should keep going. Until he gives up, every comment he gives to the press is gonna be corncobbed as hell. Popete posted:Whose the alternative if not McCarthy? Seems like unless the rest of the GOP caves to the HFC and elects an absolute nut job (even beyond McCarthy) the next in line is doomed to the same fate. At least a few of the holdouts probably just want McCarthy's head mounted on their wall as a trophy, and would probably be much more cooperative once they've got that.
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Jan 5, 2023 20:55
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Charlz Guybon posted:Surely both his loyalists and the Dems would both vote for that hoping they would win. I doubt it. It'd be hugely risky for him and his loyalists, and I don't think getting the Speakership as the minority party is actually worth much to the Dems.
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Jan 6, 2023 02:07
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The Lone Badger posted:Sooo.... what do you do? Eventually someone will get sick of this and give in. The divides here aren't actually that deep, it's just a pissing contest to determine the factional balance of power. Because the US system heavily encourages a two-party system, situations like this are exceedingly rare. This is the first time in literally 100 years that a Speaker wasn't elected on the first ballot.
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Jan 6, 2023 04:40
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The Lone Badger posted:Isn't a nonfunctioning House way more strategically valuable to the dems than any level of 'moderation' in the choice of speaker? The House does need to function occasionally, so they can't just leave it like this for two whole years. That said, it's still a few months before any House action is urgently needed, so the Dems don't need to be in any hurry to put an end to this. Thing is, the House will still be barely functional even if they pick a speaker. Even if the Freedom Caucus loses and McCarthy gets the speakership, the Freedom Caucus could refuse to vote for bills he wants. This is just the beginning - they could potentially pull this poo poo on any proposed bill that's brought to the floor. McCarthy would be almost totally unable to govern without throwing concessions to Dems.
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Jan 6, 2023 06:31
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illcendiary posted:What’s the conservative argument for term limits? Is it meant to defang effective Democrat politicians and put seats in play more frequently? Term limits are fairly common in populist movements of any kind. The idea is to oust the longtime career politicians and ensure frequent turnover in seats and in leadership, reducing how much power and influence is able to concentrate in the hands of any individual party leader. For a relatively new upstart faction that mostly came about by ousting incumbents and frequently clashes with the longtime established politicians running things in the House and Senate, the short-term political advantages are fairly obvious.
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Jan 7, 2023 02:52
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Pendragon posted:This is what I'm trying to figure out: HOW is he keeping the rest in line? What's the benefit to supporting McCarthy for the "true" Republicans? The simple answer is that nobody else is stupid enough to want the Speaker seat right now. Managing this much chaos with a slim majority is a miserable job. Kammat posted:If anyone's curious, here are the raw text and an analysis of what's currently pending for house rules. There's still a ton to finalize and they need formally introduced but you can see what were in for Monday. Monday is going to be pretty funny. Here's some highlights:
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Jan 8, 2023 02:20
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PostNouveau posted:Is there another speaker election next year or does it hold until new House elections? Can McCarthy now go, "Well, sorry guys your crazy rules package didn't pass. We'll have to go with the old rules." and not have to worry about blowback until a totally new House is elected? The sitting Speaker can be removed at any time by passing a motion to vacate, which is essentially a no-confidence vote. However, House rules sometimes restrict when and how a motion to vacate can be brought to the floor. So how easy it is to remove McCarthy depends entirely on the contents of the rules package that gets passed. One of the concessions the Freedom Caucus demanded from McCarthy, of course, was a rule that would make it extremely easy to bring a motion to vacate to the floor, allowing just a single member to call a no-confidence vote at any time. Barrel Cactaur posted:Don't forget other winning policies such as no unionizing for our congressional staffers and no nda clauses that let them talk to the ethics committee or office of workplace conditions board. Generally, the ones that require a law are just saying "McCarthy commits to bring a bill about this to the floor so that it could be voted on and turned into a law". It basically requires him to bring their dumb poo poo up for a floor vote, and prevents him from ignoring their wild ideas on the specified subjects.
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Jan 9, 2023 17:57
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