Like rotten mackerel by moonlight, he shines and stinks… There’s a wealth of Repub (un)talent to keep an eye on, but Chip Roy is making a real effort to hog the limelight.
Hey @chiproytx, why are you threatening our Veterans and military just because you don’t want to pay our nation’s bills? That’s not only fiscally irresponsible, it’s a danger to our national security. https://t.co/l5TBEuOVnh
— VoteVets (@votevets) January 12, 2023
Oh no, anything but that https://t.co/6tYzSsojcr
— chatham harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison) January 10, 2023
Roy also wants to ‘defund the WHO‘ because he thinks they ‘praise the CCP‘ and ‘support abortion‘.
It’s always useful, to a weak ‘leader’ like Kevin McCarthy, to have a noisy fall guy at hand to blame when the Tantrum Caucus breaks something (like getting those Social Security checks mailed out)…
Wondering who consummate "That Guy" Chip Roy is, and why he's committed to the "ongoing ritual humiliation and sacrifice of would-be House Speaker Kevin McCarthy"? @cd_hooks has you covered: https://t.co/RSDEeuZetM
— Ben Rowen (@ben_c_rowen) January 5, 2023
‘Our first entry in an encyclopedia of Texas politicians who’ve forced their way onto the national scene’…
… Typically, Texas politicians who fall in the That Guy category rail against the system and the establishment, which they say is a threat to the Texas values that many That Guys have dedicated their lives to defending. Roy, who was born inside the D.C. swamp in Bethesda, Maryland, and raised in Virginia, does precisely this, but he is a prominent member of a subcategory of That Guys who are also consummate insiders. He is a miniature of his longtime mentor and ally Ted Cruz: a veteran political operative from out of state, bound for the upper class, who rode to office on the back of a folksy populist persona and a nickname. They’re even both now experimenting with facial hair…
Roy was raised an hour outside of D.C. and graduated from the University of Virginia. He spent a few years in finance before winding his way to the University of Texas School of Law. Once here, he caught on with John Cornyn’s 2002 Senate campaign, perhaps in hopes it would send him back to the Beltway. He credits his decision to turn his life to politics to the 9/11 attacks, yet another thing for which America can blame Mohamed Atta…
Roy marinated on Cornyn’s staff in the Senate for most of the rest of the decade. Then, following a brief stint as an assistant U.S. attorney, he became a one-man think tank, ghostwriting then-governor Rick Perry’s 2010 book Fed Up! A slim 220 pages, Roy’s opus championed a greatest hits of then-popular ideas among the tea party movement, including that Social Security was probably unconstitutional and that the Seventeenth Amendment, allowing for the popular election of senators, had been a big mistake. Roy probably expected the book to herald Perry’s ascent to the presidency, after which Roy could surely count on a juicy White House job.
That didn’t happen, but when the Lord closes one door, he opens another. Perry was an imperfect messenger for the tea party’s agenda, but Cruz was a great one. When Cruz, who had become familiar with Roy during his days as Texas solicitor general, entered the Senate in 2013, Roy became his chief of staff. Having spent much of the last decade working for a senator, Roy knew how to break things, so he did. He helped design one of the boldest gambits ever offered by a newly elected senator: forcing a shutdown of the federal government and attempting to keep it shut until Congress defunded Obamacare…
When it comes to Roy’s personal politics, or ideology, there’s no compromise. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Roy called for the U.S. to reach “herd immunity” as quickly as possible—by mass infection—and not wait for a vaccine, which would have minimized economic disruption but resulted in a huge number of additional deaths. In 2022, he was one of three members of Congress to vote against a bill making lynching a federal hate crime. (The bill, he said, only served “to advance a woke agenda.”) The next month, in a congressional hearing about violence targeting Asian Americans after a spree shooting in Atlanta, Roy hijacked proceedings with a bizarre tangent about the threat of “Chicoms,” Cold War slang for the Chinese communist party, and endorsed the legitimacy of lynching as a tool to get “the bad guys.” …
Roy has not led the coup against McCarthy per se, but he’s naturally been in the mix. He has demanded concessions and promises, including an end to U.S. aid to Ukraine and a new way of doing business from McCarthy, to end the imbroglio. Roy told radio host Mark Davis on Wednesday morning that McCarthy didn’t have the guts to truly break the “swamp cartel.” He wants a leader who will take a brick bat to the White House, like Cruz tried to do in 2013…
Much more at the link. Verily, Rep. Roy is a man who will not be silenced — and yet, for all his rock-ribbed BELIEFS, he doesn’t seem to accomplish much beyond irritating his colleagues. Inside the tent, pissing on the rug…
"There's no official list," Chip Roy said of the side-deals McCarthy cut to win the speakership. "You look somebody in the eye and shake their hands and move forward. That's precisely what happened here." pic.twitter.com/OuH99brvgd
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 10, 2023
Postcard Writing Party and Music Thread (Special Elections #1)
HumboldtBlue
Has there been a starker and more sudden example of a politician bought and paid for so quickly than Sinema?
Sinema is asked at Davos about leaving the Democratic Party. She criticizes Dems for trying to change filibuster rules and pass voting rights legislation. She calls Kevin McCarthy “a dear friend of mine.”
And Kathy Hochul is making no friends with her staunch insistence people support her odious nominee for state supreme court, a man she had the shame to compare to Dr. King.
“Dr. King called upon us to be just and to be fair, and to not judge people. And that has not been afforded to an individual named judge Hector LaSalle,” Hochul told a Sunset Park congregation on Sunday.
lowtechcyclist
Chip Roy: Christ, what an asshole.
NotMax
Couple of items which caught the eye for one reason or another.
1) Guess who’s at the big-league economic
shindigforum in Davos? Sinema and Manchin (enough article before paywall obscure the rest to confirm). And…2) Devalued dreck, now with more pollution!
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@lowtechcyclist: I was thinking of making the same comment, but had to take the garbage out first.
eclare
@HumboldtBlue:
I have no idea what either of them think. Although I would not be surprised if Kyrsten came out with a stylish line of athleisure wear (I think Suzanne has suggested this.)
We need to get Gallego (sp?) into the Senate.
Very OT: I saw the latest Magic Mike trailer ads tonight. Oh my. I may go back to the theater for the first time since the before times.
eclare
@lowtechcyclist: Perfectly succinct.
Lapassionara
There used to be a term for people who moved south to participate in the politics of another state. Hmmmmm, let me see now, it is right on the tip of my tongue . . . .
ian
Usually I am grateful that our party doesn’t behave like Republicans in terms of media messaging and ‘truthiness’, but it would sure be nice in this case if we could get this asshole branded as being on the record as willing to “defund the police”.
NobodySpecial
I love the fact that Roy admitted there’s nothing set on paper over the Speakership deal. Nothing says “virile DEEfender of th’ Consitution” than getting rolled by the likes of Kevin McCarthy.
Dastronomer
Christ, what an asshole.
NotMax
@NobodySpecial
Not paper. Parchment. Same as the Constitution, as the originalists demanded.
//
James E Powell
@eclare:
Sinema is done as senator & as any elected official. She’s an asshole and no one likes her. Republicans will certainly encourage & applaud her attacks on Democrats, but they will never vote for her.
eclare
@James E Powell: Oh yeah, she is toast.
SectionH
Sorry, I’m so gobsmacked by the English Parliament telling the Scots that a law they passed was not OK.
Sinema – Suzanne had her number a long time ago.
JWR
@HumboldtBlue:
I watched that clip of Sinema earlier tonight, and here’s what she said about the filibuster and voting rights: Dems had wanted to, “eliminate the filibuster and pass a massive voting rights package”. Well bless her little ol’ heart. Oh, and STFU, Kyrsten!
I don’t know if I’d ever heard her voice before, but that, along with her weird facial expressions reminded me of Maggie Haberman’s scowling visage. Dunno if that means anything, but I thought it, so there. ;)
Msb
Roy is correct that WHO supports abortion. It quite rightly does so as an essential part of perinatal care. But WHO actually cares about the health of women and families. Roy doesn’t.
Amir Khalid
@HumboldtBlue:
Is Congress in session? If it is, what is Sinema doing in Switzerland?
Tokyokie
@Amir Khalid:
What’s she doing in Davos? Lining up clients for her upcoming lobbyist career.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
See #3 above.
Gaining introduction to the Saudis, I’d wager.
Geminid
@Amir Khalid: I guess now is a time when there are no critical votes, so Congress members are going on “junkets.” The Times of Israel has an article about a delegation that is about to visit Israel. It includes among others Senators Rosen (NV), Kelly (AZ) and Budd (NC). I believe a couple Representatives are coming along too.
The main subject of the article was that the lawmakers had let their Israeli hosts know they would not meet with Knesset Members Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, who lead the Religious Zionist party, Netanyahu’s toxic coalition partner. The two lawmakers said they had not heard this, being too busy wrecking Israeli civic institutions.
Amir Khalid
@SectionH:
This is just going to add to the pressure for another independence vote, isn’t it?
Amir Khalid
@Msb:
Thank you for not calling it “the WHO”, which can lead to bad dad-rock jokes.
JoyceH
@Lapassionara: Ooh ooh, I know! The – wait it’s right there… – the cloth valisers, right? Something like that.
Geminid
@eclare: The notion that Sinema might put out a line of athleisure clothing came from the jocular Geminid:
Suzanne has observed the Senator throughout her political career in Arizona and gives sounder and more substantive analysis, including the characterization of Sinema as essentially “a social climber.”
Aussie Sheila
@HumboldtBlue:
No. No there hasn’t. I get Manchin, sort of. He is a type of pol familiar to me. Stupid, corrupt but quite successful in garnering conservative voters. Maybe because of those personal characteristics.
In the end though, will do a deal for his ‘mates’ in the Party.
Biden’s personal characteristics and his long political history probably helped with getting Manchin over the line on the IRA. I doubt Manchin will be returning to the Senate.
@JWR:
Sinema represents exactly the problem with an ill disciplined/no discipline Party apparatus.
I know US party politics is ill disciplined (except for conservatives, interestingly enough), but Christ almighty, she has been a disaster.
It is not just her refusal to back her Party and it’s leader, but it’s her caping for the Opposition, and her obvious contempt for those who worked so hard to get her elected.
I have worked hard all my life to ensure the organisation and election of progressives and leftists in my neck of the woods.
That woman sets me off in a way no politician from a democracy ever has. She is abominable.
May I suggest at the minimum, in future, no person who has ever been a member of the US Greens ever gets a Dem nomination again?
Just for starters. The US Greens are unique in my opinion. They appear to me to be a fully subscribed Russian influence operation. Unlike their namesakes from here and from Germany. I don’t know much about UK Greens.
In addition, where a Senate candidate has been a member of a state legislature, maybe it would be a good idea to peruse not just their voting record, but how they work with their Party and their colleagues?
The world can’t withstand any more fuckups from Democrats in these elections. Particularly in 2024when the Senate map looks very difficult for democrats as well as Democrats.
mrmoshpotato
Oh late night/early morning YouTube infomercial trash. You’re adorable.
Gvg
@James E Powell: but apparently she stuck by the party for the speakership fight which surprised me. Manchin too. They didn’t even get mentioned during the whole fight when they could have got a lot of attention.
lowtechcyclist
@Msb:
“That’s exactly what I’m asking!!”
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: As a former US Green Party adherent, Sinema is an anomaly among Democratic politicians. She dropped her Green affiliations when she first ran for the Arizona legislature as a Democrat. Sinema had left her leftyish roots far behind when she won a newly created Congressional District in 2012, and joined the Blue Dog Caucus. Ironically, if Sinema had supported President Biden as consistently as her former House Blue Dog colleagues did in the last Congress, we would not hear all the complaints about her that we do.
American voters and not the parties control who wins public office. Arizona Democrats nominated Sinema for Senate once, in 2018 and then were stuck with her for six years. She was going to lose her primary next year which is why she became an Independent for the last two years of her term. She still has been a consistent vote for the administration’s nominees and most of the Democrats’ substantive legislation.
Tony Jay
@SectionH:
There’s no such thing as ‘the English Parliament’. It’s the Government of the United Kingdom picking this fight over the Scottish Parliament’s Gender Recognition Law.
Six years in the making, passed by a cross-party consensus, devised to be in line with all of the relative Equalities and Equal Rights laws on the books, but also oh so tasty as a hunk of red-meat to toss to the radicalised Right and a great distraction from the flaming shitstorm the Tories have created in every other aspect of Government.
And the performative blocking of the GRL also twists the nipples of Nu-New Labour, putting an unwelcome spotlight on its disgraceful policy of pandering to ‘culturally intolerant’ Tory voters, in this case by shitting all over its members in the Scottish Parliament who voted for passage.
The Tories are almost certainly going to lose the next Election, but they’re not going out without hammering divisive wedges into every available hairline crack in the British body politic.
Frankensteinbeck
@eclare:
Is this a reference to money laundering?
@Aussie Sheila:
As you may be noticing lately, conservatives aren’t disciplined at all. They have a voting base with consistent demands: “Fuck you, libs, for taking away our god-given right to be asshole bigots.” Super-easy to fall in line with.
Lately, their voters are turning on the previous round of elected, not for any difference in ideology, but for failing to deliver. A black man was elected president, and the white supremacy party keeps failing to secure absolute power for the white identity minority. Meanwhile the majority gets even more accepting of groups the white identity minority hates and is used to abusing freely and violently. This is an apocalypse situation to GOP voters – and until failure became unacceptable because of their deranged desperation, incredibly easy to unify over.
It doesn’t and can’t work that way here. The American system is inherently bottom-up. If a candidate can convince the primary voters they’re what the voters want, that’s it. They get the job. Period, end of discussion. That’s how Trump, loathed by the establishment, won over the establishment pick Jeb Bush. That’s why the establishment fell in fanatical line behind him. Their voters had spoken, loud and clear.
Geminid
@Geminid:
@Aussie Sheila: I would add that the US Green Party has dwindled in its influence on the American left. The Democratic Socialists of America were picking up their slack for a while, but the DSA now seems to have hit a wall in growing their membership. They and the Working Families Party are still forces in New York politics.
I think most of the pragmatic progressives have chosen to express their political power within the Democratic Party, in coalition with liberals and moderates.
Geminid
Whoops! Wrong thread.
Betty
@lowtechcyclist: If only he were an isolated case. Seems like we are overwhelmed by them these days.
Geminid
@HumboldtBlue: @MichaelPaulauski put up a good twitter thread yesterday, analysing Judge LaSalle’s judicial record. He concludes that while LaSalle is maybe not as terrible a choice as critics say, he’s still a bad pick on Hochul’s part. I think New York Senate hearings on LaSalle are due to begin today.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is also attending Davos this year, in order to pitch his state as a location for the electric vehicle industry.
Anyway
@Gvg:
They’re senators and have no role/ vote in the House Speaker contest.
Geminid
@Geminid: @TomWatson, an academic at an NYC university, has been following the LaSalle nomination on his twitter account. Watson opposes the nomination, but he is fairly objective and has no anti-Hochul axe to grind.
Mai Naem mobile
@Amir Khalid: Sinema’s hobnobbing with rich people. That’s her thang.
@Gvg: when she was in the House she used to vote for John Lewis. It was the mavericky thing to not vote for Nancy Pelosi. BTW, Gabby Giffords also didn’t vote for Pelosi either. I don’t think Giffords is a Sinema but she also played the maverick card.
I find Chippy Roy dangerous. He really comes across as one of those smart true believers who’s willing to break stuff even if the consequences are dire. He’s just got this cruel ruthless affect. I cannot believe this guy is a cancer survivor.
Josie
@Mai Naem mobile:
So, much like his mentor, Ted Cruz.
RAM
It’s always seemed to me the GOP’s attempts to renege on the national debt are unconstitutional. The 14th Amendment, Section 4 Public Debt, flatly states: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” Once spending is authorized by Congress and approved by the President it is clearly “authorized by law.” Trying to renege, then, seems not only morally and ethically wrong, but also clearly unconstitutional.
Betsy
Yegqds, he even has a Confederate officer cosplay beard!
Citizen Alan
@HumboldtBlue: So Hochul’s nominee is “odious” now? Again, I ask for the third time, what did the guy do that’s so objectionable other than join a ruling on an overbroad subpoena that was to the benefit of a pregnancy crisis center?
Citizen Alan
@James E Powell: Her plan, obviously, is to run as an independent and try to pressure the Dems to clear the field for her. But (a) I don’t think she could win that way because Dems in AZ would refuse to vote for her in sufficient numbers to save her seat and (b) I’m honestly not persuaded that having a Republican who at least ran as a moderate (not that there’s such a thing as a genuinely moderate Republican) wouldn’t be better than having her ratfuck us for another 6 years. At least after 6 years, the Dems would be united against that republican, but we’ll never be rid of Synema if we give in to her blackmail.
Citizen Alan
PREACH! And may I suggest we have the same policy regarding the Democratic Socialists of America, which I am also certain is used by oligarchs foreign and domestic as a stalking horse to damage Democrats.
Citizen Alan
@Geminid: As I recently told a Facebook friend who is a DSA member (and who is also an IT guy for a major corporation who nevertheless spouts off about how he wants to abolish capitalism), I would never support the Democratic Socialists because I am not a Democratic Socialist. I am a Social Democrat, which, in true Monty Python fashion, makes the Democratic Socialists my mortal enemies.
artem1s
great suggestion. want to know why Ohio Dem Party is such a mess? Green party, Kucinich babies, and glibertarian ‘organizers’ creating burn it all down chaos at the local level.
Geminid
@Citizen Alan: I don’t know if you mess with Twitter, but yesterday @MichaelPaulauski put up a pretty good and measured review of LaSalle’s judicial record. Paulauski’s conclusion was that while LaSalle’s “anti-choice” position is an exaggeration, other decisions make him a bad choice.
Other criticisms of Governor Hochul’s nominee is that there is a conservative majority on the court already that needed to be rebalanced with a more liberal judge.
@TomWatson, a liberal NYC commenter opposes the nominee on more political grounds. Hochul should have listened to Senate and union leaders, Watson says, and not have made a choice bound to bring on a divisive fight with the Senate Democrats.
LaSalle’s first day of Senate hearings are going on now so New York news sites will be jammed with stories this evening.
Geminid
https://www.moorevoices.net/post/moore-county-timeline-of-terror-part-2