U.S. Politics January 2023: Kevin McCarthy's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Life

Did he show his syphilis test results?

"inconclusive"

BRECHEEN flips and goes for MCCARTHY

Two flips on this vote.

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) January 6, 2023

lol Jim Jordan's getting votes again?

4 have flipped to McCarthy now

OK, so McCarthy gave the candy store away to the most insane tantrum children in Congress and now delivers them the keys?

Donalds voted McCarthy

despite the flips, he loses again

he's missing a vote, too (Hunt, who had to fly back to TX today for some reason that i forgot)

if this goes until tomorrow, Hern, the guy Boebert keeps nominating, won't be present because of his mother's funeral. i don't know if Boebert thinks she's doing something kind for him by repeatedly nominating him landslide losses on the week his mother died

So really, the only hail mary left is that McCarthy promises even more ludicrous power to the lunatic faction and finally loses a couple centrist GOP reps?

he always enjoys a challenge(r)

xpost starting to think there is eventually a threshold where Democrats will start to vote present. they're gonna want the aides to get paid

it seems like democrats should just vote for Mkkarthy to annoy the breakaway teabaggers and stop any concessions to them

Big shouts of relief and applause were heard coming from the office with the new votes that have switched for McCarthy.

One person was heard yelling, "Yeah, baby!"

xpost starting to think there is eventually a threshold where Democrats will start to vote present. they're gonna want the aides to get paid

I really hope they don't.

each failed vote saps a little more chi from what's left of the House GOP - I think the Dems should just let this play out with no funny business

i don't either, nor am I really that in a hurry to get the GOP House agenda moving, but.....

the little guy getting fucked AGAIN in something like this would bother me.

Gaetz wasn’t invited by McCarthy to the negotiations on Wednesday, but he showed up anyway.

guess McCarthy learning how women feel now

Eight flips. Wonder if McCarthy will come in first for once.

there is no way democrats are going to help mccarthy, especially not today, when he looks set to flip about 10 votes

the eventual threshold is next week, not today.

Luna flipped, for example. her whole deal is trying to be the new worst person in congress.

Roy just flipped.

xp yeah, i would guess that the holdouts will continue through the weekend, extract one more concession, and then give in on monday

McCarthy is stupid enough to think that now continued concessions are going to get him the remaining votes, when in reality, there's probably enough remaining holdouts who are intentionally milking him for concessions while never having any intention to vote for him.

looks like 214 for McCarthy, 3 for Hern, 4 for Jordan. Hunt's return will make it 215 for McCarthy, so he needs to flip 3 more to win. (or 4 to win without Hunt's vote)

he needs to flip 3 or 4 of these:

biggs
boebert
crane
gaetz
good
harris
rosendale

Great start so looking forward to another 2 years of clown car trip.
Or is this the insidious introduction of fascism disguised and once they're in place they become a finely tuned machine

The GOP is an automatic-engine 2009 Suzuki Forenza with transmission damage and will continue to be after this

Well - senators run statewide which means they often moderate their positions for reelection. But these gerrymandered House member can only survive by being complete whackjobs

yeah, those 14 or so who flipped will probably have primary challengers calling them traitors.

i didn't think swalwell was great or anything, but i'm kind of surprised that he is this wrong

I don’t know who will become Speaker, but one thing just happened we should all celebrate: the Freedom Party is dead. The majority of them just flip-flopped on McCarthy. They got rolled. And I’m here for it!
The flippers@RepRalphNorman@Rep_Clyde@ByronDonalds @realannapaulina

— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) January 6, 2023

dude. they run the house now. if they're dead, they're dead in the way that zombies who attack a house and murder everyone inside are dead

it's fun to LOL at the situation and yeah, it might cause some friction in-party, but in the end, despite how not a unified, well-oiled machine they are, the GOP House will return to collaborating on really horrible, awful shit that doesn't make anybody's lives easier.

Swalwell can have fun imagining their death but yeah, if Trump himself didn't kill the GOP, this definitely won't

A little reminder that a lot of it will be DOA in the Senate. It's the (literal) in-house stuff to be concerned about, which I'm not handwaving.

This is kind of true, but the more McCarthy has to concede to these garbage people, the worse the republicans will look overall to average Americans. The last few elections show just how much people are turned off by their bullshit. It's going to be a bad couple of years, but I also think it will continue the process of the republican party absolutely torching any last shreds of credibility that they had.

Swalwell's just trying to suggest a bit of spin into the politiverse, KM.

xxpost yeah I'm not worried about bills, I'm worried about pointless dog-whistle investigations (i.e. "was COVID a lab leak?", "did Biden illegally shut down Hunter investigation", corruption of things like intelligence committees, etc.

no actual destructive legislation will come out of it for the next two years.

still rather have the GOP have the House than the Senate though.

xp aimless

perhaps so! but it seems like rather shortsighted, bad spin to say that the freedom caucus is dead when they are running the house for the next 2 years.

I also think it will continue the process of the republican party absolutely torching any last shreds of credibility that they had.

I'm not snarking you, but I've seen this sentence in many forms since 2006.

Swalwell is a moron.

Yeah, the 2022 midterms surprised many of us, but anything "conservative" and "GOP" IS Freedom Caucus sewage.

oh shit, this might be the vote that ends it? only mccarthy and jeffries are nominated for this round.

Hoping for seven "present"s under the tree.

if not, a fun way to force an end is to all vote to approve a "STOP THE COUNT" method.

which is, the clerk running proceedings sets a timer to a random amount of time, and doesn't tell anybody, and they take roll call.

when that timer expires, she yells "stop the count" and the winner is who has the most votes at that exact point.

the key part of the spin was that they were flip-floppers who swore they'd never let McCarthy be speaker. the part about their death was just the needle to get the flip-flopper part injected into the public mind. but it won't work unless it gets memified by the QAnon'ers.

Hoping for seven "present"s under the tree.

― The Terroir of Tiny Town (WmC), Friday, January 6, 2023 2:12 PM bookmarkflaglink

me too, but when they cast their first vote during roll call, they are able to change it up until the final vote is recorded, so if some of the McCarthy holdouts saw what was happening they might change their vote to fuck the Dems. I don't believe Gaetz one moment where he says he'd be ok with a Dem speaker over McCarthy.

nope, nevermind - though not formally nominated, jordan has already received votes from Biggs and Boebert.

and no, no again.

a handful of holdouts are about to be on television all weekend, which is what they wanted

I guess two McCarthy voters who missed today's votes are coming back later. So he would only need to flip two of the holdouts to win.