The Politics Thread

[janea4old]

 

 

 

 

[Vee]

Back at the Clownhouse:

 

 

[janea4old]

Now on round 12 of choosing a Speaker of the House.  This is day 4 of the process.

 

 

[janea4old]

TWELFTH vote for Speaker of the House

More than 50% of those voting must agree for a Speaker to be chosen.

In the TWELFTH round, 3 persons did NOT vote: 
Republican Ken Buck of Colorado, 
Republican Wesley Hunt of Texas, 
and Democrat David Trone of Maryland.

This means that 431 of the 434 members voted.
Since 431 voting - then only 216 votes needed and not 218.

No nominee received more than half the votes cast, so nobody elected.

People formally nominated for this vote:

• Republican Kevin McCarthy
• Democrat Hakeem Jeffries
• Kevin Hern (Republican from Oklahoma)
• Jim Jordan (Republican from Ohio)

Big news: 
Victoria Spartz of Indiana voted McCarthy (and not "present" as she had been).

Byron Donalds has dropped out of the nomination.
He voted for McCarthy.
His supporters voted for McCarthy, Hern, and Jordan.

Results of twelfth vote:

213 votes - Republican Kevin McCarthy

211 votes - Democrat Hakeem Jeffries

3 votes for Kevin Hern (Republican from Oklahoma)
.   **** (but Hern voted for McCarthy)
Lauren Boebert (CO)
Eli Crane (AZ)
Matt Rosendale (Montana)

4 votes for Jim Jordan (Republican from Ohio)
.    **** (but Jordan voted for McCarthy)
Andy Biggs (AZ)
Matt Gaetz (FL)
Bob Good (VA)
Andy Harris (Maryland)

Zero votes as "present" 
(Victoria Spartz of Indiana voted McCarthy).

3 persons did NOT vote: 
Republican Ken Buck of Colorado,  
Republican Wesley Hunt of Texas, 
and Democrat David Trone of Maryland.

________________
434 total members.
All are still technically "members-elect" because they can't be sworn in as members until after a Speaker is chosen.

(They are still doing the official tallying; so one or two votes might be adjusted if an error is found, but still not enough to elect McCarthy).
_
EDIT after final tally.
To correct that three members didn't vote, not two as I had thought.

Edited January 6, 2023 by janea4old

[Vee]

 

[janea4old]

The ultra far-right "freedom" caucus
wants to take away our freedoms.
They agreed to vote for McCarthy if he puts them in key positions on committees and lets them set the agenda.

This is not funny.  This is the politics of hate.

[Fevuh]

Ahhh.  So this is their "out".  All that has to happen is some of the wonky votes for 'other' candidates....is vote "present" and they'll have a speaker.  The ones who only vote "present" can defend themselves that they did the 'right thing' with their conscience by not supporting the nominee, but he gets confirmed by those who did vote for him.  And they'll get slammed for not 'supporting' the choice for the rest of their careers, but everyone kind of 'wins' for them if they look at it in twisted fashion.

Or ignore what I said they'd do, and they'll do this.  Negotiating with a bunch of Devils, just different devils than before.

[janea4old]

They've started round THIRTEEN.

Each round, different people from each party have risen to officially nominate the various Republican nominees for Speaker.  I've looked up the political positions of the nominators and they're scary.   It's all rather terrifying that these people are in government. 

[Vee]

It's not good period, but watching the Freedom Caucus try to manage their tiny majority will be a shitshow to behold. It will be a mess, but the damage they can do at these margins is ultimately a drop in the bucket in the long run.

[DRW50]

The worst part is going to be the debt limit, where they will do their best to starve out and gut what is left of the safety net, with the media by their side all the way making sure to blame Democrats for the pain. I guess at least we aren't in the era anymore where Democrats might have gone along with severe cuts. 

As I've seen a few people say, it seems very convenient that all this drama is happening on the anniversary of 1/6. What a surprise that the ever-complicit media is going along with this blindly rather than questioning the GOP's obvious distraction attempts. 

[Vee]

They will, but let's try to hold out on assuming the public will fall for it. 

The GOP often banks on the idea that enough of the public has the same bothsides goldfish memory as the Beltway each cycle, which will always default to GOP sympathy. And there are a lot of online outrage or doom corners which do not resemble the public electorate which always love to say with grim certainty that this will definitely absolutely happen, that the public will be conned and vote the GOP back in because of media bias and laziness. I heard it in 2019. I heard it in 2020. I heard it in 2021 and 2022.

The reality hasn't borne it out. The classic squishy-middle laziness defaulting to blaming the incumbent or blaming Dems has become less and less the case over the last two cycles. Trumpism and white supremacy upends the apple cart. The fact is that just enough of an edge of the majority of the public has received the 1/6 hearings and the last 6 years of chaos with shock and outrage agains the GOP. It has resonated and had an impact. That's a big part of why they lost last year.

Would I like the entirety of the American public to be repulsed by these people, or to turn in full of the GOP? Of course. Have enough Republicans gone to jail or been drummed out of Congress? Absolutely not. But just because not enough I'd like has happened doesn't mean nothing has happened, or that the Republicans always win. If that were the case we would not be here today, dealing with this. They're in this mess because of where the public has put them - despite the media constantly putting its thumb on the scale for Republicans. The media has not swayed enough of a majority of the public. That is reality. And that can very well continue.

[DRW50]

In this case I was talking more about the pain they can bring, with full media support, before voters go back to the polls, by stopping social security, welfare, etc. I'm not really sure about 2024. The Senate is a brutal map, and I'm hesitant about Biden running against someone who isn't Trump, who is a shiny new toy and a media darling like Ron DeSantis (even if DeSantis talks like a British actor trying to play a gay man from Minnesota), or Glenn Youngkin, who don't have all of Trump's baggage. I also remember how the Republicans crashed the economy in 2013 with the shutdown and still won big in 2014. 

There are times when the public surprises me, like 2022, but even then, the games Republicans played to rig the House still worked. It's going to take massive turnout against all odds, message fine-tuning, beating voting suppression and smears, and against a media that will do anything and everything to have GOP domination at all levels. It could happen, we can't give up, but after so many losses when we needed wins, it's hard to ever expect anything else. Seeing McCarthy treated as a god by the press after he lost 13 votes just reinforces that for me.

Edited January 6, 2023 by DRW50

[Vee]

It may be hard to expect anything else, but letting the mindset be dictated entirely by doomsayers online isn't an accurate reading of the public climate IMO. The public has proven that over and over these last few years, to the media and to online prognosticators. Just because media still love DeSantis, etc. does not mean they play to American voters outside of their states or DC. That can be proven out soon.

And I don't think the press is treating McCarthy like a god. I do think many are trying to preserve some facade of dignity for him because they've worked very hard to cultivate connections with him with the expectation he would be some sort of massive GOP leader. That is not going to happen, but they are still trying to give him a figleaf for their own purposes. That has nothing to with public perception outside of the Beltway. And at the end of the day will McCarthy end up with the media pull, reputation and adoration of a Boehner or to a lesser extent Paul Ryan? No. He is Eric Cantor, if that. And meanwhile this shitshow is still viewed by the majority of the actual voting public as an embarrassing farce for him and his party.

It may not all be what we want, but it's enough for the chaos of right now.

Edited January 6, 2023 by Vee

[janea4old]

I had to go away from my computer for a while, and just returned. I see that the official tally was announced for the twelfth vote.  I see that three people didn't vote (not two as originally assumed by the media.).
McCarthy vote total corrected.
I've corrected my tally of the 12th vote at this post:
https://boards.soapoperanetwork.com/topic/28724-the-politics-thread/?do=findComment&comment=1830898

Now I have to get caught up to see what happened with the 13th vote while I was out.

[DRW50]

I think we feel that way, but so many on the left and right are eating up the points that this was such an incredible deal, why didn't the Squad do the same, look at how much they get done on the right because they are unafraid and unbought. Then the Beltway is there to shore up McCarthy, their hero and survivor. They flood the zone, and it works for too many.