House Speaker election/circus/all ages carnival - ongoing coverage

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JEDI

Lifer
Sep 25, 2001
29,391
2,738
126
Agreed probably some back room deal was fleshed out which is fine it’s the way our system is designed, where the new guy gets x, y and z done and done exactly how it was agreed upon. No way this dude literally came out of nowhere and had 100% of Republicans say “Yup this guy is perfect”.
I feel the moderate side got something and the looney side got something.
What did Johnson promise to the Looneys on top of what McCarthy already promised?
 

manly

Lifer
Jan 25, 2000
13,262
4,039
136
Then why did Repubs vote McCarthy out?
I'm not saying Dems would prefer McCarthy around, but he was slightly left of his party center. Also, he did twice choose to put the country first before MAGA bullshit, with must-pass legislation this year. That pretty much disqualifies him to lead the GQP. Most of us are pretty sure that Gym Jordan or the newly chosen Speaker would have chosen the federal shutdown option instead. It is pretty likely that Johnson will choose that door in a month, because what else is the GOP gonna do besides pass some BS slash-and-burn bill that never reaches Biden's desk?

To answer your question, 'pugs wanted McCarthy out because he wasn't sufficiently loyal to the extreme right.

I think the evidence suggests that yes there is some daylight between McCarthy as Speaker and the newly anointed assclown.

This new speaker, it seems the Republicans settled on a "middle of the road" kind of guy conservatively speaking. So if he's the proverbial not too much of something and not too much of the other compromise package deal the nutjobs and moderates finally settled on, it really does expose to the world how that party of theirs has gone off the rails and into a black hole where nothing can come back out. What comes out the other side though, well, we really should be prepared for something much more worse keeping in mind the self-destructive path the party has been on.
You and I have rather different definitions of middle of the road. :p
 

eelw

Lifer
Dec 4, 1999
10,334
5,487
136
i Like Lincoln Project's latest tweet:
Johnson, speaker in name only :p

I dont see him being successful in controlling the wacko Repubs any more than McCarthy
He’s less likely to cave to the Dems when faced with a default. Johnson will drive the car over the cliff
 
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HomerJS

Lifer
Feb 6, 2002
39,293
32,792
136
I'd like to agree with you but frankly I don't see the US Supreme Court ever issuing any decision actually reducing gerrymandering any time in the foreseeable future. The Supreme Court issued one of it's worst, most anti-democratic decisions ever in 2019 (Rucho v. Common Cause) were they ruled that no federal court may ever consider any lawsuit contesting partisan gerrymandering, holding that issue is up to state legislatures and state governments.

Ironically this horrible decision actually inadvertently opened the door to challenging gerrymandering in the state courts where in places like Wisconsin the absurd partisanship lockhold on state government is finally starting to weaken there. Ever there (and Wisconsin is a traditionally liberal state that actually had Socialist governors in the early 1900s) it is a long slog and so far has required multiple landslide votes in favor of Dems with the GOP still retaining substantial oversize control of the state legislature and courts. It will be a decades long process of active voter participation to bring the scales even remotely close to balanced. On the federal level it will require several decades of Dem control of the presidency and senate to replace the outright "conservative" wackjobs Trump (especially) appointed.
Does that include violations of the 65 VRA? That’s how Ala Republicans got slapped down
 

HomerJS

Lifer
Feb 6, 2002
39,293
32,792
136
It never ceases to amaze me how the political media has infantilized Republicans. The basic idea seems to be that since we know Republicans are insane morons it’s the job of the Democrats to protect the country from these idiots.
Republicans fuck things up and people expect Democrats to run to the rescue. Clinton left Bush a surplus. Bush then cuts taxes for the rich blows up the deficit and Obama has to fix it. We went into financial crisis and was also left to Obama to fix. He didn’t fix things fast enough and Dems were voted out of Congress. Ingrates.
 
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Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
40,866
10,221
136
I sincerely hope he's just marked as the loon he is.
Since the desperate, chaotic, disorganized Republicans seemingly dug him up overnight (perhaps literally, i.e. in a day or less) maybe someone will dig up some serious dirt on this guy. That wouldn't not surprise me a bit. Similar things have happened to lots of "chosen" people.
 

cytg111

Lifer
Mar 17, 2008
26,156
15,577
136
amazing what cucks every one of these GOPers are. Trump tweets a thing, they all drop their pants and wait for servicing.

Are they all being threatened, daily, by his fucking MAGAT army? I know half of them are completely uneducated, ignorant fucking pieces of shit, but even a lot of them should be able to just say this shit out loud about the prison of Trump world that they have constructed for themselves.
Even knowing what kind of inhuman garbage these people are, I still can't wrap my brain around their complete lack of shame in publicly immolating themselves like this, every fucking day, simply to serve the random narcissistic whims of an 80 year-old dottaring pedophile like Donald Fucking Trump. Seriously--why don't they make the threats from MAGA world more public? Are these idiots so poisoned by tying their self-esteem and identify to the amount of Twitter likes that they get from Trump-inspired Russian bots that they are this willing to shit all over themselves in front of other adults?

I still don't get half of this.
Well if I was a Harlan Crow kind of guy, I’d be sure to have the dirt on the candidate BEFORE I sponsor his run for Congress or whatever. Any other way would just be bad business.
 

gothuevos

Diamond Member
Jul 28, 2010
3,439
2,397
136
Dems keep enabling MAGA - started in the 2022 primaries when Dem aligned groups would put out ad buys to promote the MAGA GOP candidates hoping they would get thru the primary round but fail in the general election. This mostly worked, as did joining the vote to boot McCarthy. Yet this has netted them a MAGA Speaker of the House. They are banking that this will hurt them in the general election.

Maybe it will, maybe it won't. It's a gamble. All they're doing is just filtering more and more extreme MAGA types into elected positions. What's the long term strategy? Do they think this will work indefinitely? One day they're going to wake up and find that the entire GOP has been replaced by hard right MAGA types - yeah yeah, I know, no such thing as a moderate conservative anymore, but the Dems are making sure that they too are fueling this change as rapidly as possible.

So what happens when that day comes and they do secure actual control of Congress and/or the presidency?
 

GodisanAtheist

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2006
8,321
9,695
136
After reading Johnson's bio, there is no way he doesn't realize that he is being offered up as the "sacrificial lamb" here.

Basically forward some very unpopular parts of the conservative agenda and then act as a lightning rod for the inevitable public backlash, then get kicked to the curb by republicans. Ideally this is all so the moderates can do the whole "see we tried" schtick and then get a potential compromise candidate in there (working with dems or not).
 
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fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
87,935
55,288
136
Dems keep enabling MAGA - started in the 2022 primaries when Dem aligned groups would put out ad buys to promote the MAGA GOP candidates hoping they would get thru the primary round but fail in the general election. This mostly worked, as did joining the vote to boot McCarthy. Yet this has netted them a MAGA Speaker of the House. They are banking that this will hurt them in the general election.

Maybe it will, maybe it won't. It's a gamble. All they're doing is just filtering more and more extreme MAGA types into elected positions. What's the long term strategy? Do they think this will work indefinitely? One day they're going to wake up and find that the entire GOP has been replaced by hard right MAGA types - yeah yeah, I know, no such thing as a moderate conservative anymore, but the Dems are making sure that they too are fueling this change as rapidly as possible.

So what happens when that day comes and they do secure actual control of Congress and/or the presidency?
In case you didn't notice all the 'moderate' Republicans went along with this so what's the difference? If they were actually moderate five of them could have come to a deal with Democrats and installed their preferred speaker candidate but they chose not to.

So yeah, smart move by the Democrats and they should keep doing it to the maximum extent possible as it ends up with fewer Republicans in Congress/the presidency.
 

trenchfoot

Lifer
Aug 5, 2000
15,780
8,356
136
I do believe the term “blow” was used as a generally widely known alternative for fellatio. 🙂


Whatever the act is called, methinks a thorough preparatory soaking of Roundup® on the afflicted target zone will have to be done. I hear tell a follow-up discretionary irrigative treatment of hydrogen peroxide or pool grade chlorine is recommended but not required.
 
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UNCjigga

Lifer
Dec 12, 2000
25,566
10,243
136
Dems keep enabling MAGA - started in the 2022 primaries when Dem aligned groups would put out ad buys to promote the MAGA GOP candidates hoping they would get thru the primary round but fail in the general election. This mostly worked, as did joining the vote to boot McCarthy. Yet this has netted them a MAGA Speaker of the House. They are banking that this will hurt them in the general election.

Maybe it will, maybe it won't. It's a gamble. All they're doing is just filtering more and more extreme MAGA types into elected positions. What's the long term strategy? Do they think this will work indefinitely? One day they're going to wake up and find that the entire GOP has been replaced by hard right MAGA types - yeah yeah, I know, no such thing as a moderate conservative anymore, but the Dems are making sure that they too are fueling this change as rapidly as possible.

So what happens when that day comes and they do secure actual control of Congress and/or the presidency?
I do think there’s an element in the Dem party apparatus that believes once the GOP goes permanently full-on MAGA, the Dems can pick off all their corporate and centrist donors and become the “acceptable alternative”. I do think there’s a risk that once MAGA is in power, they won’t ever give it up as “easily” as Trump did in 2021. And corporate donors care more about serving their interests than any kind of public boycott over candidate funding. They will serve whomever is in power and can grease their wheels.
 

uclaLabrat

Diamond Member
Aug 2, 2007
5,632
3,045
136
I do think there’s an element in the Dem party apparatus that believes once the GOP goes permanently full-on MAGA, the Dems can pick off all their corporate and centrist donors and become the “acceptable alternative”. I do think there’s a risk that once MAGA is in power, they won’t ever give it up as “easily” as Trump did in 2021. And corporate donors care more about serving their interests than any kind of public boycott over candidate funding. They will serve whomever is in power and can grease their wheels.
Im sure the corporate dems/neoliberals think that, but that is wholly incompatible with the need to court pro-union, pro-mainstreet americans that have been fleeced by corporate america. The neoliberals want corporate cash while the AOCs and bernies of the world want to raise corporate taxes and taxes on the elite.

Dems need to figure out who they are, and my perspective is more of the pelosi-wing corporate dems is the wrong way to go.
 

manly

Lifer
Jan 25, 2000
13,262
4,039
136
LOL Pelosi is a corporatist now?
Compared to the GOP, Dems are somewhat of a big tent party. There is no uniform "who we are" although the elected pols generally get along and understand we're mostly rowing in the same direction outside of a couple Senate DINOs.

Mike Johnson is nothing but a MAGA extremist, as much reporting has revealed. I can't speculate on the GOP's strategy in choosing him except there's unlikely they have a coherent strategy. At "best" their policy goal is to radically shrink the size of the federal government without raising a penny in taxes, and Johnson aligns with that 110%.

 

APU_Fusion

Golden Member
Dec 16, 2013
1,695
2,494
136
Nice rebuttal.
The only one you deserve. WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE IN A LAKE OF MAGAT FIRE AND IT IS DEMOCRATS FAULT. IF ONLY THEY APPEASED THE MAJORITY LIAR WHO LIED TO THEM WE WOULD BE SAVED. BUT NO, THE TAN SUIT BABY EATING CAUCUS HAD TO STICK TO THEIR GODLESS COMMUNIST, SOCIALIST, FACIST, ATHEIST PARTY AND NOW THEY ARE DIRECLTY RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL MAGAT BEHAVIOR.

DEATTTTTHHHHHHH

KHANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN