After yet another speaker nominee failed to get 217 votes on the House floor Tuesday, some House Republicans are eyeing a new way out of their self-induced dysfunction.
Frist!
Darn that discobot! I guess I have to settle for being second. Just like the Mayor of Mar-a-Lago.
House Democrats, gazing upon the dysfunction from a distance, have so far stayed in lockstep.
Gazing from a distance? Hell, they’ve brought marshmallows to toast.
Pelosi’s “learning how to count” quote is just epic. Nonna is very disappointed in you boys.
Quick! More gauze and tape!
Frankly, from a non-partisan continuity-of-government perspective, it seems insane that there are things the Speaker can do that no automatically-designated successor cannot.
Is there anything the VP can do as President of the Senate that President pro tem cannot, aside from cast tiebreaking votes?
Like many here, I’m sure, I was not super thrilled to lose our House majority, but losing less seats than predicted by almost everyone sure feels a lot better today than it did at the time. We’ll see if I have reason to remain chirpy in the next few days.
When the position was created, I don’t think anyone was envisioning a dysfunctional House, totally unable to elect a new Speaker.
About Patrick McHenry, he voted to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. That is he is not an election denier/insurrectionist.
However, I do not know where he stands on aid to Ukraine, if he would bring a bill to the floor as any bill brought to the floor would pass.
Been a rare thing-- when sitting House reps did something so cravenly stupid, for a long enough time, for voters to stand-up and take notice.
Another week of this-- might just leave an impression.
it just shows that Republicans can’t unify and that’s a shame because the American people need us right now.”
Hate to break it to Nicole but the American people have never needed Rethuglkilans.
I can scarcely even figure out what word you’re brutalizing at this point. My relatives sound silly when they talk about Demonrats, too.
I repeat:
"It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham."
– Fielding Melish
On Tin Jordan slithers away.
The problem is the plain language of the Constution, which requires the House “chuse” its speaker and Kevin McCarthy chose McHenry.
Republicans want to change the rules, or break the rules as Josh Marshall says, when the rules are incovenient, even though they have been followed for 236 years now.
Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) put it: “Absolutely, 100 percent against it,” he said emphatically, adding that they should not be “altering powers for a constitutionally vested office for convenience.”
This exactly. It is extremely dangerous to change stuff like this. Remember how damaging it was that TRUMP was able to rely on “Acting” officials.
When Charles Koch comes to finish off our democracy, it will very likely start with a seemingly innocuous change to longstanding rules, a change that will open an exploit in the system that none of us has perceived but which Koch’s giant army of evil law scholars has spent decades searching for and preparing to weaponize.
I once worked with a reasonably well-known software architect who, in his younger days, would cheat at MMOs by exploiting loopholes in their rules. He said one of the most common sources of exploits was when games allow the player to have a “pet.” You know, like a magic black cat that follows you around and meows but isn’t supposed to have any ability to interfere with the rest of the game. Clever people find the flaws in how that is executed. E.g.: the cat is invincible because it’s supposed to be cosmetic and they don’t want monsters to kill your cute cat, but it also takes up space on the ground and people can’t walk through it, so the cat can be used as indestructible cover in a narrow hallway. You have just broken the game, because you can now “complete” challenges that were designed expressly to keep out people who haven’t met the proper criteria.
All these acting and temporary positions are like pets in games. The GOP, and practically all the money in the world, is dedicated to finding the set of game-breaking exploits they can use to simply flip the switch on democracy in broad daylight.
Give the Speaker Pro Tempore more power, and combine that with the fact that the Speaker doesn’t have to be an elected Rep, and suddenly you can have TRUMP, or Charles Koch’s business manager, in charge of the legislative branch.
We do not have to lower the bar to accommodate the GOP’s diminished capacity to hold each other to their own agreements. It is their fault they can’t clear it. They are not entitled to those powers if they can’t clear the bar. The bar is there precisely to ensure that those powers don’t end up in the hands of an insane group that rejects all forms of social agreement.
Precisely.
@26degreesrising Again it falls to conventions everyone always relied on. No one in 200 odd years imagined they might reach the level of dysfunction of the Republican Party today. If the Speaker was hit by a bus and needed to be replaced, everyone expects the Majority Leader would basically step into the role by acclimation. So the designated successor is only supposed to be in the role for all of 5 minutes to schedule the vote. It’s been inconceivable that the Party in power would be so broken that they couldn’t support their majority leader (or that they could nuke their own Speaker in the first place).
On the other hand, I’m not sure about all the details when the Federalist Party imploded and for a brief moment the Democratic Republicans were the only Party of consequence (who quickly split into 4 factions). Maybe things got a bit dicey there, so maybe someone should have thought of something then. I suppose Newt’s ouster is the closest analogue in recent memory and was a bit of a shitshow until Hastert took the seat (which turned out to be such a rousing success for the GOP).
The main issue is that this isn’t some random dude whose getting kicks for breaking the rules. It’s more like a toll bridge operator and so long as we can’t replace them, the bridge is stuck and no one can cross. If an online troll exploits MMO rules, the consequences are minor outside of the game itself. But the Speaker is required to get any work done at all in the House, so no new laws can be passed and eventually that’s going to have real consequences for everyday Americans and our allies (e.g. Ukraine).
I think it would be reasonable if we could find a way to let the toll bridge down for must-pass bills, even if the regular bills remain in limbo. Obviously, it’s a tendentious issue because it’s so fraught, but the Burn it All Down Caucus also wins if they can freeze all business by buffaloing the Speaker’s race indefinitely. They (think they) are happy with a shutdown and no Ukraine aid, so they lack the incentive to negotiate with the rest of the Representatives and find a compromise candidate. There needs to be some way to take that away from them, in the absence of a viable alternative.
Rethuglickers, is an apt description of the current Republican Party because they’re Thugs and Boot Lickers for Donald Trump. It’s a time saver.