House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is a man who stays in motion — enthusiastically greeting tourists at the Capitol, dashing overseas last week to the G7 summit of industrial world leaders, raising funds back home to elect fellow Republicans to the House majority.
But beneath the whirlwind of activity is a stubborn standstill, an imbalance of power between the far-right Republicans who hoisted McCarthy to the speaker’s role yet threaten his own ability to lead the House.
It’s a political standoff that will be tested anew as the House returns this week from a long summer recess and McCarthy faces a collision course of difficult challenges — seeking to avoid a government shutdown, support Ukraine in the war and launch an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
“They’ve got some really heavy lifting ahead,” said the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, John Thune, of South Dakota.
There are a lot of things I’m sick of from the American right, but these little fucking games that they play with government shutdowns and potential US credit defaults every single year are particularly getting old.
their base loves it. that is all that matters
And the things they claim to care are are only a problem when they’re not in power.
They only care about the deficit after they ran up the bill. They claim they are about law and order until it’s one of their own. Etc
Well the last president proved that impeachment apparently means absolutely nothing. So I think it funny the GOP is doing this at all.
They just don’t want Trump to be the only one impeached. They want it to mean nothing, so they’re probably going to try impeaching every Democratic President forever now.
I still think that they really wanted to impeach Biden three times. This would “prove” that Biden is more corrupt than Trump. Ignore that none of the Biden impeachments would have been about any actual crime beyond “we don’t like that he’s President - we wanted the other guy!”
Of course, with McCarthy’s razor thin margins, he couldn’t manage this, but he’s feeling increased pressure to get one impeachment in. This way the Republicans can say “well, yes, it was political but this just proves that the two Trump impeachments were political also so the Democrats are worse!” (Again, ignoring that Trump actually committed crimes and Biden didn’t.)
To be perfectly honest if you can get enough of congress to agree you could impeach for wearing a tan suit, and then convict and remove.
Impeachment is a completely political act, it requires no law breaking, no ethics breaches and no wrongdoing.
That’s why our president (according to the constitution, not the laws made by congress since) are still subject to federal and state laws.
theyve been doing that since the 90s. they wanted anything to impeach obama on and got nothing as well.
They just don’t want Trump to be the only one impeached
Have they forgotten the whole Clinton thing already?
Oh poor Kevin McCarthy, if only his caucus wasn’t filled with idiots, and if only he could ignore stupid political theater to focus on governance (cough impeachment cough)
Pfff it’s not like McCarthy is some kind of political genius only hamstrung by his caucus. He’s one of the floating turds.
Go ahead. Do it, I dare you
-John Fetterman
Even a competent Speaker not conspiring in an insurrection would be mostly doomed with a five seat majority and the clown caucus he heads. Yes Nancy made it look easy, but she was Speaker for the grown up American party. There’s a reason Boehner took off running.
Juggling all these unproductive, non-substantive things, whatever shall he do? When your whole goal is to blunt any progress, any time wasted is progress.
I hate McConnell, but even in his old age he is somehow more component than this buffoon.
McConnell plays the long/subtle game. McCarthy can’t see past his nose.
Also, McConnell is in the Senate. To win a Senate seat, you need to appeal to your entire state. This has a moderating effect on politicians. You can’t win in most states by saying “Trump really won in 2020. We should hang all Democrats and seize the Jewish Space Laser!”
Meanwhile, in the House, you just need to win a small section of the state. This section is likely heavily gerrymandered so that you’re safe no matter what. In some of these areas, “Impeach Biden on the first day for the crime of pushing Trump out of office” actually works and can get those people into the House.
McCarthy needs to juggle these crazies along with more rational Republicans (that being a relative term). He could work across the aisle - teaming Democrats up with more moderate Republicans to get things done, but he doesn’t want to do this. Instead, he wants to only have Republicans involved which means he needs the votes of the crazies. This gives them more power than they should have.
The issue is that the crazies are so crazy that they would have no problem paralyzing the House if they don’t get their way. They pushed the Speaker election to eleventy billion votes just to prove to Kevin that he can’t govern without them. And in exchange for their (eventual) support, they got Kevin to agree to rules that say they can call a snap election for a new Speaker, whenever.
Republicans have spent decades telling people that government is the problem with everything. Then they got a bunch of people elected who don’t really believe government should be effective, because it only gets the way. These people really don’t care of they end up burning the place down ot not.
Insightful comment
This is the best summary I could come up with:
But beneath the whirlwind of activity is a stubborn standstill, an imbalance of power between the far-right Republicans who hoisted McCarthy to the speaker’s role yet threaten his own ability to lead the House.
It’s a political standoff that will be tested anew as the House returns this week from a long summer recess and McCarthy faces a collision course of difficult challenges — seeking to avoid a government shutdown, support Ukraine in the war and launch an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
White House spokesman Ian Sams said, “Speaker McCarthy shouldn’t cave to the extreme, far-right members who are threatening to shut down the government unless they get a baseless, evidence-free impeachment of President Biden.
Meanwhile, what should have been a fairly prescribed process to fund the government after McCarthy and Biden negotiated a more than $1 trillion deal earlier this summer over the debt limit appears to be falling apart.
Trump faces his own more serious charges of wrongdoing, including the federal indictments over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election he lost to Biden and his refusal to return classified documents stored at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Watching from the Senate, which has been working to pass all 12 of the regular bills needed to fund government operations through committees ahead of floor votes starting next week, Republicans hope cooler heads in the House will prevail on all fronts.
The original article contains 1,246 words, the summary contains 232 words. Saved 81%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
