So, apparently Matt Gaetz filed a motion to remove Kevin Mccarthy as house speaker, and it appparently succeeded. A handful of republicans, including Gaetz, combined with the entire democratic party, voted to remove him as speaker. I know that the republicans struggled to get a speaker in the first place, with a lot of hardliners pressuring him for concessions to allow him to win. McCarthy wasnt extreme enough for the most hard line trumpers and tea partiers, so he had to promise to deliver on conservative promises. And with the debt negotation leading to a 45 day continuing resolution with only ukraine aid cut, some republicans felt that wasn't enough. I mean, I noted that Biden got the better of McCarthy the last time the republicans did brinksmanship, and now they delivered on exactly what the democrats wanted in the first place. McCarthy has been good to the left. Despite threatening major cuts, he would end up accepting fairly weak deals that didnt deliver on conservative ideological promises, but actually helped the democrats minimize damage.
And some people got pissed and filed a motion to remove him. Which only 8 republicans voted for, but the entire democratic party did.
And now, the republicans need to elect a new speaker. Good luck. Their margins are narrow as fudge in the house, they had to make significant compromises just to cobble together a coalition to back mccarthy, and who knows what is gonna happen. Will the GOP be able to push for something more extreme? not without getting moderates on board. Will the dems be able to take advantage of the situation? Maybe. A lot of democrats are calling this a failure for the GOP and a de facto win for them.
Im less sure. Keep in mind, the dems have DC brain rot sometimes where they think moderation and compromise is always good, and they think right wing populists doing moves like this is gonna back fire on them. Maybe it will, but maybe the GOP will then elect someone more extreme, leading to more shut downs and more brinksmanship. I don't know. I'm not psychic.
This could be good be good, this could be bad. Risky move. Let's see how this plays out. Could lead to democratic victories, could lead to republican gains, we'll see.
I generally respect the use of political pressure to push the legislative process to one's ideological side of the aisle. I aint opposed to, for example, force the vote in principle. But I do recognize that at the end of the day, pragmatically, the furthest left members of congress can only do so much, and i see little point in castigating them as sell outs.
The GOP didn't seemm to get the memo on that. While I can appreciate the pressure they put on mccarthy to get concesssions, sometimes if you push too hard, yeah it can backfire. And they mightve just pushed the envelope a little bit too far here.
I mean, compare this with my response to biden and the dems. Im not really going as hard on them despite still being significantly further left than them on economics. But then again, I also recognize the limitations of public pressure and how at the end of the day, you can pressure all you want, but when the dems do respond to you, you have to support them, even if it's not everything you want. Gaetz didn't seem to get that message. he mightve just pulled the rubber band too hard and now it snapped in its face. And now who knows what will happen.
I mean, time will tell. Im not sure this was a bad move for the GOP. Although given the dems jumped right on it perhaps they know something I don't. Maybe they wanna make the GOP look bad and take advantage of the chaos to further their advantages. I dont know, we'll have to see. I guess we'll find out when it comes time to elect a new house speaker and we see how that process plays out.
No comments:
Post a Comment