Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“But what about the lurkers?”

All hail the time of the bunny!

Second rate reporter says what?

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

You are here: Home / Politics / GOP Death Cult / Repub Stupidity Open Thread: Squeaker McCarthy Is In The Pigslop Over His Wingtips, Again

Repub Stupidity Open Thread: Squeaker McCarthy Is In The Pigslop Over His Wingtips, Again

by | 89 Comments

This post is in: , , , , ,


Reader Interactions

89Comments

  1. 1.

    japa21

    McCarhy is dumb, but there are dumber GOPers in Congress.  But there are none that are bigger cowards.

  2. 2.

    Ohio Mom

    Fetterman looks to be in fine fettle (sorry, I couldn’t help myself). I haven’t seen a video of him in a long while, looks to me his brain is fully healed.

  3. 3.

    SpaceUnit

    The strategy of creating an aura of scandal and trusting the media to not properly contextualize it has a proven record of success for Republicans.

    I’d like to think our MSM have learned but I’m not optimistic.

  4. 4.

    Salty Sam .

    @Ohio Mom: Fetterman looks to be in fine fettle (sorry, I couldn’t help myself).

    You should be ashamed!

    Not really- good one.

    And I’d just like to say that I LOVE Senator Fetterman.  In a totally manly way, of course.  Best troll we have in the Senate!

  6. 6.

    bbleh

    Per earlier comment elsewhere:

    Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced today that, acceding to the demands of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, he will for the remainder of this legislative year wear a ball nose and big floppy shoes and a tiny hat, and he will precede all his remarks with several toots on a bicycle horn.

    They didn’t elect him as a leader.  They elected him for precisely the opposite reason.

  7. 7.

    Geminid

    I kinda want a government shutdown October 1st just to see foungkin’ Glenn Youngkin explain to Virginia’s federal workers and contractors why it’s a good thing to be going without paychecks, and how voting in Republican General Assembly majorities will make their lives even better.

  8. 8.

    dmsilev

    A reminder that a ginned-up conservative-media-fueled impeachment inquiry with no substance behind it resulted in Bill Clinton becoming more popular and Speaker Gingrich basically getting turfed out by his own ostensible supporters.

    Please proceed, Kevin.

  9. 9.

    Alison Rose

    LOL Fetterman is awesome.

    So how do the members of the FreakDumb Caucus navigate their joint custody over the jar holding Kevin’s balls? Does it swap hands every day, once a week, on the full moon? Must be complicated!

  10. 10.

    Jeffro

    Two good, probably unintentionally complementary pieces in That Paper:

    David French (you have to ignore the ‘both sides’ stuff, a little): where’s the evidence, Mr. Speaker?

    But at the risk of sounding crass, where is the blue dress? Where is the phone call? Where is the riot? There’s little question that Biden family members — especially Hunter but also Joe Biden’s brother James and daughter-in-law Hallie — have profited enormously over the course of Joe Biden’s political career. But evidence that the president was himself involved in Hunter’s schemes or shared in any of the profits is thus far lacking, as is any evidence that the president violated the law.
    Ironically enough, McCarthy’s announcement came months after the initial Republican investigations failed to find any criminal activity by the president. There is no evidence remotely comparable to the evidence that spurred inquiries against Clinton or Trump.
    …It’s also worth mentioning here the sheer extent of Republican hypocrisy. The deep concern that Joe Biden might have profited from his position sounds almost comical after the G.O.P. has spent years trying to divert Americans’ attention from the blatant way that the Trump administration steered federal dollars into trump properties during his presidency. And if we’re talking about the sleaziness of presidential family members profiting from their access to power, then Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump — who, unlike Hunter, worked in the administration — have benefited to exponentially greater degrees from Saudi and Chinese largess.

    They pull this shit because they know that almost no matter what they do, they can keep it close…and maybe win.

    Michelle Goldberg: The Authors of ‘How Democracies Die’ Overestimated The Republicans

    (well yeah, that’s easy to do!)

    “Tyranny of the Minority” is their attempt to make sense of how American democracy eroded so fast. “Societal diversity, cultural backlash and extreme-right parties are ubiquitous across established Western democracies,” they write. But in recent years, only in America has a defeated leader attempted a coup. And only in America is the coup leader likely to once again be the nominee of a major party. “Why did America, alone among rich established democracies, come to the brink?” they ask.
    A disturbing part of the answer, Levitsky and Ziblatt conclude, lies in our Constitution, the very document Americans rely on to defend us from autocracy. “Designed in a predemocratic era, the U.S. Constitution allows partisan minorities to routinely thwart majorities, and sometimes even govern them,” they write. The Constitution’s countermajoritarian provisions, combined with profound geographic polarization, have locked us into a crisis of minority rule.

    Liberals — myself very much included — have been preoccupied by minority rule for years now, and you’re probably aware of the ways it manifests. Republicans have won the popular vote in only one out of the last eight presidential elections, and yet have had three Electoral College victories. The Senate gives far more power to small, rural states than large, urbanized ones, and it’s made even less democratic by the filibuster. An unaccountable Supreme Court, given its right-wing majority by the two-time popular-vote loser Trump, has gutted the Voting Rights Act. One reason Republicans keep radicalizing is that, unlike Democrats, they don’t need to win over the majority of voters.

    All liberal democracies have some countermajoritarian institutions to stop popular passions from running roughshod over minority rights. But as “Tyranny of the Minority” shows, our system is unique in the way it empowers a minority ideological faction at the expense of everyone else. And while conservatives like to pretend that their structural advantages arise from the judicious wisdom of the founders, Levitsky and Ziblatt demonstrate how many of the least democratic aspects of American governance are the result of accident, contingency and, not least, capitulation to the slaveholding South.
     
    It’s worth remembering that in 2000, when many thought George W. Bush might win the popular vote but lose in the Electoral College, Republicans did not intend to quietly accept the results. “I think there would be outrage,” Representative Ray LaHood, a Republican from Illinois, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Bush camp planned to stoke a “popular uprising,” in the words of The Daily News, quoting a Bush aide: “The one thing we don’t do is roll over. We fight.”
    Most Democrats, however, feel little choice but to acquiesce to a system tilted against them. Depending on the Constitution for protection from the worst abuses of the right, they’re reluctant to delegitimize it. Besides, America’s Constitution is among the hardest in the world to change, another of its countermajoritarian qualities.

    Levitsky and Ziblatt don’t have any shortcuts for emerging from the straitjacket of minority rule. Rather, they call on readers to engage in the glacial slog of constitutional reform. Some people, Ziblatt told me, might think that working toward institutional reforms is naïve. “But the thing that I think is really naïve is to think that we can just sort of keep going down this path and that things will just work out,” he said.

  11. 11.

    CaseyL

    I expect nothing good from the MSM.  They’ll do to Biden what they did to Hillary: talk about clouds of suspicion, claim there must be “something” behind all the smoke and mirrors because the GOP is making a big deal of it, say “well, it’s out there, we have to talk about it” using Fox News as reference point and framing.

    I mean, they hate Biden already – for pissant reasons, but they do hate him.  Plus a Biden impeachment gives them a “Both sides!” when mentioning Trump’s trials.  They’ll be thrilled to be able to talk scandal scandal impeachment scandal all day and all night.

    And Democrats will hardly ever appear on MSM talkfests, and hardly ever be interviewed, because the MSM never has given us equal time.

  13. 13.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    OT: This does not sound like the behavior of a sober person

    U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert was escorted out of a Sunday night performance of the “Beetlejuice” musical in downtown Denver, accused by venue officials of vaping, singing, recording and “causing a disturbance” during the performance.

    In an incident report shared with The Denver Post on Tuesday afternoon, officials with Denver Arts & Venues wrote that two patrons were asked to leave the city-owned Buell Theatre during the performance of the touring Broadway show. They previously were issued a warning during the intermission regarding behavior that prompted three complaints from other theatergoers, the report says.

    she will be voting on the article/s of impeachment, if McCarthy gets it that far

  14. 14.

    dmsilev

    LA Times:

    California’s five most vulnerable incumbent Republicans don’t seem to want to discuss impeachment. Their offices either declined to comment or did not respond when The Times reached out to ask about the subject last week.

    But that silence won’t stop Democrats and their allies from hammering the issue. The Congressional Integrity Project launched a digital ad campaign against all 18 Biden-district Republicans on Tuesday.

    “After seven weeks at home, Representative Mike Garcia is returning to Washington,” one ad says. “America faces critical priorities: healthcare, the economy, the cost of living. But MAGA Republican leaders like [Kevin] McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Greene want to focus on their bogus impeachment of President Biden, even though they have no evidence. All to protect Donald Trump.”

    I’m sure all those swing-district GOP Reps are just thrilled that they’re being jerked around by McCarthy’s kowtowing to the Freedom Caucus loons.
    So sad.

  15. 15.

    Jackie

    What happens if “My Kevin” is fired as Speaker? There isn’t ONE GQP who wants the job, and there’s no way any nominee gets the required 218 votes.

    No sworn in Speaker means the House is at an empasse – which means the government shuts down.

    And even dumb nut “My Kevin” is aware of this.

    I think it’s time to stock up on 🍿 and favorite beverages.

  16. 16.

    piratedan

    @CaseyL: same as it ever was….

    Faux News says that there’s something fishy…

    GOP says there’s something fishy…

    MSM then chimes in and says that some people are finding things fishy

    the general public says, hmmm, something must be fishy since everyone is talking about it…

    as such, how Faux manufactures talking points and frames the narrative ad nauseum.

    what exactly is fishy?  no one knows, people are simply talking about it.

  17. 17.

    RaflW

    AOC’s take from earlier today is correct on this (esp coupled with a budget shutdown): Chaos vibes. That will be the GOP brand after this utter horse shit farrago.

    How did the 2020 mid-terms go for Republicans? Or for Newt’s Congress after that impeachment imbroglio?

    Yeah, the press is going to whiff on how to talk about how utterly evidence-free this is. But I think voters will know the House GOP is just fapping in a corner to please an insane, shrinking base, and not doing squat for them.

  18. 18.

    catclub

    @Jeffro: ​
     

    The Constitution’s countermajoritarian provisions, combined with profound geographic polarization, have locked us into a crisis of minority rule.

    This is dumb. Would you rather have Hungary’s, Poland’s, Israel’s or Italy’s version of fascists in charge? We are doing better than those, not worse.

  19. 19.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @piratedan:

    @CaseyL:

    So far, it hasn’t worked. GOP House investigations have failed to get the public or the MSM to care about the Hunter Biden stuff. None of it really makes sense and there’s no connection to the POTUS

    I think it worked on Hillary Clinton because there had already been a near 20 year smear campaign against her. Plus misogyny. Can’t forget that

  21. 21.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @catclub:

    I thought Italy’s weren’t that bad? At least not anti-democratic from what I’ve been told. Haven’t looked too closely at them I admit. They’ll have to actually govern and I suspect if Italian voters don’t view things as better under them, the party/coalition will be voted out of power

  22. 22.

    Anne Laurie

    @Jackie: What happens if “My Kevin” is fired as Speaker? There isn’t ONE GQP who wants the job, and there’s no way any nominee gets the required 218 votes.

    Matt ‘Butthead’ Gaetz seems to be making a strong play for the job.  Whether even his fellow Tantrum Carcassers are dumb enough to let him have it… is a question for another day.

  23. 23.

    bbleh

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): concur.  Even with the added excitement of PENIS!! they just don’t seem to be making much headway (heh).  The alleged impeachment thing — with which I guess executive agencies may not cooperate — seems to focus on vague financial something-or-other.

    It’s all for show of course, like pretty much all Republican politics now other than tax cuts.  But this show ain’t selling out the house…

  24. 24.

    RaflW

    @CaseyL: The press seems to be settling in on the old and failing (bullshit) theme. The execrable NYT circle-jerked itself today by headlining that Biden has ‘shaky public performances’ just days after they knowingly mischaracterized his joke about jet lag as him being … shaky.

    Sure, they’ll Hillary’s Emails some of the Hunter stuff, too, but what the Beltway (and their NY friends) have craved is some meta ‘narrative’ they can flog that shows there just as tough on Democrats, so they can feel (wrongly!!) that they’re fair and balanced when they report the endless parade of actual GOP scandal.

  25. 25.

    Gin & Tonic

    I know we’re supposed to hate Twitter here, but lots of people in Ukraine use it, so I do too. And I’ve noticed what I think is a change in the UI. Used to be, when you clicked on a Tweet that had, say, 197 “likes” (the heart symbol) you could click on the number 197 and get a list of the people who’d liked said Tweet. Now, you click on the number, and it highlights the heart, meaning you are “liking” the Tweet – but you can’t see the others who did. This is on a desktop in a browser. On my phone, where I have studiously *not* updated the Twitter app to “X” it does work as I was accustomed – you can click on the number and get the list of people who liked the Tweet. Is this working as Elmo intended, or am I doing something wrong here?

  26. 26.

    RaflW

    @Anne Laurie: I can’t imagine what iceberg of reality steamship America will be headed for if Matt Gaetz manages to acquire the gavel. If I lived outside our nation’s borders, I’d probably pop barrels of popcorn and watch. But there aren’t enough flood-proof bulkheads to save us from the Chaos Vibes he would bring to that post.

  27. 27.

    Jackie

    @RaflW: “to please an insane, shrinking base” of One.

    I wonder how long long it’ll take for TIFG’s loyalists to finally realize they might get primaried? The completely gerrymandered districts will still be Repugs, but maybe less MAGA?

  28. 28.

    RaflW

    @Gin & Tonic: Elmo screwed the interface again. One now has to tap the three dots (…) in the upper right corner of the desired tweet, then from the pulldown, select “view post engagements” to see who has ReXitted or Liked something.

    If anything in the Xitter universe requires more steps to accomplish, it’s a sign Elmo hates that we do it, but has so far been talked out of nuking that feature entirely — so far.

    And yes that mean he’s still a petty dumbass and a crap businessman.

  30. 30.

    mrmoshpotato

    Looking to impeach President Biden for nothing, and being economic terrorists by threatening another government shutdown.

    Can we throw the GOP into the Sun already, and get an opposition party of actual adults?

  31. 31.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    OT:

    Did any of you hear about the awful story about Micheal Oher, from The Blind Side? His so-called adoptive parents, the Tuoys, placed him under a conservatorship, telling him it was the only way to make him apart of their family as he was 18 and supposedly couldn’t adopt him. Oher only really found out that they lied fairly recently, and he had been in conservatorship for nearly 20 years. He’s suing them now.

    They absolutely did it to steer him to their alma mater, Ole Miss; they’re boosters of the school and NCAA rules would’ve prohibited this if they had officially adopted him. Plus, I suspect, given the stories about the Tuoys, they didn’t want Oher to have inheritance rights. The whole thing stinks to high heaven, as the lawyer who handled his conservatorship, the author the book the movie was based on, etc were friends of the Tuoys.

    The most disturbing thing to me though, is how a court approved this when Oher clearly didn’t meet the criteria for a conservatorship

    I never liked The Blind Side because it was a patronizing white savior story that made Oher look like he was special needs when he never was. I’ve read you have to be pretty smart to play the position he did, especially at the professional level. Sandra Bullock’s character literally had to teach him how to play football when the real Oher had been playing for years already.

  33. 33.

    Jeffro

    @catclub: Look at that statement again

    The Constitution’s countermajoritarian provisions, combined with profound geographic polarization, have locked us into a crisis of minority rule.

    and tell me that we aren’t locked into that problem here in the U.S. at the moment, other countries be damned?

    I don’t get why you’re raising the distraction, but whatever.  It’s something that needs addressing here, now.

  34. 34.

    West of the Rockies

    I would like to believe most Americans will see the impeachment inquiry as pure performative bullshit.  I hope it blows up in the ugly faces of the House Repugs.

    Also,  helped my kid move from a second story apartment across town to a third story apartment.  I am so damn tired.

  35. 35.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Jackie:

    MTG and Gaetz are at odds… without her support… no 218 votes.

    Huh. They hate each other too? I thought they were all buddy-buddy. Wasn’t it Greene he was talking about during an interview when he said he needed a cigarette after hearing a speech by her lol?

    I guess it’s not just Boebert and her that hate each other

    ETA: Yup, it was Marge he was talking about, in 2021

  38. 38.

    japa21

    There will never be Articles of Impeachment brought to the floor of the House.  There aren’t enough Republicans to get them passed.  But there is no intention to go through with the process, merely to create the possible question of wrongdoing.  I actually don’t even expect the hearings to be all that public.

  39. 39.

    Lyrebird

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): There were a few threads recently that discussed this, but I don’t remember exactly which day.  It’s a shameful story, for sure.  I hope he has a good lawyer.

    I did not watch the movie bc it looked ultra cringe and patronizing, and I do not like to admit that I believed the advertising that said oh this is a true story.  Again, I hope Mr. Oher has an excellent lawyer.

    Side note: you can indeed adopt an 18 y  old.  Or a 38 year old, in some circumstances that vary by state.

  40. 40.

    opiejeanne

    Kyle Cheney tweeted this today:

     

    NEW: The Biden administration has a literal Trump card to play against the House GOP impeachment inquiry: In 2020, Trump’s DOJ issued a binding legal opinion that impeachment inquiries are invalid without an official vote of the House.

  41. 41.

    Scout211

    @opiejeanne: In 2020, Trump’s DOJ issued a binding legal opinion that impeachment inquiries are invalid without an official vote of the House.

    Well, then there really is no problem. Their impeachment inquiry is merely aspirational.  They don’t seem to care whether it is valid or official.

  43. 43.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Senior FBI agent disputes some whistleblowers’ claims about Hunter Biden probe

    Key parts of Sobocinski’s interview with lawmakers focused onan Oct. 7, 2022, meeting that Gary Shapley, one of the IRS whistleblowers, had earlier described to the lawmakers.

    Shapley said Weiss told FBI and IRS agents during that meeting that Weiss was not the “deciding official on whether charges are filed.” But Sobocinski, who was also there, said he did not hear Weiss say that and“never felt that [Weiss] needed approval” to bring charges. […]
    “I never thought that anybody was there above David Weiss to say no,” he said.

  44. 44.

    Eunicecycle

    @japa21: sort of like when Trump encouraged Georgia, Arizona, etc to just announce there might have been improprieties in the counting of votes. And let the Rs take care of the rest.

  45. 45.

    CaseyL

    @opiejeanne: ​

    I can’t find it right now, but I saw a post on Mastodon (maybe Legal Mastodon) stating that impeachment is completely within the purview of the House; the Executive has no power to make any rules regarding the process. That “binding legal opinion” was pure BS by Trump’s Office of Legal Counsel.

    However, I do hope the Biden Administration ignores House subpoenas and refuses to cooperate. The Executive Branch has too much real work to do, to send its people out to a shitshow.​

  46. 46.

    wjca

    @bbleh: They didn’t elect him as a leader.  They elected him for precisely the opposite reason.

    Actually, they elected him Speaker.  Speaking being something he can actually do.  (Well, better than TIFG.  Admittedly a very low bar.)

    Scalise is the one elected Majority Leader.  Not sure he has any aptitude for it.  But being better at it than McCarthy is (recurring theme) a low bar.

  48. 48.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    ALL of that highly incriminating evidence that Qevin has for impeaching Biden ALSO shows that Qevin is a traitor and goat-fncker.  Every single bit of it.

    Maybe the MSM should report on it.

  49. 49.

    Jackie

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Wasn’t it Greene he was talking about during an interview when he said he needed a cigarette after hearing a speech by her lol?

    I guess it’s not just Boebert and her that hate each other

    ETA: Yup, it was Marge he was talking about, in 2021

    That was then; now she’s threatening Kevin she’ll refuse to vote for a new budget IF he refuses to impeach Biden. MTG has effectively grabbed Kevin’s balls and is slowly squeezing harder…

  50. 50.

    karen marie

    Someone posted on Mastodon a screenshot of a McCarthy tweet that he hasn’t deleted (from before the first Trump impeachment, I believe)  that said “Pelosi can’t just open an impeachment hearing, the House has to vote on it.”

    I wonder what changed?

  51. 51.

    RaflW

    @CaseyL: Since the whole thing is pattycake/make believe, then I really do think the BIden Admin should mail back a hard copy of that Trump DoJ memo in response to any subpoena.

    I hate that, longer term, it does weaken the power of Congress to compel testimony. But everything the GOP does these days has toxic penumbras and emanations.

  55. 55.

    wjca

    @japa21: there is no intention to go through with the process, merely to create the possible question of wrongdoing.  I actually don’t even expect the hearings to be all that public.

    The obvious optimum course for them: closed hearings and massive (and, of necessity, inaccurate) leaks.  Combined with the best Joe McCarthy “I have a list right here…!” blather from the whole Nutcase Caucus.  Closed hearings avoid any chance of revealing embarrassing facts which don’t fit the narrative.  Or awkward comparisons to the Trump impeachment presentation.

  57. 57.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Gin & Tonic: ​  You now have to click on the three dots on the upper right then click on View Post Engagement.​
    ETA: Beaten by everyone and their cousin. But I knew something about things with computers so that counts for something.

  58. 58.

    wjca

    Allow me to make an extended prediction.  (Hey, all kinds of pundits do this.  Can I do any worse?  Even if I’m not Agnes Nutter.)

    While the Nutcase Caucus is distracted by their impeachment inquiry farce, the House manages to pass a continuing resolution.
    No actual budget, let alone spending bills, ever get done, and the CR expires 30 Sep 24.
    Next September we again have no budget and no spending bills for the coming year.
    BUT, the Nutcase Caucus has vowed not to get played yet again.  So this time the government does shut down.
    It’s still shutdown a month later on November 5th (Election Day).

    Predicting the impact on the election is left as an exercise for the student.

  59. 59.

    jonas

    @dmsilev: Not only that, Clinton did sort of actually do the thing they said was deserving of impeachment (lie about his affair with Monica Lewinsky) and it still blew up in their faces. They don’t even have that this time around.

    McCarthy pulled the trigger on this I think hoping that these Freedumb Caucus idiots will eventually grow tired of facing a media scrum every day, day in day out, asking what the fuck they’re doing and where any evidence is of an impeachable offense and eventually call it off or get distracted by something else.

  62. 62.

    Ruckus

    @Alison Rose:

    Just by the general evidence that everyone can see, I think he lost those a very, very long time ago Might have been an elementary school bus incident/accident where someone put an M80 down his pants…. (could possibly have been him trying to prove that he had some to lose)

  63. 63.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Ammar Moussa @ammarmufasa 9h

    Statement from the Biden-Harris campaign: “As Donald Trump ramped up his demands for a baseless impeachment inquiry, Kevin McCarthy cemented his role as the Trump campaign’s super-surrogate by turning the House of Representatives into an arm of his presidential campaign.

  64. 64.

    gene108

    @dmsilev:

    A reminder that a ginned-up conservative-media-fueled impeachment inquiry with no substance behind it resulted in Bill Clinton becoming more popular and Speaker Gingrich basically getting turfed out by his own ostensible supporters.

    Also resulted in Al Gore’s distancing himself from President Clinton, in the 2000 presidential election, because Bill brought “shame and dishonor” to the White House.

  65. 65.

    jonas

    @piratedan: That worked when it was just committee hearings or whatever, like with Benghazi. The committee chair could leak what he wanted and control the narrative. An impeachment is a whole different thing. They’ve leveled up now, and I’m not sure stringing reporters along day after day with “we’ll come up with some evidence eventually” is going to generate the positive coverage they’re hoping for. Fox and the other Trumpist propaganda outlets will be loyal stans of course, but I think other outlets may smell the sweetest of all chum in the water: desperate politicians.

  67. 67.

    Mike in NC

    If McCarthy had to find a real job, Walmart of Bakersfield would have rejected him from unloading trucks.

  68. 68.

    jonas

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think Weiss *himself* has stated that he and he alone made charging decisions and at no time did anyone influence his judgment. So the person the whistleblower says was being pressured has said in no uncertain terms that that’s not true.

  69. 69.

    Kelly

    @dmsilev: I’m in an Oregon swing district. My Republican Rep has been trying to keep the district from noticing she is part of the Republican lunacy. Eastern Oregon’s safe Republican district’s Rep Bentze is ready to rumble with the impeachment. Craziness could sweep Chavez-DeRemer out the door.

     

    Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, R-Oregon, described the impeachment inquiry as a “momentous step.” A spokesman for Chavez-DeRemer didn’t answer specific questions about whether Chavez-DeRemer supports the inquiry and whether there should be any limits on the inquiry’s scope, instead sharing a four-sentence statement.

    “An impeachment inquiry is just what it sounds like — a search for facts and the truth regarding serious allegations against President Biden,” the statement said. “This is a momentous step, and it should be treated solemnly and without political maneuvering or grandstanding. Like all Americans, I want the truth to come out through a fair, dignified, and just process. While this plays out, I remain focused on keeping the federal government open and functioning, so that there are no disruptions to services for Oregonians.”

    Bentz represents a safely Republican district in eastern Oregon, while Chavez-DeRemer’s 5th Congressional District is more competitive. She won by 2 percentage points last year and Biden won the district  in 2020.

     

    oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2023/09/12/bentz-supports-biden-impeachment-inquiry-chavez-deremer-distan…

  70. 70.

    piratedan

    @Kelly: yeah…. nothing says “fair, just and dignified” better than having Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Buckaroo Boebert speaking on behalf of the inquiry.

  71. 71.

    jonas

    @Kelly: I’m thinking of calling up my congressman (R-Weaselville) tomorrow and giving the intern (calmly) an earful about bogus impeachments and shutdowns. We’re in a Biden +7 district here, so I’m sure he’s squirming a bit tonight. Good.

  72. 72.

    Joe Falco

    @gene108: 

    An enduring reminder that Democrats should never let Republicans (or the media for that matter) set the narrative because Democrats will never be rewarded for playing along.

  75. 75.

    Burnspbesq

    @CaseyL:

    OLC opinions are binding on the Executive Branch. Which means that unless there is a vote by the full House to initiate an inquiry, the Executive Branch is required to blow off subpoenas, and will have a potentially solid defense against contempt of Congress charges.

  77. 77.

    Burnspbesq

    Right now, the most likely person to be able to get 218 votes for Speaker is Jeffries, and unless he’s not nearly as smart as I think he is, he ain’t going near that tire-fire.

  79. 79.

    BruceFromOhio

    Brain stem driving the bus. Its like McCarthy knows the ride ends up in the ditch, and just does not care because Jim Jordan. He’s got his own “Tire Rims and Anthrax” scenario, and goes on the date anyway.

  82. 82.

    Matt McIrvin

    Isn’t the case simple? He’s guilty of being a Democrat. I’m actually kind of surprised that isn’t a slam dunk for them.

  83. 83.

    Matt McIrvin

    @gene108: With Clinton there was a sex scandal with some substance to it, and Al Gore’s problem was that being squeaky clean and a bit of a prig was actually part of his brand.

  84. 84.

    sab

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Late to this thread. Oher had his own book out a while back, shortly after the movie came out. It was partly about the Tuoeys (at that point he was still grateful for their care but quietly outraged about Lewis’s misrepresentation of him.) It was mostly about the difficulties in growing up in a family headed by a drug addicted single mom. His target audience was kids in difficult circumstances

    ETA I think a family with wholesome intentions would have kept Michael Lewis miles away from their home and that kid.

  85. 85.

    ETtheLibrarian

    McCarthy is an idiot. Everyone knows you don’t negotiate with terrorists.

    Now they are looking to oust him as leader. This is what he got for pushing through what will be a shambolic impeachment inquiry and no budget/CR. He gave them what they wanted, he got nothing for it, and now they smell blood in the water.

  86. 86.

    Geminid

    @ETtheLibrarian: House Republicans may lack an alternative to McCarthy. They might be able to unite around Scalise, but then what would be the point? I hope Gaetz tries to make good on his brag, though. The House is barely functional with McCarthy as Speaker, and it’s hard to see how that would improve with another Republican in the Chair.

    But Republicans are setting up a good line of attack against them. In 1948, Harry Truman used a “do nothing Congress” attack to good effect, and so can Joe Biden in 2024. I think it’s not a question of whether Democrats can reclaim the House next year, but a question of by how much.

  87. 87.

    eversor

    @Matt McIrvin:

    As I was a young youth and that was the first election I could vote the prig was most of it for my cohort.   The 90s weren’t all that great for us really.  There was Hillary Clinton crusading against rap music and then Tipper Gore crusading against video games.  There were multiple legal battles over this.

    I don’t think the older generations get how much of an impact those two things had.  For us the Republicans were the party of the Bible but the Democrats were the party of moral scolds launching lawsuits against what we loved.  That changed with Obama who openly talked about drug use (yes I enhaled, also did coke), loved hip-hop, and was young.

    Hillary was never going to turn out young voters because we all remembered the Clinton era and the railing against the things we loved.  That the Democrats did not realize this is on them.

  88. 88.

    linnen

    Clinton’s impeachment was, IMO, purely because the Republicans could not gin up any other scandalous material. (To the point of continuing past Starr’s investigation into the early part of the Bush II first term.) Even if the part about ‘lying under oath’* rose to the point of impeachment, what about it made the grade (so to speak) that the earlier Iran-Contra stuff under Reagan/Bush I administrations or the later lies that the Bush II administration used to get us into Iraq did not?

    * From what I have read Clinton’s perjury indictment was over-turned by a later judge as the result of perjury trap by the prosecution team.

Comments are closed.