McCarthy Lost Speaker Vote, And Then He Lost Again, And Again, And Again, And Again, And Again, And Again, And Again, And Again, And Again, And Again . . . More Losses Coming On Friday
"The dazed and stunned GOP . . . looked like pre-schoolers taking a dump on the living floor while the extended family visits for the holidays."
Opening Act:
Second on the bill:
Steve Almond came prepared:
What Almond said:
The reason that people change their behavior is because there’s an economic incentive. A couple years ago when you taunted survivors of the Parkland mass shooting, you apologized because advertisers withdrew from your show.
Main Event:
Charlotte Clymer, The Daily Beast, January 5, 2023
It had been a brutal two [three, now] days. . . .
The California Republican looked about as lost as Donald Trump in a public library. . . . When it comes to leadership, Kevin McCarthy has always been a resumé in search of a reason. . . .
Kevin McCarthy doesn’t appear to have any sort of vision beyond his own quest for power. His current and past GOP colleagues certainly seem to think so. . . .
Last month, Matt Gaetz published an op-ed in The Daily Caller claiming: “Every single Republican in Congress knows that Kevin does not actually believe in anything. He has no ideology. Some conservatives are using this fact to convince themselves that he is the right leader for the moment, as McCarthy is so weak he’ll promise anything to anyone.” . . .
Seriously, why does Kevin McCarthy want to be speaker? Has anyone figured that out? Has anyone asked him directly? I don’t think he knows beyond some half-baked effort at his legacy. He has articulated no particular vision for the country. His colleagues don’t seem to trust him . . .
[H]e apparently doesn’t [understand] that the more he offers concessions and grovels to these people, the more he drives them away. They dislike him . . . because he’s weak. And by “weak,” I mean that he’s spiritually weak. What does Kevin McCarthy stand for at the end of the day? What does he believe in? He doesn’t even have the good sense to believe in himself. Who wants to follow a leader like that?
Amanda Marcotte, Salon, January 5, 2023
So if this godawful mess is not personal or ideological, then what is it? Ultimately, it’s not about Kevin McCarthy at all. It’s about the Republican Party’s self-conception in its exciting new fascist iteration . . . Fascism needs to be understood less as an ideological movement and more as a movement devoted to the worship of power for its own sake, and also a dramatic aesthetic of constant warfare and performative purification of an ever-narrower conception of the body politic.
Those are big words, and I apologize, but here’s a simpler way to put it: Fascists are a bunch of trolls who are never satisfied. They must always prove their power by ganging up on someone who’s been cast as an “outsider.” . . . Most of the time, the targets are racial and sexual minorities, liberals or immigrants. But sometimes, that restless need to constantly bully someone manifests in purification rituals, where a once-trusted or even beloved insider is deemed an outsider who must be ritually purged. It’s just Kevin McCarthy’s turn in the proverbial barrel, though he almost certainly hasn’t helped his cause by constantly debasing himself before the hardliners. He’s marked himself as a weenie, and that just makes his tormentors enjoy watching him suffer even more.
The Trump era has, understandably, led to a nonstop and frustrating debate over what exactly “fascism” is. I favor the famous 1995 essay by Italian philosopher Umberto Eco, who argued that fascism is a movement of “rigid discombobulation, a structured confusion,” replete with contradictions and incoherencies, and yet that “emotionally it was firmly fastened to some archetypal foundations.”
In other words, fascism is about vibes more than fleshed-out ideas. Very, very authoritarian vibes. One big reason we can identify Republicans as fascist now is because while their appetite for power knows no end, their willingness to govern — that is, to use power to achieve substantive ends — has diminished to nothing. It’s all vibes and no ideas, beyond an inchoate loathing of anyone they deem too dark-skinned, too queer or too literate to be truly American.
In his “Ur-Fascism” essay, Eco laid out 14 features of fascism . . . [T]he McCarthy debacle illustrates some of Eco’s most important observations: Fascism is deliberately irrational. Indeed, it makes a fetish of irrationality. It’s a “cult of action for action’s sake” that believes thinking before acting “is a form of emasculation.” The fascist believes that “life is permanent warfare” and therefore there must always be an enemy to struggle against. That’s why fascists love conspiracy theories. Their “followers must feel besieged,” and since they have no real oppressors to rail against, they make up imaginary ones.
After Trump’s coup failed and the red wave of the midterms didn’t materialize, Republicans are turning on each other. . . . For the dysfunctional Republicans, however, this anger is being refracted through their increasingly fascist worldview, which is paranoid, irrational and hostile to democracy. That’s why the demands made by the anti-McCarthy faction are incomprehensible and seem to change by the hour.
Noah Berlatsky, Public Notice, January 4, 2023
McCarthy’s failure here is personal. He has spent more than two years kowtowing to Trump and bending over backward to appease MAGA extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and all he got for it (at least so far) was Tuesday’s once-in-a-century public degradation.
But it’s also an indication that the GOP is badly broken. As they’ve become more and more divorced from reality, Republicans have lost interest not just in compromise, but in policy and governing. Members are focused on personal grudges and on posturing as True Conservatives. They don’t really care if the House passes anything, ever. . . .
Thanks to the right wing news bubble, Republicans barely need to make a coherent case to their voters these days. Fox and its clones prefer symbolic conspiracy nonsense like “Build the Wall” or “Stop the Steal” over real solutions to actual problems, since those are often complicated and make for poor television.
Instead, the goal of many in the GOP caucus is to get Fox News hits (or, failing that, Newsmax hits). . . .
Unqualified posturing, foaming, and screaming is a successful GOP primary strategy; passing legislation and behaving in a responsible fashion is not. That’s why McCarthy himself has been assiduously sucking up to Trump even though there is plenty of evidence he privately loathes him.
Brian Karem, Salon, January 5, 2023
Where's the popcorn? It’s the best staged circus in history with clowns, brave and ignorant fools; a high wire, a trampoline and trapeze act, human oddities and despicable acts usually only seen in all the worst parts of the Christian Bible, or a cheap adult bookstore. . . .
It’s hard to take Jordan seriously even when he swears with all of his heart that he’s for real. . . . Jordan’s apparent coup attempt against Kevin McCarthy’s leadership had all the appeal of a badly performed middle-school production of “Macbeth” and was viewed by the GOP as a joke — except for the 20 people in the House apparently crazier than Jordan. . . .
Jordan is the guy who’d sell you a stateroom on the Titanic, real cheap — after the iceberg hit. . . .
After six ballots, no one budged, blinked or changed their mind. . . . [T]he House reconvened at 8 p.m. The only noticeable difference was the ruddy smiles on some faces that indicated they’d spent the last few hours imbibing. . . .
We all know politicians are itinerant whores, but this first week of Republican control of the House looks like a mashup between the television shows “Dallas” and “Hee Haw.” . . .
The dazed and stunned GOP, a far cry from the boogeymen (mostly old white men) they want to be, looked like pre-schoolers taking a dump on the living floor while the extended family visits for the holidays. Of course, some people enjoy that type of thing . . .
You can’t embarrass a group of individuals who are unaware of their own ignorance. Worse yet, they have no shame. . . .
The only issues on their mind are fentanyl and immigration, both of which they either purposely twist or completely misunderstand. Chances are it’s both. . . .
Rep. Kat Cammack nominated McCarthy for the final vote on Wednesday, saying she understood why people didn’t want him as speaker while also praising him for standing up to critics — which he famously has never done. Not to be outdone, Rep. Lauren Boebert nominated Donalds by imitating a coyote baying at the moon while demanding McCarthy give up. . . .
Then there’s McCarthy himself. The insipid, spineless man who once delivered a speech entitled “How the GOP can solve problems in government” has been unable to solve the simplest of matters — getting 218 votes. . . .
The challenge facing the country is acute and Republican members of Congress have shown themselves to be feckless fools with the mental acumen of toddlers, the demeanor of preschoolers, the confidence of a schoolyard bully and the ability of a large rock in a stream.
Encore:
