Republican Stupidity

Tuesday Night Open Thread: The GOP Death Cult Steps On Its Own… Leadership

by Anne Laurie| January 3, 20239:09 pm| 120 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Stupidity, Republican Venality, Republicans in Disarray!

The new House of Representatives adjourned for the first time with no speaker, no new members sworn in, and no clear path to functioning as a governing body in the near future. https://t.co/rD89VlHROz

— Axios (@axios) January 4, 2023

… State of play: Three times, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) fell short of the 218 votes needed to become speaker, with 19 Republicans voting for alternative candidates on the first and second ballots.

– On the third ballot, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) switched his vote from McCarthy to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) — calling on the GOP conference to huddle and “come to a consensus” given that McCarthy “doesn’t have the votes.”

– “Hard to overstate the psychological/optical blow of *losing* support on the third ballot when you desperately need things to be heading the opposite direction,” Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman tweeted.

What’s next: McCarthy and the rebels are both digging in, threatening to turn the speaker battle into a war of attrition when the House returns tomorrow at noon.

– Asked how long he’s willing to let this go on, leading anti-McCarthy Republican Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) told reporters this evening: “Six more months.”
– For McCarthy, withdrawing from the race is not on the table. But there’s little else he can offer up in the spirit of compromise, given the raft of concessions he’s already made…

NOW: The U.S House of Representatives has adjourned for the day after Republicans, who have the majority, failed to elect a Speaker. It’s the first time in 100 yrs that a U.S. House speaker was not elected on first ballot. Kevin McCarthy was nominated 3 times. 3 times it failed.

— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) January 3, 2023

Democrats chanted Hakeem Jeffries' name after nominating the New York representative to be Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. He's received more votes than House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy 3 consecutive times. 🙌🏾 pic.twitter.com/j4J9zJEkae

— Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) January 3, 2023

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Tuesday Night Open Thread: The GOP Death Cult Steps On Its Own… LeadershipPost + Comments (120)

A Couple of Tidbits Whilst We Await McCarthy’s Excellent Adventure

by Tom Levenson| January 3, 202311:43 am| 242 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity

So–COVID is so far treating me with some kindness. Two nasty days, then yesterday, when it felt like nothing worse than the tail end of a bad cold, with today being pretty similar. Thanks to all the jackals for your kind thoughts.

So I’m up and dressed and at my computer, and wishing everyone a belated happy new year. I gotta think that this is yet another chapter in the why-we-love-vaccines epic. I’m fully jabbed, five doses, with the last being the Moderna bivalent booster in the first week of September. So yeah, I still caught the damn thing, but I am deeply grateful that my experience of it (touching wood) has been this benign. Hope it stays that way.

Anyway, as I tried to consume the entire internet before turning to my manuscript (keyboardscript? pixelscript?) I came across a couple of items that in microcosm capture the absurdity, banal evil, and sheer Hollywood-could-never-write-this-badly-tude of Kevin McCarthy and today’s GOP at large.

First, here is what may be thought of as the price of George Santos’ vote:

The part of [McCarthy’s] proposed changes to House rules that drew the most attention was allowing just five House members to call for a vote at any time on ousting the Speaker; that would render McCarthy beholden to the most extreme members of his caucus, should he get on their wrong side. But buried in the text was another provision that could be highly consequential for the new Congress being sworn in on Tuesday: language that would effectively gut the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), as the independent panel faces pressure to investigate lawmakers who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

McCarthy et al. are being sneaky about it: they’re not shutting the office down–just making it impossible for it do be anything more than a facade.

McCarthy’s proposal would require OCE to hire its staff for the 118th Congress within 30 days of the resolution’s adoption, a requirement that sources familiar with the process tell TIME would make it exceedingly difficult for the office to have the resources it needs to conduct its investigations, given how long it takes to hire candidates for roles in the federal government. The proposal would also block OCE from hiring new employees over the next two years if someone leaves their position, sources say…

The resolution would also impose eight-year term limits for members of OCE’s eight-member board, which is composed of four Democrats and four Republicans. The move would result in three of the four Democrats being forced to vacate their seats effective immediately. While the new Democratic leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, would be able to appoint replacements, the changes could still significantly slow down the panel’s work and zap it of valuable institutional knowledge.

The net result: not just Santos, but a whole lot of January 6 co-conspirators will slide, for the next two years at least.

That’s serious, and I don’t want to make light of it, but hey–the assiduous and unrelenting DC media will fill the gap, amirite?

The next one, though is (in hindsight) just freaking funny, a reminder of how lucky we all were that the 1/6 coup central cadres were such irredeemable drongos:

Then-President Donald Trump wanted to trademark the phrase “Rigged Election!” days after Election Day in 2020, according to emails provided by Jared Kushner to the House select committee…

That desire was handed off to the administration’s czar-of-all-portfolios, the ill-fitting-human-skinsuit-clad Jared:

“Guys – can we do ASAP please?” Kushner wrote.

There was a problem:

Dollman responded: “‘Save America PAC’ is already taken/registered, just confirming that. But we can still file for ‘Save America.’”

Red Lectroid Kushner was decisive:

Kushner’s response, according to the transcript, was: “Go.”

I laugh, I cry, I long for a better timeline.

Open thread, y’all.

Image: Pieter van der Heyden after Hieronymus Bosch, Die Blau Schuyte (The Ship of Fools), 1559.

A Couple of Tidbits Whilst We Await McCarthy’s Excellent AdventurePost + Comments (242)

Repubs in Disarray Open Thread: Kevin McCarthy Genuinely Wants to Be A Chewtoy

by Anne Laurie| January 2, 20239:28 pm| 148 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, Republicans in Disarray!, Schadenfreude

not *just* because it would be the funniest possible outcome, but because this is the kind of hubris that puts people who are on the fence firmly on the opposite side of you

— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) January 2, 2023

Odds are, in the end, Kevin McCarthy gets his dream job because all potential challengers are either too smart to try, or too disorganized to win, at taking him down. But for us Democrats, it’s great fun to watch the sausage being made! Gift (un-paywalled) link to the Washington Post‘s excellent, exhaustive story:

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and his allies have spent the holiday weekend working the phones and meeting with members, trying to salvage his career goal of becoming speaker on Tuesday as Republicans continue to argue over whether he deserves the top spot.

While an overwhelming majority of Republicans want to elect McCarthy (Calif.) as speaker, roughly 15 have put the outcome in serious doubt. McCarthy can afford to lose only four Republicans in Tuesday’s floor vote, and the razor-thin margin has emboldened staunch conservatives within the House Freedom Caucus, who have made specific demands in exchange for their votes…

Five Republicans have remained firm in their opposition to McCarthy, or are leaning toward no, since the midterms. They include Rep. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), who lost to McCarthy in a conference vote behind closed doors in November but will challenge him publicly on the floor Tuesday.

McCarthy met with key lawmakers across the ideological spectrum Monday evening to walk through what to expect Tuesday. No breakthrough occurred, as the holdouts emerged reiterating to reporters that they were still against his candidacy.

While McCarthy has made numerous concessions in an effort to win the holdouts’ votes, including changes to a provision that could limit his time as speaker, nine additional Republicans signed a letter late Sunday calling McCarthy’s proposal “insufficient,” further signaling that his ascent remains unassured…

Privately, McCarthy remains defiant, keeping some final tactics available as he intends to stay on the floor Tuesday as long as it may take to get elected, according to several lawmakers who, like others for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private and ongoing deliberations.

“To use his words, if they’re playing a game of chicken, he’s ripped the steering wheel out of the dashboard and he’s got his foot to the floor,” one Republican lawmaker said, paraphrasing a recent quip by McCarthy…

[McCarthy’s sweaty-fingered grasp on the English language remains… sweaty.]

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McCarthy’s potential failure to clinch the necessary 218 votes to become speaker could derail the 16-year congressional career that he has paved to reach this moment. Although he is known for his ability to trade favors in hopes of gaining trust, his quest could be for naught if he is unable to overcome the demands by some who seek to weaken the power of the speakership.

McCarthy, who entered the rungs of leadership just two years after he was first elected, in 2007, had a front-row seat to how the Freedom Caucus influenced the demise of the speakerships of John A. Boehner (Ohio) and Paul D. Ryan (Wis.). Seeing how both men tried to ostracize the Freedom Caucus from the mainstream Republican Party, McCarthy instead embraced the group, even after Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio) in 2015 led the group in opposition to McCarthy succeeding Boehner as the chamber’s top Republican.

“[McCarthy is] a very strong relationship guy,” said Frank Luntz, a GOP pollster who is close friends with McCarthy. “Most congressional leaders, the higher they climb, the less they listen. Kevin’s been exactly the opposite, and that’s been the secret of his success.”…

An endorsement from Frank Luntz — just what McCarthy needed in his time of trouble!

Also, the recent kerfuffle in the GOP septic tank has surfaced some memories of the last time, back in 2015, that McCarthy failed to attain his dream job: Whatever Happened to the Scandal That Derailed Kevin McCarthy’s Last Bid for Speaker?

NEW: Just caught up w @GOPLeader Kevin McCarthy in the Capitol.

He said he's feeling "actually really good" as he entered the speaker of the House suite on the second floor of the Capitol.

I asked him if he'd set motion to vacate at one, and he smiled and walked in the office

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) January 2, 2023

FWIW — House Democrats tell me they will be at full attendance tomorrow. If that's the case, and if all Republicans show up, the House will be at 434 and McCarthy needs 218 to win.

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) January 2, 2023

In order to secure enough votes to become speaker, he will have to make a bargain with more than one devil. https://t.co/jTYpk040k0

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) December 31, 2022

… Remember Richard Harris in the egregious 1970 movie, A Man Called Horse, in which Harris is a British nobleman who joins the Sioux, but not before he completes initiation rites that include being hung up by the thorax with pins? Next week, McCarthy will undergo something similar—except, unlike Harris’ John Morgan, McCarthy also will have to listen to Marjorie Taylor Greene. The arrangement is blatantly unconstitutional as a violation of the Eighth Amendment. It’s cruel and she’s unusual.

You see, McCarthy wants to be speaker of the House of Representatives. Nero didn’t want to be emperor as much as McCarthy wants to be speaker. Poisoning his rivals being unavailable as a campaign strategy, McCarthy has determined instead to further poison the political culture. He has already promised endless snipe hunts into everything from the administration’s COVID and border policies to Hunter Biden’s laptop, soon to replace “But Her Emails” as shorthand for pointless wastes of time, money, and political energy, all of which would be better spent on actual problems…

Only McCarthy’s vestigial conscience can tell him if the gavel is worth his coming humiliation. At the moment, for all his truckling and groveling, he still might not have the votes. Largely through the efforts of the people he’s currently placating and the former president* to whom they remain enthralled, the new Republican majority in the House is a slim 10 votes, which means that—assuming no Democrats vote for him, and god help any who do—with six new members already on record as refusing to vote for him, McCarthy is two votes short of what he needs. Since the establishment of the Constitution, only 14 elections for speaker have gone to multiple ballots; the last of them occurred in 1923, the only time it’s happened in the years since the Civil War…

Two years? It may only be two days. https://t.co/WBKQHoKyB5

— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) January 2, 2023

Backup backup plan for the "Only Kevin" caucus should be to find another guy named Kevin. See if Costner is available

— your himbo boyfriend (@swolecialism) January 1, 2023

Republicans could theoretically vote for a speaker who is not in the house but who reflects their values, like say Dennis Hastert.

— Jean-Michel Connard (@torriangray) January 2, 2023

(Yep, you’re not the only one who thought Denny was dead. As my people say: Heaven won’t have him, and Hell doesn’t want him.)

Repubs in Disarray Open Thread: Kevin McCarthy Genuinely <em>Wants</em> to Be A ChewtoyPost + Comments (148)

Sunday Evening Open Thread: Cheers for Our ‘Woke’ Military

by Anne Laurie| January 1, 20235:33 pm| 112 Comments

This post is in: Military, Republican Stupidity

These tweets all used to be about the Russian military until they spent a year getting tricked into pulling a string that dropped a piano on their headshttps://t.co/yGD2ZxWKQ9

— Zack Budryk (@BudrykZack) December 31, 2022

One gets the impression the self-defined Defenders of Tradition wouldn’t be whining half so loudly if it were TFG taking a selfie with the same troops. (Of course, Trump wouldn’t have allowed any military members below the rank of general within ten feet of his flabby self, unless they were fetching him Diet Coke or hamberders on a nicely polished tray.)

I am struck by the stupidity of this thread and of this shitposting account.

A little context. This is an Air Force logistics unit in South Korea. Everyone is young and many are nonwhite … because that's the military. The average age is 23 and half of millennials are nonwhite. https://t.co/Y5eO06GH2U

— George Chidi (find me on Mastodon) (@neonflag) December 31, 2022

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The idiocy about “wokeness” or the “lack of testosterone” in this shot isn’t just wrong. It’s deeply ignorant about how the military works and what valor looks like.

The people in this picture are the most likely targets of a North Korean first strike if Kim Jong Un gets froggy.

It takes no testosterone to kill people with modern military weaponry. A woman can guide a missile or drop a bomb as easily as a man. More, perhaps: there’s some evidence that female pilots can pull more Gs in a tight turn than men.

But lethality is not the measure that matters.

The distinction between troops and civilians is the uniform. By that, I mean it is marking oneself as a legitimate target in warfare, to distinguish yourself from people who should not be killed.

It’s not killing that matters. It’s the willingness to be killed to protect others.

Every one of those airmen has said that they’ll die if they have to, and serve about 50 miles south of North Korea and a dictator actively planning to kill them. The base is a prime first strike target. The flight time of a hypersonic missile to that base is roughly 60 seconds.

But shitty anti-woke blowhards like this are perfectly willing to throw troops under the bus in order to send racist signals to their mouthbreathing followers, all pretensions about supporting the troops be damned. The “controversy” is worth the clicks.

America’s far right knows no moral value that is more important than an opportunity to denigrate gays and Black people. Fact.

They’re siding with Russia against the United States. This is what it looks like.

Almost every reply to that idiot troll's post is accounts who are paying Melon $96 a year and have like 50 followers. It's hysterical.

— Dan Murphy (@bungdan) December 31, 2022

I think there's a poorly hidden sense of low-key horror, though, among those types, that the They/Them Army could totally wind up crushing their totalitarian senpais.

— Zoomer Antimillenarian ???? (@surcomplicated) December 31, 2022

[senpai]

Go yell at some more clouds grandpa https://t.co/hKuxiwjKNZ

— Mike Black (@MikeBlack114) December 31, 2022

99% of "Zelensky bad" takes are just microwaved "Woke Military" takes.

— Eric L. Robinson (@UticaEric) December 31, 2022

Sunday Evening Open Thread: Cheers for Our ‘Woke’ MilitaryPost + Comments (112)

Thanks, Dr. Fauci

by Betty Cracker| January 1, 202311:43 am| 153 Comments

This post is in: Healthcare, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity

Dr. Tony Fauci, who served as director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for decades, retired as a federal employee yesterday. He plans to write a memoir and accept speaking engagements to encourage people to choose careers in public service. He also says he’ll show up for House Republicans’ planned show trials if asked.

Republicans have relentlessly vilified Fauci, starting with Donald Trump, whose juvenile sneering was eagerly taken up by a vile parade of imitators like Rand Paul and Ron DeSantis. Maybe their innate amorality reacts on a cellular level to Fauci’s inherent integrity. It’s unsurprising but especially outrageous, considering the tremendous debt this country owes Fauci.

I’m old enough to remember when AIDS was an automatic death sentence that was killing so many gay guys in my friend set in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Fauci was on the job then too, and from the earliest days of the crisis, he was working with activists who were reviled by mainstream medical establishments, politicians and news outlets. Fauci worked his ass off to try to get answers on treatments and encourage GOP administrations to care about the carnage.

Peter Staley, an early member of the AIDS activist group ACT UP, wrote a guest essay for the NYT on his working relationship with Fauci and the friendship that grew between them over the years. Here’s a gift link and excerpt:

The regular meetings [Fauci] had with an ACT UP member, Bill Bahlman, continued even after Larry Kramer, one of the group’s founders, wrote an open letter to Dr. Fauci in The Village Voice calling him a murderer and comparing him to the Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann. But there Dr. Fauci was, meeting with me and my comrades, branded radical homosexuals, to discuss our policy proposal for upending longstanding Food and Drug Administration strictures against public access to drugs before they are approved…

Within months, hundreds of ACT UPers were surrounding his building at the N.I.H., and I was the first one arrested, after climbing onto its portico. Cops wrestled me down, bound my hands behind me with a zip tie, then hauled me through the building to a police van. The burly cop pulling my shoulder was dumbfounded when a familiar short man in a white lab coat walking toward us down the hallway yelled, “Peter, are you all right?” Laughing, I replied, “I’m fine. Just doing my job. How about you, Tony?”…

When Covid hit and the rest of the world got to know Dr. Fauci, he leaned on us for guidance… I’ve always been a politician among the activists, and it’s been the honor of my life that he leaned on me hard during his tumultuous year navigating “team normal” and “team crazy” in President Donald Trump’s orbit.

Because he crossed Mr. Trump, Dr. Fauci was turned into a villain for the MAGA crowd, providing fodder for those who thrive on conspiracies and hate. There has rarely been a larger gap between a mob’s viciousness and its target’s decency.

Emphasis mine because it’s the plain truth. As Staley notes, Dr. Fauci has his faults like everyone else, but he did an extraordinarily hard job competently, and he dedicated his life to saving lives. Bullies like Trump and DeSantis aren’t fit to shine Dr. Fauci’s wingtips. I hope he has a long, enjoyable and productive retirement and lives to see the goons who vilified him disgraced and shunned as they deserve.

Open thread.

Thanks, Dr. FauciPost + Comments (153)

Order in the Court

by Betty Cracker| December 27, 20221:25 pm| 155 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity

Soft-focus hologram Kari Lake, who campaigned for governor of Arizona in 2022 on a platform of lies about the 2020 election, lost. Then, following the trail blazed by the sore loser Trump, Lake filed a frivolous lawsuit over the Maricopa County results. She lost again. Now the county is asking the court to sanction Lake and her attorneys [TPM]:

Lawyers for unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who have made their name in the cottage industry of seeking to overturn elections for MAGA candidates, are now trying to bat back sanctions after their latest court loss.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson dismissed Lake’s lawsuit to overturn her election on Saturday following a two-day trial.

Lawyers for Maricopa County, joined in their arguments by the team representing Arizona Governor-elect Katie Hobbs (D), are asking the court to sanction both Lake and her lawyers “to impart to them the seriousness of their misuse of the courts to seek to undermine Arizona elections and impugn hardworking elections workers and officials for purely political — not legal — purposes.”

Good. Republicans are using the courts to undermine democracy, and it’s past time to shut that nonsense down. Making an example of some of these losers would be a good start.

Open thread.

Order in the CourtPost + Comments (155)

Tuning Spork USA (Open Thread)

by Betty Cracker| December 23, 20224:59 pm| 80 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity

Remember Charlie Kirk, the Turning Point USA Republican youth organization guy who has a cantaloupe-dimensioned face on a watermelon-sized head? (No really, google images for the name — he’s just odd looking!) Anyway, he’s attempting to flex on the RNC in ways that are roiling that already roiled organization, according to WaPo (gift link):

In a Monday email to the 168 members of the Republican National Committee, [Kirk] told them that donors and activists would desert the party unless it changed. The result, he said, would be colossal failure in the 2024 presidential election.

“How do we plan to win in 2024 if you so boldly reject listening to the grassroots, our donors, and the biggest organizations and voices in the conservative movement?” he asked in the message, which was obtained by The Washington Post. “If ignored, we will have the most stunted and muted Republican Party in the history of the conservative movement, the likes of which we haven’t seen in generations.”

The extraordinary message came in the midst of a bitter GOP leadership contest, with incumbent RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel seeking to beat back a challenge from Harmeet Dhillon, an attorney and committee member from California who has been paid for legal consulting by former president Donald Trump’s political action committee, among numerous clients. Kirk and his allies have vigorously promoted Dhillon, hosting her on various media platforms and staging a straw poll at a recent Turning Point summit in Phoenix.

There’s an intraparty slap-fight here in Florida between Dhillon and McDaniel proxies too, and I can’t quite suss out what’s behind it as it’s not breaking down across known GOP fault lines. Known by me, I mean. Maybe y’all know? Anyhoo, rooting for injuries, let us savor, etc.

Open thread!

ETA: I get that the GOP faithful are pissed off about underperforming in three straight cycles, but is this a pin-the-loser-tail on McDaniel thing? Because it looks like Dhillon and McDaniel are both pretty Trumpy. And he’s the loser. Is this a function of denial? A refusal to see the gigantic, loser-stinky orange elephant in the room?

Tuning Spork USA (Open Thread)Post + Comments (80)

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

I was promised a recession.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Optimism opens the door to great things.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

A dilettante blog from the great progressive state of West Virginia.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

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

Not all heroes wear capes.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania. Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Tuesday Night Open Thread: The GOP Death Cult Steps On Its Own… Leadership

A Couple of Tidbits Whilst We Await McCarthy’s Excellent Adventure

Repubs in Disarray Open Thread: Kevin McCarthy Genuinely Wants to Be A Chewtoy

Sunday Evening Open Thread: Cheers for Our ‘Woke’ Military

Thanks, Dr. Fauci

Order in the Court

Tuning Spork USA (Open Thread)