So, the House of Representatives has removed Speaker Kevin McCarthy. My reaction was materially the same as James Joyner’s: now what? Mr. McCarthy has said he won’t seek the speakership again. There won’t be a vote until next week.
IMO the Republicans have shot themselves in the foot. I fail to see how a new speaker will accomplish anything other than stalemate. That’s what a very closely divided House in which neither side will vote with the other means.
More like 8 Republicans and 208 Democrats shot the other 206 Republicans in the foot.
More apt would be there’s a civil war in the Republican party and Democrats have helped stir the pot. Just a continuation from 2022….
It doesn’t change much since so little was expected from a divided Congress. Only if there is an unforeseen must pass legislation in the remaining life of this Congress will the voters and politicians rue the mess.
Or even foreseen must-pass legislation. We already have that. The CR expires in about a month.
I don’t know how this ends. But yeah, the GoP is a shit show, and must-pass legislation is coming due.
“The CR expires in about a month.”
My understanding is there is catastrophic insurance in that case. The debt limit and overall budget deal McCarthy and Biden negotiated has a provision that if all the appropriations bill is passed by Jan 1, an auto-CR with a 1% overall cut to spending but more then 1% to defense comes into force.
So a worse case shutdown is capped at 45 days or so. My understanding is a similar provision exists for FY 2024 as well.
My concern with unforeseen legislation is TARP like legislation that is fundamentally unpopular and really unpopular with the Presidents own party that it needs votes from the other party. An example would be a treasury market crisis that requires a bailout of banks, or the Federal Reserve, or requires spending cuts and tax increases in an election year.
Without empowering legislation I doubt such “insurance” is worth anything.
The auto-CR is part of the Budget Responsibility Act that was enacted into law in May.
A primerhere.
Did the Democrats get to help pick the Speaker? No. So I find it odd, other than just the usual tribal stuff, that Democrats would be blamed for this. This is a GOP problem. The Dems already had bailed out McCarthy by agreeing to his plan to extend another 45 days. It’s not their job to handle the 8 radicals. The GOP produced those 8 and they need to figure out how to handle them.
Steve
I see it more as Congressional Republicans gave Congressional Democrats a gun, which they just fired. I also don’t see this as a civil war any more than when the radicals on the left held Democratic legislation hostage for most of 2021. It’s the empowerment of the extremes in a closely divided electorate.
The U.S. system wasn’t meant for such factionalism. In parliamentary systems when a vote of no-confidence succeeds, elections are scheduled, factional members might be kicked out of the party, and the electorate decides how the stalemate should be resolved.
In the 1800 election, the Federalist Party attempted to prevent Thomas Jefferson from becoming President by supporting Aaron Burr. They eventually pulled back from the precipice either because of statesman like Alexander Hamilton who argued that of the options available Jefferson was the least bad one or because the fear that the country was starting to mobilize for civil war. Is McCarthy the worst option for the Democrats? For the House? For the country? I doubt it and they left their fingerprints.
I don’t think Democrats have any responsibility for what’s happened. That Republicans are blaming Democrats is no surprise – it’s the oldest play in the book to blame the opposition.
The GoP brought this on themselves. If the shoe was on the other foot, what would the GoP do? They’d let Dems suffer the consequences of the mess they made.
The only way the GoP ever gets some coherence is to let this factional battle play out till its conclusion.