Votes are still being counted.
Votes are still able to be cured in a lot of states and in a lot of close races.
The election is still ongoing.
However, the current projection from MSNBC is a Republican House caucus with 220 seats to a Democratic House caucus of 215 seats.
#NEW: @stevekornacki reports the new @NBCNews House projection:#TrackingKornacki @MSNBC pic.twitter.com/E4Jc7nGOzl
— 11th Hour (@11thHour) November 11, 2022
I’m teaching a US health politics and policy of reform class right now. I spent a quarter of the first class talking about agenda control and caucus management. I noted that there are varying strategies and different leaders have very different skill levels. I also noted that Nancy Pelosi had demonstrated an excellent ability to manage, listen and lead a caucus with a lot of extra votes to get big things done and she led a caucus with 5 spare votes to get things done. She is the likely edge of the frontier possibility curve on the ability to count to 218.
Assuming the MSNBC projection is right, the House Republican caucus is going to have members in their minimum winning coalition that come from districts that voted for Trump by 40-50 points to districts that voted for Biden by 15-20 points (New York seats that the GOP is renting for a cycle). What beyond renaming post offices and potentially declaring ice cream is yummy will pass that is not immediate political suicide in either the primary or general election for either end of the GOP caucus? What passes on a GOP party line vote in the House that even gets looked at in the Senate where Chuck Schumer controls the vote schedule? I can’t think of much.
We’re going to get a two year demonstration of the challenges of caucus management.
Kirk Spencer
Impeachments and investigations, over and over.
Eta: oh, and deciding to not pay our bills leading to dollar default because thatythe only real leverage they have.
Brachiator
I forgot that today is Veterans Day. Will some poll workers be taking a holiday? Will this slow the vote count?
David Anderson
@Kirk Spencer: Impeachment— tell me when there are 67 votes in the Senate.
Investigations — who the fuck cares..
Lady WereBear
They know the game has changed. I’ve never seen them so flummoxed and gobsmacked.
Loving every minute of it.
Kirk Spencer
@David Anderson: didn’t say removals. But impeachments nonetheless.
JMG
It is quite possible the GOP caucus won’t even be able to pick a manager, let alone be managed.
bbleh
@Kirk Spencer: Exactly this. Lacking any possibility of substance, it will dissolve into pure performance.
After seeing what happened this cycle, though, I am less pessimistic that their doing this won’t hurt the Republican Party overall. It does seem to appear (maybe, I hope) that there are still enough non-crazies among them who are willing at least to withhold their votes from the craziest candidates (&/or declare themselves “independent,” for what that’s worth), if not actually switch parties.
[sigh] to think I recall fondly the days when Republicans were only stuffy greedheads
@David Anderson: As to investigations, the media will care. They love them some High Drama. If nothing else, House Republicans will succeed in causing problems and working the media so their numbers and power seem much greater than they actually are.
Ken
I'm sure Kevin McCarthy will be up to the challenge.
(We are still using the code font for sarcasm, right?)
Steeplejack
(Brought up from downstairs.)
In the scenario you describe—a five-vote GQP majority—I wonder whether Nancy Pelosi (or her successor as minority leader) could sort of run things behind the scenes, at least for critical legislation, with the Democrats joined by a small cohort of (relatively) sane Republicans from D + n districts. She is bound to have much better caucus management than whatever nitwit gets horked up as speaker.
narya
We’re going to get a two-year demonstration of how f*cking awesome Pelosi has been, if the Rs are in charge. But I’m also waiting to see the final tally, tbh.
bbleh
@Steeplejack: Indeed. It would be very satisfying to see her complete the emasculation of McCarthy through a combination of party discipline, strategic bribery, and Discharge Petitions.
And at the same time I would like to see a little bit of Pelosi’s Revenge for the attack on her husband.
She’s one of the most effective legislative leaders of … well, probably pretty much all time. And being the minority leader, and hence not responsible for getting things done, frees one from certain … constraints.
bbleh
@Brachiator: I’m pretty sure that in Maricopa, at least, they have announced the workers will be working through the holiday AND the weekend.
Matt McIrvin
Coming into the election, the Republicans were openly boasting that they were going to hold the debt ceiling hostage to extract concessions under threat of a default. If a red wave had materialized, with a whole lot of batshit freshman members of Congress, they’d have had a good chance of either getting something, or actually dropping the bomb and pinning the blame for the resulting chaos on Biden.
Now… even if they have the House, it’s a lot harder for them to pull off. The deciding votes will be a bunch of Chamber of Commerce Republicans from New York, not the type to play the Bond villain hellbent on apocalypse.
sdhays
We’ve already seen this. This is how the House ran from 2011 to 2019. Republicans couldn’t even really run the House with comfortable majorities and Republicans in the Senate and White House.
zhena gogolia
I didn’t realize Katie Porter’s race hadn’t been called.
p.a.
Don’t know if House R institutional memory reaches back to how Clinton’s impeachment was the cutting of their own throats.
The optimist/realist in me hopes to see the Dems somehow hold a slim majority😃 (the optimist). The realist would then expect to see which Ds try to be the House version of Synemanchin🤢
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Now I’m wondering if an full-blown impeachment resolution (with all the trimmings, investigation, witnesses, and the works) has ever come up for a vote in the full House and failed. I bet there would be at least five Republicans for whom a vote to impeach Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or a member of their administration would amount to political suicide, more even than Kinziger or Cheney’s votes to impeach Trump.
And if the GOP loses Representatives as a result of the January 6 Committee’s investigation and report, hoo, boy…
Brachiator
@Steeplejack:
I am not seeing much more than gridlock and revenge investigations if the GOP get a majority in the House. Pelosi won’t be able to do much of anything, even behind the scenes.
Presumably Kevin McCarthy will become Speaker. He is a small minded and spiteful piece of work.
Kirk Spencer
@JMG: I just did a quick lookup. The speaker is elected by a majority of the house unless the house votes to accept a plurality. And that’s all the house, so Nancy’s hand will still be influencing things.
That’s to say, I think it likely that the next speaker will only take the gavel with Nancy’s concurrence.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: Hopefully, if they get the majority, it’ll be narrow enough to keep Ukraine support going.
Matt McIrvin
@sdhays: But they did successfully manage to hobble Obama’s recession response by threatening a debt default in 2011. That was partly on Obama and his economic team, for trying to seize it as an opportunity to “fix the deficit”. But the fact that the Republicans had a huge House margin that gave their insane wing a certain amount of control helped get it through.
By 2013, though, Obama wasn’t really playing that game any more (Biden will DEFINITELY never play that game), but damage had been done.
bbleh
@Brachiator: IIRC a bill can be forced to the floor with a simple majority vote under a discharge petition, which would mean that, if you get the votes for the bill (which you’d line up first), then you could pass it.
Lady WereBear
DAYUM that’s a good thought. Yeah.
bbleh
@Matt McIrvin: Thus the priority for the lame-duck session to extend the debt limit, by reconciliation if necessary.
Baud
@bbleh: I heard Manchin has already said no to that.
bbleh
@Baud: could still be done with a non-crazy Republican. I actually heard that there might be 10 Rep Senators willing to sign on to it so reconciliation wouldn’t be necessary
Republican party discipline isn’t necessarily solid on this one. I would bet McConnell, and several others, remember how well things went for the Republicans when they shut the government down under Obama.
sdhays
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, I guess you’re right. They really tried to run the House themselves for a year or so and then gave up until Nancy was Speaker again. Any must-pass legislation was pretty much handled by Nancy in the interim because the Republican “leadership” was nothing more than celebrated shit.
The only “accomplishments” they achieved without Pelosi’s help were the repeal of the ACA, which failed the first time and then passed only after keeping voting open for a ridiculously long time and making some of their members literally cry (if memory serves) and the Trump tax cuts.
Geminid
Besides the freshman New York Reps that have a tough path to reelection, the Republican caucus has people like Don Bacon. He’s been winning his Omaha area seat by small margins for a while now. It went for Biden in 2020 (winning him one electoral vote!). Bacon and others like him are caught between their radical colleagues and district electorates that are shifting demographically and politically in favor of Democrats.
Jen Kiggans in the Virginia 2nd CD faces a similar district dynamic. She’ll probably face a rematch with Elaine Luria in 2024. Kiggans and Bacon might not be able to survive the higher turnout of a Presidential election.
Assuming Republicans win a majority this time, leadership will need to accomodate the needs of members like Bacon and purple district freshmen like Kiggans and the New Yorkers if they want to win another majority in 2024.
That may not be possible because of the caucus’s large component of zealots who may not care about the politics of purple districts. Some of them may actually believe that implementing their radical program will have such a popular result that those purple districts will turn red on their own.
sdhays
@bbleh: Typically there’s a big defense reauthorization bill that must pass in December and stuff like this gets tucked into it.
David Anderson
@Steeplejack: I completely believe that on anything that actually needs to pass and is more important than renaming a post-office that Pelosi will be supplying at least 180 votes.
Remember the agreement zone for regular order is the House + Dem Controlled Senate + Dem White House…
Baud
It was 222 yesterday. I like this trendline.
gene108
In 2011, Speaker Boehner, with a large House majority could not pass a budget or raise the debt ceiling.
We learned new things like sequestration and whether or not Treasury could mint a $1 trillion coin to pay our bills.
It’s going to be a total shit show of epic proportions, with R’s running the House, besides the inability to pass a budget or pay our debts.
Nonstop investigations of Hunter Biden, fishing expeditions to bolster their desire to impeach President Biden multiple times, endless investigations into the DOJ and FBI, with Garland and Wray hauled up before Congressional committees everyday, committee hearings to discredit the existence of trans people, etc.
Republicans can’t govern, but they’re excellent at political theatre and the MSM is drooling for the kind of gossip Republicans can provide. I expect an MSM pile on to trash President Biden far worse than the Afghanistan withdrawal, as Republican Congressional investigations keep dripping out “scandal” after “shocking revelation” after “surprising new information coming to light”.
Just hope Gen Z can be just as focused on 2024, despite all the bad things that will happen.
Matt McIrvin
@sdhays: The other thing 2010 did was give Republicans a huge amount of control on the state level across much of the country–which they used to establish punishing austerity measures that hurt their own constituents and slowed the economic recovery in ways they could blame on Obama. I remember reading somewhere that it was the first economic recession since they started measuring these things where government spending actually contracted, on all levels, instead of expanding as a countercyclic response.
Now, the response to the brief and intense COVID recession was actually a traditional countercyclic stimulus, which was maybe possible because Donald Trump was allowed to put his name on the checks, so Republicans weren’t going to stop it. Of course they’re now blaming Biden for that in the usual fashion. But if Democrats had been bigger gangsters we might have blocked it and let people suffer more so we could win more elections. Actually caring about human beings can be a political handicap.
Baud
@gene108: While I agree, I also note that the Dems had control over the last two years, and the media went full force against the Dems on a number of fronts, especially in the last month, and we still worked a draw in a midterm against a gerrymandered map. I’m not sure the GOP is ready for their closeup. Hopefully times have changed, and more of the right voters are paying attention.
MattF
I’m predicting a one-vote R majority— that would be hell for McCarthy and the maximal sub-surface influence for Pelosi. And D control of the Senate, needless to say.
Steeplejack
@Brachiator:
I’m not sure Kevin McCarthy is a shoo-in. There are several ambitious Republicans who see that he is an idiot and would like to grab the brass ring. But maybe, seeing the chaos ahead, they will be content to snipe from the sidelines and let him take the heat.
PAM Dirac
@narya:
I think there is more than a little “a girl can do it so hard can it be”. I think they will find out big time. I also think that with the skills and discipline that Nancy SMASH, et. al. have, there will be far more than one occasion where the Rs will be standing around wondering “What happened?”.
Aussie Sheila
@bbleh: I don’t know the details of the processes, but if they try this on Biden and the Dem leadership should not, in any circumstances, negotiate. Particularly on social safety net programs or aid for Ukraine. Maintain internal party discipline, and hit every communication outlet including TikTok and Telegram.
Hammer them. Hard.
bbleh
@Aussie Sheila: Oh I agree re Dems, but I think they would, and as to negotiating with Reps I think the line would be “you guys wanna shoot yourselves in the foot again, I guess you’re gonna do it, but sticking with the Crazy didn’t work out so well for you guys this time around, we’re gonna be out there night and day blaming you for a shutdown, and I don’t think the Country Clubbers (ie your major donors) are gonna be too happy about it.”
Geminid
@Baud: In July Manchin said that he’d given up on any kind of compromise for a BBB-type bill. Then a few weeks later he and Schumer were all smiles about their compromise for a BBB-type bill.
I would not rule out any legislation in the “lame duck” session until it’s close to its end. Last time the National Defense Authorization Act passed after New Year’s Day, I believe. I think they have to pass another NDAA this session, and who knows what amendments the dealmakers will attach to that legislation this time?
Baud
@Geminid: True. Let’s hope they can get as much done as they can.
waspuppet
Hmmm. Sounds like a tough job. Hey you know what would help? A rapidly senilizing failson who thinks he’s a CEO, screaming at them to SHOW STRENGTH LIKE MY MURDEROUS AUTOCRATIC FRIENDS.
sdhays
@Steeplejack: Kevin McCarthy is basically a sitcom about a horrible person who keeps failing to achieve his heart’s desire. He was going to succeed Boehner until he was too candid on Foxy Snooze, then he thought he’d be Speaker in 2018 after Paul Ryan retired.
I really hope he gets the trifecta and fails to be Speaker again, one way or the other (of course, Dems controlling the House is the preferred way).
Kay
Florida Republicans tricked voters. DeSantis + GOP put in a ban at 15 weeks and national pundits portrayed that as very smart and savvy but it turns out it was complete bullshit and they fully intended to make it more draconian the moment the election was over.
The anti abortion “movement” is just completely dishonest with the public. They take “lying for the Lord” to a whole new level. Cannot trust these people as far as yu can throw them.
Apparently the public’s reaction to these bans hasn’t slowed them down at all. They’ll be jamming them thru anywhere they have a majority or a governor.
bbleh
@sdhays: OTOH maybe it’s more like an awful Greek tragedy, where he DOES finally become Speaker and then is systematically and publicly emasculated by his own crazies and by Pelosi.
But I’m willing to do it your way too. (Gotta make more popcorn.)
Baud
@Kay:
This is my shocked face.
David Anderson
@Steeplejack: No one with long term ambition should want to be the Speaker in a majority with a 2 or 3 vote cushion that is highly reliant on keeping MTG, Gosar, Biggs, Boebert on board as well as keeping half a dozen New York/New Jersey caucus members who are in lean Biden seats.
This is going to be an epic clusterfuck where there are no good, career enhancing choices of being the public face of the clusterfuck.
JML
The GOP has a major challenge for caucus management. The Democrats have a media management challenge. Every significant democratic politician in DC needs to be working on a strategy to continually paint the GOP House as an extreme, incompetent disaster that is harming the average American on a daily basis through their lack of action and inability to function. They need to fill as much air as possible with that message so that there’s less and less room for any of the BS investigation stories.
That’s the true danger with a GOP House: made-up “investigations” that are really just witch-hunts against people like Hunter Biden (they know attacking the president’s family will hurt him personally and the cruelty is the point, plus their base buys into the conspiracy that he’s corrupt and will somehow bring down Joe Biden), Hillary Clinton (they haven’t gotten her yet and it burns. she’s still the bete noir for them), Merrick Garland (how dare he investigate Dear Leader Trump! he must be corrupt. Get him!), Kamala Harris (can’t allow a black woman to be in power without going after her, must make shit up about her in case she’s running for president soon), and of course Joe Biden himself (they won’t have the votes to impeach him, but you know they want to since they are the party of “I’m rubber and you’re glue” and have decided that impeachment is really just a political attack on someone you don’t like).
They’ve got to batter them on the daily to keep the BS investigations from dominating the discussions, because as seen in this election and previously, the DC medial elites love breathlessly reporting on anything they can call scandal and will accept at face value anything the GOP vomits in front of them.
Incompetent. Dangerous. Harming regular people. For me, that’s the message. And they’re going to need to run ads for it in any battleground state to counter the sinclair medias and FauxNews of the world (MN, WI, MI, PA, GA, NC, VA, AZ, NV to start)
Roger Moore
@Steeplejack:
A random Democratic backbencher could do a better job running the D caucus than anyone in the Republican party could do managing the R caucus. Fundamentally, the Democrats have stuff they want to accomplish, and they’ll be willing to listen to whomever they choose as their leader in hopes of accomplishing that stuff. The Republicans have no shared vision beyond owning the libs. Since that is primarily a competitive, individual activity, the caucus will be impossible to control.
Kay
@Baud:
Also- the 15 week ban has no exception for rape or incest, a detail national pundits who think it’s super moderate left out. Because they don’t care. Not one of them read it.
Punditry got played again.
God, we thought they were credulous with Trump. DeSantis will have them spinning in circles.
gene108
@David Anderson:
The media. They’ll amplify whatever BS Republicans are pushing and pile on President Biden with glee.
The 2012 Benghazi consulate attack occurred during President Obama’s first term. Investigations kept it going as an issue for Secretary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential election.
Biden’s popularity isn’t impervious to negative media attention, and Republicans will stoke this to make the 2024 election close enough to steal, like they did in 2000 and 2016.
Layer8Problem
@Kay: Pain inflicted in their strongholds and injuring their own constituents, because “you f-ked up, you trusted us,” serving as an object lesson to the rest of the country on how bad it could be. It’s going to take a lot of fluff pieces on “how Florida’s actually winning by being assholes” from the Red Wave crowd to overcome their bad optics.
Acallidryas
Biden famously likes ice cream, so even an “ice cream is yummy” bill would be political suicide for some of these people.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
@narya: “I’m also waiting to see the final tally, tbh.”
Me too. Every time the tally /estimate changes, it changes in the Dem’s favor. Repubs only have to lose 3 more seats on MSNBC’s estimate, which is currently 220 seats, to lose the House. With the number of CA House races still open, and several other races in other states (cough Boebert’s seat cough) still up for grabs, it’s still doable. It seems like a lot of the media is having a hard time coming to terms with the failure of their assumptions about Democrats being losing losers who lose.
@Baud: “it’ll be narrow enough to keep Ukraine support going.”
Ohio in particular has a pretty sizeable Ukrainian community. I don’t see Repubs being able to unite on withholding aid, even though it’s what their financiers want. It may be trickier than it should be, but it should be safe (insert fingers crossed emoji here).
Baud
@Kay: Frankly, I’d rather DeSantis go into 2024 with that bill under his belt rather than 15 weeks. (Although I still hope it fails).
Geminid
@JML: If Republicans are in the majority in the next Congress and follow through on their threats, they’ll run the risk that their nothingburger investigations and fruitless impeachments will make Joe Biden look like the Roadrunner, and themselves look like a bunch of Wiley Coyotes in suits.
Steeplejack
@David Anderson:
I wonder whether someone like Marjorie Taylor Green or Gym Jordan might want to be speaker, to intensify the clusterfuck—and for the perks, of course.
Aussie Sheila
@JML: This. Exactly.
Brachiator
@Steeplejack:
Good point. I know that he lusts after the position and also yearns to punish Pelosi and Biden. I haven’t heard much about other contenders.
But I think the fantasy of naming Trump Speaker is as dead as the failed Red Wave.
Matt McIrvin
@KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager)): Back when the Soviet Union was a going concern, I’d already noticed that Ukrainian-Americans were super proud of their Ukrainian heritage, would mention it at any opportunity, and bristled at any mention of “The” Ukraine or suggestion of it being a mere region. They will not stand for any abandonment of Ukraine.
Steeplejack
@Brachiator:
Steve Scalise is the other “normal” contender I have heard mentioned.
Ken
I’ve heard conflicting reports about whether the Republicans will go back to the Hastert Rule, that says legislation must be supported by a majority of Republicans to be brought to a vote. That would limit the ability of the “Democrats plus six sane Republicans” caucus to pass anything.
James E Powell
@Kay:
With respect, I don’t think punditry got played. They know exactly what they are doing. They promote & protect their chosen ones.
James E Powell
@Steeplejack:
I’m betting that Elise Stefanik’s knives are already sharpened.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
@gene108: “The media. They’ll amplify whatever BS Republicans are pushing and pile on President Biden with glee.”
While this is generally true, and I expect it won’t improve to any great extent, I did notice that when Shirt-sleeves Gym released a thousand-page report on “FBI corruption & politicization” the Friday before the election, and I’ve seen next to nothing about it in the press, only a pretty dismissive mention that he released a bunch of old, rehashed letters & complaints. So maybe, just maybe, they’re getting a tiny bit jaded about the theatrics.
We can hope anyway.
Brachiator
@Steeplejack:
Ah. Okay. Scalise may be “normal,” but he is another rabid Republican.
He will be determined to push a narrow Republican agenda. And he loves them tax cuts.
gene108
@Ken:
They’ll adopt the Boehner Rule, where bills must pass with only Republican votes.
Part of the reason the House so messed up last decade is Republicans doubled down on freezing Democrats out of any decisions, and only dealt with Democrats in cases of emergency like passing a budget.
randy khan
@Kirk Spencer:
Not being an idiot on this point is what caused John Boehner to resign from Congress and at least created a bunch of trouble for Paul Ryan. McCarthy is an idiot, but we’ll see how much of an idiot he really is when push comes to shove. And, of course, as Mr. A notes above, being that much of an idiot likely would doom some of the Republicans on the not-incredibly-right wing of the caucus.
In the meantime, I’m hoping that the Dems set aside some time between now and January to pass a big increase in the debt limit.
Ken
Metaphorically, or is there some chance we’ll see a report starting “Republicans lost their slim control of the House today when four Representatives died during the fight to become Speaker”?
Xavier
@Roger Moore: just right, although I’d say the Republicans have no vision beyond preventing the Democrats from accomplishing anything.
JML
@Geminid: that’s not what matters, though, if you don’t tarnish the entire brand with the individual morons in the House. Yu can’t sit back and hope for overreach or that the media will understand that it’s a massive overreach that the country doesn’t want any part of. FFS, they kept walking away from abortion being the dominant issue in the election because they just had to find a way to equate out the teams and ensure that the small town white male voter was still the most important constituency.
Never plan on the other side doing all your work for you, or the media leading the charge. Own your message and go on offense.
“Yield not to evils, but attack all the more boldly.” – Virgil
Ken
We may not even see a defense authorization bill…
Shalimar
@Steeplejack: I’m not sure how “normal” you can be when your response to getting shot is to call for more guns everywhere.
Shalimar
@zhena gogolia: Katie Porter’s race hasn’t been called because of the long timeframe in California for counting and curing ballots. As far as I have heard, it would be a huge shock if she didn’t win.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Ken:
“Republicans lost their slim control of the House today when four Representatives died during the fight to become Speaker”?
I think the media would LOVE 😍 that. If it bleeds, it leads! This would be a dream come true for the bored political press.
superdestroyer
Speaker Pelosi depended on the unlikability of Trump go get some of the Democrats in swingable districts to victory. What happens when Trump goes away but those moderate Democrats still have a 100% voting record that gave Pelosi whatever she wanted. Not a long term plan for success. And what happens to the Democrats if DeSantis is the nominee in 2024 while Hakeen Jeffries is the minority leader in the House.
Omnes Omnibus
There is a distinct smell of both troll and mothballs in here.
Steeplejack
@James E Powell:
Ooh! I forgot about her. Yes, she’s undoubtedly licking her chops.
David Anderson
@superdestroyer: Hey welcome back troll… enjoy the dooming.
Steeplejack
@Shalimar:
Hence my use of quotation marks. For current Republicans, “normal” = not quite barking mad. (Cf. Marjorie Taylor Green.)
Shalimar
@superdestroyer: My opinion is that giving Pelosi whatever she wants would result in an amazing long-term path for the country.
superdestroyer
@Shalimar: Given that Pelosi represents a district with unaffordable real estate, a high level of homelessness that has gotten to the point of affect her own family, and she comes from a state losing population, I doubt it.
Geminid
@JML: I said nothing about sitting back and letting the other side do our work for us, and I don’t believe I implied it either.
I would add that while the media may condition public opinion it does not determine it. It’s not just the people here who take in the news and make up their own minds.
And I still think the public may end up seeing Joe Biden as the Roadrunner and Republicans as Wiley Coyote.
Kent
I actually kind of doubt it. That would give the fringe crazies WAY WAY too much power with this closely divided of a House, and turn the House into the Senate. You would essentially be creating 25 new Sinemas and Manchins because on any single vote any crazy could hold it hostage for any reason. No leader is going to want that. Perhaps some version of the Hastert rule where they need a majority of the caucus in favor to move forward. But they aren’t going to give their bleeding fringe that much power.
What they will likely do is go ape-shit on investigations. But that will also be a clown show and backfire just like it did with Clinton. HIs highest approval numbers ever were reached during impeachment. Because they have nothing really to investigate so they will go ape-shit on crazy Info-wars type conspiracy theories to excite their base and disgust the rest of the population.
Kent
Do you honestly think that MTG could get a majority of the GOP caucus to support her for speaker? Don’t make me laugh. She is a useful tool for them, nothing more.
topclimber
My own not totally impossible scenario has Dems flipping three seats and the GOP winning only nine of the remaining 24 contests. That works out to a GQP red wave of 218 seats and a 1-person majority.
I am beginning to prefer this outcome, where Republicans take the fall for doing nothing in the next Congress, vs. a Dem majority of 1-2 where nothing gets done thanks to filibuster in Senate and the Dems get blamed. The alternative is if some Republicants in both chambers understand that they better cut deals rather than be cut out.
More optimistic about my crazy numbers than I am about the latter.
topclimber
@James E Powell: Unfortunately, she can also boast how her kind of Republican can pick up Congressional seats in New York State. So thrilled to have her as my rep!
topclimber
@Kent: Boehner rule is something Dems can deal with. It is the Hastert rule, variously interpreted as no GOP support if they need Dem bills to pass anything, or 80% internal agreement, that is impossible to beat.
topclimber
@superdestroyer: We win, silly.
Another Scott
@Kent: TheHill says the crazies are saber-rattling already (from today):
If it’s a GQP-led House, it will be a weak one because the crazies are going to make impossible demands all the time and Boehner and all the rest showed that their leadership cannot and will not control them.
I want us to win. Even with a tiny majority, it’s much better than being in the minority (controlling the floor, debt ceiling, pushing the Senate to do the right thing, etc.).
Fingers crossed!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Archon
@superdestroyer:
What am I missing about DeSantis? He’s Trump without the showman charisma.
superdestroyer
@Archon: DeSantis is probably smart enough to read what is in the briefing book. DeSantis can also hold a meeting with his advisors that only covers one subject.
DeSantis has zero charisma and supposedly is famous for running off staff and irritating his donors. the thigh food story is a huge tell on what a sociopath DeSantis is. However, DeSantis is not Trump.
Shalimar
@superdestroyer: An average 8th grader is smart enough to read what is in the briefing book. This just points out how overwhelmingly incompetent Trump is. And says everything about Republican voters that they don’t care.
Shalimar
@superdestroyer: Pelosi is a national leader, not the mayor of her district.
superdestroyer
@Shalimar: DeSantis reminds me more of the obsessive-compulsive government type who reads the memos and briefings and will remember them months later if some other memo or brief says something different. That is more normal for the government but not like Trump at all. DeSantis is smart enough to pick out a winnable policy and use it to beat up the Democrats.
J R in WV
@superdestroyer:
Welcome to the pie safe, asshole troll !!!