West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin called today’s vote to oust McCarthy a “sad day for our country” that sends a negative message to the rest of the world about American democracy.
-Said a douchebag who spent years obstructing progress.
“I didn’t make any money from this. A sad day.”
Nailed it
Joe Manchin voting record sends a negative message to the rest of the world about American democracy.
Perhaps. But consider Speaker Jordan. McCarthy may be a jellyfish who had no business wrapping his tentacles around the House gavel, but he at least tried to slither across the aisle on occasion.
I’m settling in for the clown show to come.
West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin
They misspelled republican in disguise wrong
They misspelled it wrong, so they spelled it right?
I bet he said all that from the back of his yacht.
Eli5 on Joe Manchin please? Never heard of him
He’s a dem who doesn’t seem to share any views with other Dems.
He singlehandedly delayed or outright prevented many large bills from going through.
When Bidens term is looked back upon, Manchin will be the force that prevented Biden from pushing though some of his more progressive plans.
There are two things he’s useful for: having a Democrat as Senate Majority Leader, and he actually does side with Dems on voting rights most of the time (even co-sponsoring bills). That’s it. Other than that, might as well let the seat fall to a Republican for all the good he does.
With his position as swing vote, Manchin is arguably the most powerful person in the world. He’s doing fuck all with that power besides obstructing things. If I were a W. Virginia voter with sense, I would be asking how he’s using his position to help W. Virginia. You want to bring jobs and industry and sweet government pork to your state, Joe? You’re in a prime position to do it.
Which was 100% predictable and expected.
Including the fact that there are plenty of other Democratic senators who believe the same shit he does and vote accordingly but he’s doing what he agreed to do as the public whipping boy.
Democratic senator from an otherwise red state. He tends to be a spoiler for Democratic plans, along with Kristen Synema.
If the GOP was closer to the center, he would likely switch parties.
He’s not all bad. He has let the democrats get through as many judges as possible. That said, he is a bad look for the party hands down. He allows moderates to believe democrats have a plurality when really they are just being lead by the people the least to the left. So when things go wrong it was the other 48’s fault but not really.
You mean christofascist supreme court justices?
No, the various federal benches. Which, incidentally, were the only federal positions that Trump had been filling with any urgency. Ambassadors and heads of departments all went unfilled, but not judges. So now the federal bench is stuffed with Trump appointees, and Democrats are only pushing back a bit.
If they had any sense, they’d quadruple the size of the federal judiciary and stuff it back up. The size hasn’t been increased in a while, and the workload per judge has been pilling up, so there’s a good reason to do this, anyway.
… no Joe Manchin has not helped the democrats appoint any christofascist Supreme Court Justices.
??? No, he helped the fucking Republicans do it. Wtf man?
The Republicans didn’t need his help.
from an otherwise red state
Not really, his voters overwhelmingly support progressive policies.
It’s just no progressive has a chance in the primary with the party blocking all of Manchin’s primary opponents.
It has been on a downswing lately tho. 2016 there was more D than R voters, and 2021 it got tied up.
I do t know why everyone acts like all these “red states” are worth writing off, it really wouldn’t be hard if we actually tried for them.
I don’t know where you’re getting there being more D than R voters in WV. The last two presidential elections went to Trump by 40 points
Manchin is a senator, which means the election is state-wide, and West Virginia is a deeply red state.
A Progressive candidate has 0 chance in West Virginia and any claim otherwise is quite simply wishful thinking.
Let’s leave the Bernie Math in 2016
Ugh I’m not gonna try like a little fuckwit
Thank you
He’s a bitch boi
He’s like the swing vote guy, or one of them. Votes against party policy.
Summary of voting record: opposes big business, environmental protection, financial sector regulation, gun control, hawkish foreign policy, foreign and humanitarian aid, taxing the middle class, military spending, domestic surveillance. Supports taxing businesses, restrict money in politics, consumer protection, disaster relief, funding education, public health, labor rights and wages, lgbt rights, internet freedom, a robust safety net, higher spending, women’s rights.
Came across this site looking up an answer for you. http://politicsthatwork.com/voting-record/Joe-Manchin-412391
Worth looking at it in more detail because he did vote to support abortion restriction so idk about supporting women’s rights etc.
He’s the dem senator from west Virginia. He’s a coal barron we put up with because if he lost a Republican would most likely take his seat. He’s the Senate’s kingmaker
“Democratic Senator”
Democrats this morning were shown a clip of McCarthy on CBS over the weekend trying to blame them for shutdown chaos, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said, calling that a clarifying moment for those in the party who might have voted to save him. McCarthy’s decision to blame Democrats on TV this weekend was “one of the most crushingly stupid things somebody could do on the eve of your survival vote,” he told NBC News this afternoon.
I saw that interview clip - the reporter actually started laughing when he tried to blame the Democrats. It really was a stupid thing to say.
The Democrats were discussing working with him. Then he basically told them to fuck off with that interview. So he lost with 8 republican votes. Such bad strategy. It just makes you think, aren’t you supposed to be a politician. You ever politiced in your whole life?
I guess this is the kind of stupid, horrible strategy you can expect from the current Republican party. They don’t have to make deals are negotiate. Their entire platform is scream Democrats bad.
He was trying to throw the democrats under the bus because the threat from Gaetz was that he was working with the Democrats. But he forgot the Democrats aren’t complete pushovers, just mostly pushovers, and ended up falling under the bus instead.
He eas trying to get the most radical reps back by showing “hey i am one of you, i also wanto to own the libs” But fascists hanging their own to try if they are not radical enough is a story as old as fascism.
I mean, hasn’t he always been kind of dim? I’ve always thought of him as kind of an older Eric Trump, tbh.
Do you recall where you saw that video?
I don’t remember the exact link I watched, but here’s a clip: https://youtu.be/6sAFFDWaNtY?si=wUaBjyiPv1o8SWzJ
Thanks MVP 🫶
Man, McCarthy is such a hilariously stupid little bitch. I’m honestly mystified that he thought that gaslighting approach was going to work.
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Former Fairfax County Commissioner Gerry Connolly? The man who never met a defense contractor he could say no to?
Everyone wants to act like he wants to be speaker…
He gets zero out of it and no matter what happens it hurts his chance retaining his seat or moving up to a higher office.
He probably can’t be happier to step back in the shadows.
Edit:
Woke up to see no ones ever heard about a dog that spends it whole life chasing cars, then when one stops realizes it doesn’t know what to do
He desperately wanted to be speaker. He was pissed off when it took him many votes to get the role, actively negotiating for the job he should’ve been a shoo in for.
Then even once he had it, he was doing anything he could to appease the freedom caucus, including the unilateral impeachment investigation and the shutdown threat.
In averting the shutdown he essentially resigned, but at that point he was a broken man who was tired of selling his soul to appease the far right. Lets not act like he didn’t do everything’s short of shutting down the government to avoid this.
He’s been trying to get that speaker spot for years, you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Speaker is usually end game. For politicians who want it, that’s where their career peaks. Party leaders pretty much always end up unpopular. That’s why Paul Ryan was reluctant to do it and now his career is tanked. John Boehner is a full time lobbyist now. Pelosi will probably never leave Congress.
But no one has ever wanted to be speaker more than Kev. He’s not really smart or popular enough to get any higher anyway. The fact that such a dim witted sad sack got as high as he did is a miracle by itself.
I want to keep this as civil as possible. The world would be a better place without Republicans in it.
Delete conservatism and religion.
If you deleted religion would conservatism even survive a few generations?
Have you like looked at Japan or any communist country. Japan is 62% non-religious and is highly social conservative. Czechia is the least religious country in the world but they also obviously have a conservative politics.
It’s not that they’re not religious. They just don’t pick only one. As they say, “Born Shinto, married Christian, die Buddhist”
I love that quote, that’s so accurate. Especially with how many funerary schools are primarily Buddhist in Japan along with the vast majority of their burials. It’s actually uncommon for a mortician to prepare a body for a wake.
I had a Japanese boss tell me the state religion of Japan is “being Japanese”. That struck me as being so very true during my few months living there.
It’s a very regimented culture, isn’t it? Everything guided by ceremony and tradition, you’d think half of it was religious in nature.
Could be remnants from past religious values and teachings?
This says Japan has at least 70% of the population following religious practices in 2019?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/237609/religions-in-japan/
The majority of Japanese adhere to Shintoism, a traditional Japanese religion focusing on rituals and worship at shrines. In 2019, around 70 percent of the total population of Japan participated in Shinto practices.
There are always going to be people who like how things are or who preferred how things were, regardless of whether it was actually good for them or not.
That isn’t what political conservatism means though. Political conservatism is running the government into the ground infavor of private business interests while also villifying minority groups and idolizing authoritarian.
It has nothing to do with being conservative about changes.
Well, it’s supposed to be about conservative changes.
But instead it’s exactly as you described.
You are describing Neoconservative and/or Trumptard “conservative” policies. In the political textbooks, Conservative does mean the ones who want to preserve traditional ways of doing things, conserving money by reducing wasteful spending, conserving our military forces by not engaging in wars of foreign intervention.
That type of textbook Conservative is a lot harder to find in government since 9/11 happened and turned America into the shit version that we have now.
But it’s religion that brainwashes a huge portion of them to blindly follow and obey even when it hurts them or isn’t good for them.
Take away religion and the conservative base vanishes. They wouldn’t be able to win elections.
Religion no longer blocks the way to progress, things improve, people don’t get sucked into the conservative rabbit hole the same way.
Slowly but surely, at least what we consider conservatives today and in the past would cease to exist.
I wouldn’t be so confident that the removal of religion would be such a panacea for humanity. These social structures developed for a reason and things would likely appear to fill the vacuum. People already raise up companies and cults of personality in place of formal religion as it is. Even just being a republican party supporter has a certain degree of cult like devotion.
If your view of a conservative is a person of deep religious conviction, then sure, I guess.
In other words, humans love to simp.
Humans collectively have a lot of pent up craziness, angst, and existential terror… and it’s got to go somewhere.
I don’t think all conservatives are deeply religious, but it’s the religious that prop them up. So much hate and death in human existence stems from religion. That hate breeds hate even outside the religious, quickening its spread.
If it was gone, humanity would finally be able to begin the healing process.
I have no qualms about the dissolution of religious structures, but I feel like you’re underestimating humanity’s ability to self-sabotage when envisioning such a rose tinted portrayal of a post-religion society.
It would be a serious blow at minimum
Without all authoritarians in it, in fact.
They can take a long walk off a short pier for all I care
Remember this is the same McQarthy who chose to kiss orange ass at every opportunity he got. He was given so many opportunities to do the right thing but deliberately chose to be an asshole and pack all the committees with Nazi caucus members. He did everything he could to push extreme right wing lunacy and kill bipartisanship.
Now the same Qevin turns around and makes a pikachu face why Dems didn’t save his sorry ass.
K-Mac was also the dude that said on the floor that Putin pays Trump and Dana Rohrabacher. Yet he continued to side with them, after Dead Eyes Paul Ryan told him to keep that info in the family.
Kevvy pooped in his bed and was surprised he woke up covered in shit.
K-Mac sounds a budget version of a Big Mac except somehow you have convinced yourself you a have a 50 % chance of getting dysentery and the other 50% is that it won’t give you dysentery. Yet every time, you have a K-Mac…you get dysentery.
Mmmmmmm…K-Mart burgers…
I like those odds, does it have a pickle?
It’s up to you, you can all the pickles or no pickles. Can’t guarantee how fresh those pickles are.
We gonna get a carousel like the Conservatives in the UK last year? Will our next speaker outlast a cabbage?
On this side of the pond we use Scaramuccis
Conversion ratio, for reference: One Truss is equal to exactly four Mooches.
Americans will use anything but the metric system.
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No, because those things are so full of salt and other preservatives they’ll last forever.
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I’m uh… not sure?
Yes
Some US politicians certainly do look like leathery old salted meat.
I get that Dems are enjoying seeing the Republicans seem to fail, but I get the feeling this is going to turn out horribly. We’re going to see Speaker Jim Jordan or Matt Gaetz and the country will suffer for it.
Highly unlikely. Freedom caucus will not get the speakership. GOP hates them more than McCarthy. Gaetz didn’t think this through. The only option is more of the same or somebody more friendly to the Democrats.
The freedom caucus can block any nominee they want, and Republicans have made it clear they won’t accept someone that wants to work with Dems. It took 15 votes to get McCarthy as it was. I am not hopeful.
The freedom caucus can only block nominees if no compromise is made with dems. The gop can give concessions and have a speaker tomarrow if they like.
If they dont, then the house will have no speaker, and the GOP will get no bills passed of any type. The budget will be CRs until the election because none of the middle of the road GOP wants the shutdown fallout.
Then, hopefully all these clowns get walloped.
No bills can be brought without a speaker, so no CRs until a speaker is elected. The temp running the show has 3 powers: He can call a recess, adjourn, and call a vote for the speaker. That’s it. No other legislation passes unless they can get off their asses and put in a speaker.
Can’t the pro tempore bring bills before the house?
He can only run the voting for a new speaker
Can the govt shutdown proceed without a speaker?
Oh yeah. 40 some days left.
Conservatives can’t govern.
Which would also imply they can’t bring an impeachment vote in front of the House.
I’ve been saying for a while now that the best way to fight fascism (before it gets to its terrible end state) is to push them to fight each other in purity contests. This is a good example.
If we oversimplify what happened, it’s hilarious that they are mad at him for voting with Dems, so they got rid of him by voting with Dems.
And one of the more likely scenarios is the non-freedom caucus GOP cuts a deal with Democrats to neuter freedom caucus’ power.
Which is what McCarthy should have done a while ago. “I won’t do this stupid impeachment inquiry as long as you back me when they try to oust me”
You’re assuming Kevin is smart.
I think he’s just terrified of Trumps base.
He is(edit: terrified, not smart). For sure. But the way you strip their power is by ripping the band-aid off and stop kowtowing to their non sense. That’s what actual leadership is. Saying “we need to do it this way because it’s the right thing to do” even if it’s hard or unpopular.
The Republican moderates, if any actually still exist, could take back control of their party if they really had the balls to. It would require them to call a spade a spade, and then start working with Democrats.
Only cuz abstain is same as a no vote tho, really.
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I mean they just showed they have the power to remove the speaker, the power goes through them
They wouldn’t have had the power without Dem votes, ironically.
Well, we have Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise as the choices. Both worse than McCarthy.
They gotta get the votes. Idk if u saw how Kevin struggled but he used everything he had politically to get that gavel in the first place… and even some he didn’t have. When he caved then that was when the idiots like gaetz knew he had kev by the balls…which is why we are here now.
I can’t shake the bad feeling that the timing is going to be a real problem once shutdown time rolls around here in less than 40-ish days. What if we don’t even have a fucking speaker at all by then??
There is the possibility that Dems coordinate a vote with the not-Freedom Caucus GOP to elect the least disagreeable candidate, though…
If that was a possibility, I would think they would have done so in one of the 14 ballots before Republicans settled on McCarthy.
Look what they did to Liz Chaney. They would expel a Republican that did that from the party, and then they would Primary them out of office.
The next speaker will be incentivized to neuter the freedom clowns after what happened to McCarthy.
So I think there is a better chance they try to strike a deal with the Dems. Honestly it’s just mins blowing to me that the Republicans see this absolute fiasco as a better outcome than getting 10-15 Dems on board. It wouldnt take much work.
Any Republican that works with Dems any more than McCarthy is likely to be primaried. They have brainwashed their base to think Dems = Evil, and working with them is worse than a deal with the Devil.
Republicans are stuck in this weird place where they do not have enough votes for a majority without the freedom caucus, but the base will replace them if they work with Dems. As such, they placate the freedom caucus.
They can’t do it like wounded gazelles. They have to act together or in larger numbers. Don’t get picked off one by one.
I know they are cowards, but jeez, I guess they can’t trust each other enough to do it together.
I’m not a betting man, but if i was, this will be the outcome.
Man, the GOP have really let themselves be gutted by their most extreme members.
Yeah man. I’m running out of popcorn here.
Call me old and cynical but I see the inevitable conclusion of this game that the conservatives have been playing being a civil war. This is what they are pysnigb for, this is what they want.
The reason they want this is because, well, they are extremist Christian terrorists and they’re plain evil. Dunno how else to say it. They don’t want gays to have any rights, they want gays converted or dead. They don’t want trans people to have rights and have a remote shred of happiness, they want them dead. They don’t give a shit about abortion, they want more babies in poor and breken families who are easy to manipulate into voting for them. Hell, they don’t want democracy, they want a theocracy.
They watched the handmaid’s tale and thought they were watching an awesome documentary. It contains all the elements that gets them hard; being able to force their religion upon others, being able to control others, rape others…
Imitgt be having a tinfoil hat on right now but I see these extremists come up with a document that wants to do away with democracy and have an all powerful
presidentdictator, that outlines a plan to prohibit porn and even simply books that talk about transgender issues and jail anyone who produces or possesses such evils…These are not nice people, at this point I think it’s safe enough to say that these are dangerous terrorists
I think the US is in much bigger trouble than most people see
Imitgt be having a tinfoil hat on right now
No thank you. Literally every holocaust survivor was screaming deja vu with Trump, along with all their descendants who got the bed time stories.
For the voters you maybe right. For the leaders, follow the money… It’s as simple as wealth and power.
Keep us “plebs” fighting on stupid shit so we don’t eat the rich. Terrorism recruiting strategy 101. Get people addicted to hate so it can be channeled against the opposition.
At least those are my insights.
Do we actually have to eat the rich? Can we just use them as fertilizer instead?
I mean, I’ll take their cake and share it around to be eaten, lol. Could care less about their bodies.
You sound like Marjorie Taylor Greene lol. Things are nowhere as bad as you are projecting, we are all literally laughing at the Republican party (Republican party included).
If anything, this whole ordeal probably just saved us from going to civil war because it showed the country how dangerous this type of MAGA thinking in just 8 representatives can be.
I’ve seen many rather too prominent R party members talking casually about civil war. If that doesn’t at least make you frown then I think you might be a bit naive. Hitler too was a funny guy until he suddenly burst on the world stage. Trump too was laughed at a year before he was president
Could we please stop calling these agents of destruction “conservative”? They don’t want to conserve anything. “Destructives” would be better.
America’s two parties are Regressives vs Conservatives.
amen
Reactionaries.
*Russian agents
*paid russian assets
Now they’re a complete set of failures!
What happened to Eric Cantor?
According to Wikipedia, he lost the primary in his own district when he was house majority speaker. First in history to do so.
What happened to Paul Ryan?
Saw the first two years of Trump and bowed out before it went full insanity. He may be playing it smart and letting the whole Trump thing go away before running for president. We’ll see.
Paul Ryan is absolutely going to try to step back into politics once Trump is gone, and act like he’s a return to sanity.
He isn’t.
I’m not forgiving Paul Ryan for torpedoing the Hearing Protection Act at the one time in recent decades it had a chance to pass.
What would that bill do?
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The Speaker position was but a mere stepping stone to their true calling of being wealthy k street lobbyists.
Young gun, gray hair.
As it stands the GOP seem unlikely to be able to elect a speaker. Speakers provide a list of people to become temporary speaker in case of emergency, so upon McCarthy’s ouster rep. Patrick McHenry became speaker pro tempore. Speakers pro tempore have only the authority to gavel sessions in and out, and to conduct votes for a new speaker.
Basically McHenry’s first act with the gavel was to order Pelosi out of her offices. What an asshole
Right?
I’m no fan of hers, but jeez McHenry… let’s see, what’s more important: try to get the House back on track, or engage in petty, vindictive partisan bullshit?
I’m glad the House passed that CR, though I’m not sure they’ll have a new speaker before it runs out.
Pretty, vindictive, partisan power-grabbing shit. The interim speaker shouldn’t even be able to do that
Now wait a minute…I thought they liked McCarthy SOOOO much, they were willing to vote for him as speaker 15 times in a row just this year?
The first 14 times McCarthy failed to get voted in. They disliked McCarthy so much it took 15 votes to get them in the first place.
Correct. And instead of fixing the issue…here we are. But hey, they got a beefier salary out of it.
What was McCarthy’s plan?
He spent the last week daring Gaetz to file the motion, and once it happened, that was it? No political maneuvering or deal making? Just let the chips fall where they may?
I mean, its not actually clear this leads to a good outcome for Gaetz yet. I suspect it doesn’t.
I can’t wait for a historic 16 rounds of voting to get a speaker this time.
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Probably because he went back on the deal that he made with Biden after the Debt Ceiling thing. If he had stuck to that, he might have gotten enough Democrats to vote “present” to have survived the vote.
But why throw any support to a person you can’t trust?
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Yeah I think this.
You can’t even make deals w/ him anymore because he won’t abide by them. On top of that, he has to bend to the most fringe aspects of his party to stay in power so it appers that he’s reaching the same conclusions (impeachment, reneging on his words, etc) as a more conservative speaker, w/ just the semblance of moderate leanings
This is a republican problem. They renegged the budget, they caused the shutdown, they ousted their speaker when he swerved to avoid it. The republicans have all the votes they need to not fuck over the constituents. All they have to do is their job. Dems know they won’t do it. Every second republicans are burning political capital.
Yep, and they’re wasting the time they have with a majority in the House.
The Freedom Caucus is acting like a crew of undercover Democrats infiltrated the Republicans Party to sabotage it by acting like caricatures. Like, back in 2010ish, some people that were fed up with Republicans being so rigid would complain by exaggeraing their politics, and these Freedom Caucus dipshits said, “Let’s do that, but for for real.” However, they’re in effect practically helping the Democrats. This is crazy 😮
I think they decided that he is such an incredible piece of shit who stabs them in the back and reneges on every deal (see: his attempt on Sunday to blame the budget fiasco on them, his renging on the debt ceiling deal, his stance on J6…) that he wasn’t worth saving. Either some R’s join with D’s to make a coalition (as just called for by H. Jeffries) or the R’s have to get their shit together, painfully, for the budget. The last CR clearly showed the issue with the current R party composition. There is a wing that essentially acts as a third party spoiler. The CR was very much a win for the Dems (except for Ukraine funding, although I am of the personal opinion that a clean CR is the correct way to do a CR, fund other stuff separately).
I keep seeing ‘CR’ in comments, what does it stand for?
Continuing Resolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_resolution
Because he can’t be trusted to share power.
McCarthy had two choices:
Do what the freedom caucus wanted and never see anything pass the Senate.
Make a deal across the isle and get some work done.He dragged his feet, hymed and hawed and eventually caved in on option 2 as it’s the only reasonable one.
Then he proceeded to attack those who he just made a deal with the very next day.
He could have instead said that real leadership is finding compromises that move things forward but he’s lose MAGA voters who see the government burning down as an upside.
So he sold his soul, again, to those crazies and yet again proved he isn’t reliable.
Does this benefit the House as an organization?
Absolutely not. But the clown show that will follow in the next few weeks will make the GOP look horrible at least.
And maybe, just maybe, some of the more sensible parts of the GOP will come to the Democrats with a power sharing deal that will completely neuter the freedom caucus once they see how hopeless their situation is.
What is the better alternative? What if there isnt a speaker by the time the stop gap measure expires?
I have this same question too, and - with all due respect - it would be nice if someone had a response other than blaming Republicans and just leaving it at that (I mean, it’s absolutely their fault, but it doesn’t answer the real question).
It would be nice to know Dems have a plan after taking this action. I’m fairly certain they do, but best I can do now is guess how it might play out. Not reassuring…
McCarthy basically spat in the Democrats face and tried to blame them for the shutdown. So Dems told him to eat a bag of dicks.
Right, it was a quintessential FAFO situation there.
However, what now? We’re still staring down a shutdown very soon. I’d just like to know Hakeem’s got a plan, y’know?
Most Republicans don’t want a shutdown, they know it’s political suicide. McCarthy made a deal with Democrats to avoid a shutdown because most Republicans (privately) pressured him to do so.
Most Republicans don’t want a shutdown in November, either. They are the majority party so they have the power to choose a speaker who will avert one. So Democrats don’t necessarily need a plan, the process may remain completely outside their control.
If Republicans end up needing Democratic votes to elect a Republican Speaker, then they will need to offer something to Democrats, because by itself electing a Republican Speaker is not in the interest of Democrats.
All of the above is already crystal-clear to both parties. The ball is in the GOP majority’s court, they get to choose the next move: work together with the Freedom Caucus or work together with Democrats.
I mean if they play their cards right we might have speaker Jeffries for, like, a day.
I mean if they play their cards right we might have speaker Jeffries for, like, a day.
