US Politics November 2017

Gloria Allred is also famous, which is one of Two Scoops' main gages for individual value.

he still talks about Rosie O'Donnell iirc

Rosie attended his wedding in the early 90s!

I read that last quote from caek as "seeing Alfred, and not at least thinking about a tweet."

"The Eagles Were One Of The Greatest Bands Ever! "Don't Stop Believing" in #MAGA"

I have now read Mr. Moore’s statement and listened to his radio interview in which he denies the charges. I did not find his denials to be convincing and believe that he should withdraw from the Senate race in Alabama.

— Sen. Susan Collins (@SenatorCollins) November 13, 2017

I inspire Trump tweets, see.

hope this is the thing that shreds the GOP as a party but that's probably hoping for too much

some real brain salad surgery here:

One idea now being discussed under this scenario, brought up by two different White House officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, would be for Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama to block Mr. Moore if he wins, and then immediately appoint Attorney General Jeff Sessions to what had been his seat when it becomes vacant again. Mr. Sessions remains highly popular among Alabama Republicans, but his relationship with President Trump has waned since he recused himself from the investigation of the role that Russia played in last year’s campaign.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/11/13/you-want-to-see-how-to-stand-up-to-trump/

everything's coming up KASICH

Question I haven't seen answered anywhere: If Moore wins and the Senate refuses to seat him, what happens? Does the Senate just operate with 99 until the next election? I can't imagine the answer is that the Senate or the Governor would have the authority to just appoint any random person to the seat in his place or immediately hold another election, because if that was true then they'd DEFINITELY already be planning on doing that.

We've seen this playbook before: last October after the Access Hollywood tape. If Jones doesn't win, then Roy Moore will go to the Senate.

everything's coming up KASICH

Given how much my educator-heavy OH family despises Kasich, this is somewhat scary, but at least it's scary in the sense of "I don't think this man will use Twitter to get us into a nuclear war".

obviously I hope Jones wins but the idea of Moore showing up to Capitol Hill and being a gigantic ass cancer to the entire GOP is hardly the worst consolation prize.

right up until he starts a wave of repellent nightmare senators/reps in 2018

the nice thing about the national level is that the ability to fuck up the education system is broader in reach but much shallower in scope, as school privatization jerk DeVos has been figuring out

and the Senate refuses to seat him

this isn't going to happen

idk, as much as deep cynicism has been richly rewarded the past year and a half, i do think Alabama is its own fairly special hell.

the GOP folded like a wet napkin for Trump, they'll do their scolding and folding routine if Moore wins too.

US Politics November 2017

it seems like the only reason they wouldn't refuse to seat him though is they lack any alternative. I'm sure McConnell and co. would rather have anyone in America with an R next to their name occupy that seat than Moore at this point.

Every state is its own special hell in one way or another; it's built directly into the way the country works.

I mean, you'd think that Kansas would be enough of a cautionary tale to people about where all of this is heading but people generally don't give a rat's ass until it happens to them, and even then they only blame the actual people who did it to them 50% of the time.

What's up guys Lib Destroyer 67 here, today I'm gonna fuck up this snoopy sno cone machine for reasons unclear even to me

— vineyille (@vineyille) November 13, 2017

I rarely read the old fraud anymore, but George Will otm.

Moore campaigns almost entirely about social issues — National Football League protests, the transgender menace — and the wild liberalism of Jones, a law-and-order prosecutor and deer and turkey hunter who says he has “a safe full of guns.” Jones’s grandfathers were members of the mineworkers’ and steelworkers’ unions: Birmingham, surrounded by coal and iron ore, was Pittsburgh — a steel city — almost before Pittsburgh was. Jones hopes economic and health-care issues matter more.

Evangelical Christians who embrace Moore are serving the public good by making ridiculous their pose as uniquely moral Americans, and by revealing their leaders to be especially grotesque specimens of the vanity — vanity about virtue — that is curdling politics. Another public benefit from the Moore spectacle is the embarrassment of national Republicans.

tbh some of the states with the worst education are now at the point where they don't understand the nature of what's happening to them because the school never taught them how government works

The post I linked spells out that they *have* to seat him. They're only option is to have a 2/3rds majority vote in the Senate to expel him *after* he has been seated. Good luck with that.

xxp

lol Alfred was just about to link to that Will piece

*I* was just about to link to it, I meant

republicans in the house still fondly refer to their method of maintaining speaker control as "the Hastert rule" so I don't think they have any qualms about anything, really

haha yes I was trying to find some previous post I made about how the GOP is fine with pedos, it was just a month or two ago

"Pedophilia's OK when GOPers do it" = the *real* Hastert rule

but if they voted to expel him, THEN what would happen? that was my original question. I'm assuming there are no good options, otherwise I don't see why this route might not at least be entertained (unless you're assuming Democrats would uniformly vote to not expel Moore as a way to make the GOP eat their own shit).

but if they voted to expel him, THEN what would happen?

Roy Moore shoots every GOP senator.

Roy Moore supporter Brandon Moseley of @ALReporter on CNN just now compared sexual touching of a 14-year old to stealing a lawnmower, stressing it was a misdemeanor pic.twitter.com/UJ1Bf7JehZ

— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) November 13, 2017

the lawnmower gambit

I mean, you don't usually steal a lawnmower with your penis.

At least, not more than once.

If they don't seat him, they have a scapegoat whenever someone accuses them of being misogynists or apologists. They'll point to not seating Moore as a moral pinnacle and continue being horrible in every other way.

dude looks like he is sexually touching a 14yo while being interviewed

xp

if the Senate expels him, doesn't that just mean that AL has to have another election

Alabama, that's not what a lawnmower is for

these guys treat every moral/legal problem they've had like jaywalking, and also think anyone who's not them should get beat up by a cop for jaywalking

"beat up", we should be so lucky

kneeling on a sports field: deport them
pursuing underage children: execute them
pursuing underage children while republican: elect them

if moore wins the senate will seat him. everybody will forget about it in a couple of months

dude looks like he is sexually touching a 14yo while being interviewed

xp

― Οὖτις, Monday, November 13, 2017

hearty LOL

the Senate boasted James Vardaman, "Cotton" Ed Smith, Theodore Bilbo, and Strom Thurmond, often in leadership roles.

The Senate can fuck right off.

Touching the lawnmower over the grass catcher or under the grass catcher.

WaPo breakdown of unlikely scenarios

Senate Republican leaders are making clear they would rather have a Democrat join them in the Senate than Roy Moore, who has been accused of initiating sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl when he was in his 30s. But there's not much they can do about it before the election. Even if the Alabama Republican Senate candidate were to suddenly heed their calls to drop out, his name would still appear on the ballot in December's special election.

After the election, though, is a different story. If nearly half of Senate Republicans join with all 48 Democratic senators, they could kick out the newest Alabama senator shortly after he takes a seat. The Constitution lets the Senate censure or even expel its members, but it hasn't successfully happened since the Civil War. Now, in the wake of allegations that Moore dated teenage girls and touched a 14-year-old inappropriately (an allegation he denies), some senators seem to be considering it.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) floated the idea of expelling Moore on NBC's “Meet the Press” on Sunday. When asked about it on the same show, Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) didn't rule it out: “We'll have to — we'll wrestle with that if and when the time comes,” he said.

Here's how it would work, as guided by Senate procedural experts Sarah Binder of the Brookings Institution and Josh Chafetz of Cornell Law.

1. Decide whether they can stop him from taking the seat: The Senate has constitutional power to decide whether to seat someone the voters elect, and that only requires a majority vote, Chafetz said. But the rules around this are pretty strict and probably don't follow this case: The Senate can only prevent someone from taking their seat if they either weren't duly elected or don't have the constitutional qualifications to be a senator (like being under the age of 30 or not a U.S. citizen). "They can’t just exclude someone because they don’t like him or even because he has committed a crime; it has to be because he’s not actually entitled to a seat," Chafetz said.

2. The Senate's Ethics Committee moves to conduct an investigation into Moore: Just like the Senate is running its own investigation into Russia meddling, senators almost certainly wouldn't vote to expel one of their own based on one news report, no matter how carefully reported it is. (As far as litigating decades-old sexual allegations in the media goes, this story is as close to proof as reporters can get.) They'd launch their own investigation, likely calling in witnesses and perhaps even talking to Moore himself.

3. If the committee finds grounds to expel Moore, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) decides to bring up the question of expulsion for a vote before the full Senate. He hasn't commented publicly on whether he's even considering this. But on Monday, he did say he believes Moore's accusers, and he said Moore should leave the race.

4. Two-thirds of the Senate votes to expel him: That means all 48 senators who caucus with the Democrats, plus 19 Senate Republicans.

This last step in particular is an extraordinarily high bar to clear; getting a two-thirds majority in the Senate is one of the hardest things to do in politics. The requirement in the Senate to expel a senator is the same required to override a veto or change the Constitution. The last time the Senate had this much agreement on a controversial topic was when it sent new Russia sanctions to President Trump's desk.

Expelling a senator is also extraordinarily rare. Binder said the last senator expelled by the Senate was in 1862, when the Senate voted to expel more than two dozen members on the grounds of supporting the Confederacy during the Civil War.

A century later, the Senate twice got close to kicking out senators only to see them step down. Moore's defiance to establishment Washington throughout this entire campaign suggests that's not something he'd consider.

There's another roadblock to getting rid of Moore. The Senate has a long-standing, unwritten rule that they don't kick out someone for conduct known to the voters at the time that senator was elected, Chafetz said.

The thinking behind that is to avoid a slippery slope where the Senate is overriding the will of the voters.

For now, this is mostly a theoretical debate. It's possible that Democrat Doug Jones beats Moore in the election next month. Before the allegations, Jones was already within a six-point margin, according to a RealClearPolitics average of polls. Afterward, some polls show him even.

But if Moore does pull out a win, the Senate could seriously consider doing something it hasn't done in more than a century: unseat one of their own.

that would turn into such a clusterfuck for the GOP, i can't even imagine the reaction from the Bannon wing of the party.

Does the dude [nb: McConnell] even have smarts?

I doubt you'd be impressed by his smarts as they are ordinarily measured, but political smarts are a fairly specialized branch, in the same way that surgeons may be among the bottom of their class academically, but still be excellent surgeons. McConnell has a very narrowly and specialized knowledge base that applies directly to his work, within which he is eminent, but the moment you move outside that framework I think there'd be a drastic drop off.