If you missed Acyn’s clips of Hannity going after Boebert last night, you probably didn’t miss much except the clear impression that the win in all this for her and her fellow drooling morons is McCarthy’s scalp. At one point she says something to the effect that the goal of the nutty 20 is that KevMac will never be Speaker.
If that is really their goal, then McCarthy can’t do anything to placate them. Still, the latest concession from Kev is an offer to let one member of his caucus call a vote on his speakership at any time for any reason. At this point, anything that will get him to “Speaker” is enough for him. This puts the Republicans in a tough spot, and, reflexively, this means that there are some Democrats who think that means we need to save them.
I posted one example yesterday, from Marcy Kaptur. Today’s example is Robert Reich, writing in the Guardian:
Does this mean the rest of us have to sit back and allow a tiny minority of extreme rightwing Maga House Republicans controlled by Donald Trump to hijack congressional Republicans, who in turn will hijack the entire House, and thereby hijack much of Congress? [ed note: Don’t threaten me with a good time.]
No. There’s an alternative, and House Democrats and the few remaining “moderate” Republicans should take it: come together to make someone like Michigan’s moderate Republican Fred Upton or Ohio’s David Joyce the speaker of the House.
Reich at least thinks that Democrats should get something for the compromise — equal seating on committees. If dreams came true, oh, wouldn’t that be nice. Still, it’s interesting to examine Reich’s case for Joyce being a “moderate”:
Joyce is hardly a progressive. During Trump’s presidency, he voted in line with Trump’s stated position 91.8% of the time. And he voted against impeaching Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection.
But Joyce is not a Maga Republican. He refused to sign the Texas amicus brief that tried to overturn the results of the presidential election. He was also one of the few Republican House members who did not object to the counting of electoral college votes on January 6, 2021.
Could the bar be any lower? This is like saying that someone is a good human because they have a resting pulse of 70 and 20 respirations per minute.
Thank the gods old and new that, unlike Reich, Republicans understand that any negotiation and deal cut with Democrats is poison for Republicans. The bare fact that most Republicans have a deep and abiding hatred for Democrats is something that still can’t be spoken in the polite pages of even supposedly liberal outlets like the Guardian. So, we get pieces like Reich’s rather than ones that examine why Republicans are willing participants in a system where barely literate grifters like Boebert, and sleazy sugar daddies like Gaetz, can hold the rest of them as hostages.
Republican Failure is not the Democrats’ ProblemPost + Comments (93)