10/4/2023
Reblogged on kommonsentsjane/blogkommonsents.
Kevin Got What He Deserved
The Speaker of the House might be the most powerful person in Washington- but they aren’t a dictator. At all times a majority of the chamber has to support you and your agenda. If they don’t, you’re finished. There is no rule about how you build your coalition- it can be of the majority party, it can be bipartisan, it doesn’t matter. You need a majority though.
Kevin McCarthy had the same size majority as Nancy Pelosi did the previous two years, roughly four votes to give. He chose not to deal either with Democrats or his far-right flank. All that happened yesterday was he paid for that. He needed 214 people to support him and he didn’t have that. So he goes.
This idea that Democrats should have saved him is hilariously stupid and based on absolutely no substance. Democrats opposed him Tuesday. On Monday he said his offer for Democratic votes was “nothing.” On Sunday he attacked Democrats for passing a government funding bill that he proposed and they voted for. On Saturday he put that government funding bill on the floor without any negotiations with Democrats, or giving them time to read the bill. What exactly in that process was worth saving for Democrats? He offered nothing and he got nothing. It wasn’t like he was working with them before.
The other idea that this was bad for America is overblown. Sure, our Congress is in chaos, and that’s bad. What was our Congress doing anyway? During the last Congress they passed major bipartisan infrastructure and technology bills, they passed COVID relief bills, they passed bills dealing with climate change, and lowered prescription drug costs. During this Congress their main achievements were paying their existing bills by increasing the debt ceiling and passing funding to keep the government open. Kevin McCarthy stunk at his job and nobody will miss him.
Congress hasn’t functioned as well since Newt Gingrich came in and transferred a ton of the powers from committee chairmen to the Speaker. This is a bipartisan fact. It’s not a new thing, it’s thirty years old now. The institution is fundamentally broken and your representatives have less power than they did in 1985. The only difference in 2023 is that the man who occupied the office was weak, feeble, and arrogant. So he got kicked out. Good.
More importantly, McCarthy personally paid the final price for the pathetic leadership he and his GOP “Young Guns” displayed 15 years ago in the shadow of President Obama’s victory. John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, and Paul McCarthy bowed to their most rabid, activist base that was terrified because “the black guy won,” and empowered a passionate and ignorant minority in their party to take control. I guess it didn’t pay off. Boehner got fed up trying to control the crazies and resigned as Speaker after four and a half years. Cantor lost a primary to that sane rabid base, ending his time as Majority Leader. Ryan’s tenure as Speaker lasted three and a half years, and got completely neutered for the last two of them when the Trump base took over the party. McCarthy? He’s the most pathetic of all. He couldn’t get the votes in 2015, had to wait over seven years, needed 17 ballots to become Speaker, then got kicked out in less than nine months by the members, because he really had no support. The whole group fecklessly stood by and handed their party over to people who don’t want to govern. None of them get to govern anymore. We’re all better off. They represent a generation of Congressional Republicans who both bowed to their oligarch donors and their populist base. They earned their fate.
More importantly to America though, this party has proven they can’t run the government. You might think Joe Biden is too old, or too liberal, or too moderate, or whatever, but he didn’t do this. “Defund the Police” and “Green New Deal” are slogans and not laws because Nancy Pelosi was an adult and specialized in writing actual laws. The idiots running the House barely can avert causing an economic crisis, and basically can’t even pick a leader. These people can’t run anything. You might want government to take action against crime in America’s cities, or to lessen inflation, or to fix whatever major problems you feel we have. Fair. Government should fix problems. The current Republican Party can’t. This isn’t George W. Bush passing policies into law that maybe you did or didn’t agree with. These guys have no ideas and no idea how to pass ideas into law anyway.
Bye, Kevin.
****
https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/156981054/posts/1794
It is hard to pass laws that you haven’t a clue what is in the laws. Three-thousand-page laws which are not allowed to be read before voting on them have to be changed into something that is coherent and explored.
And, we now have people who are not as bright due to the educational system they endure since it is an empty glass of nothing.
And, Paul Ryan was a RINO and rode the trail behind Obama. So what do you expect?
kommonsentsjane
kommonsentsjane 