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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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TL;DR: I think it's a play to help Trump (if that's even possible) at taxpayer expense.
Another way to look at it, is that she and the Freedom Caucus are trying to make it impossible to fill the speaker position. Last time took 15 tries over 4 days. We have a pro-tempore speaker, but legislation will take a back seat to filling the Gavelmeister (I mean speaker).
This data is from Sept. 20 https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/20/politics/mccarthy-house-speaker-vote-margin-numbers-dg/index.html
31 far-right Republicans who have repeatedly voted against McCarthy
18 moderate Republicans in districts Biden won in 2020
172 other Republicans
212 Democrats
2 vacancies
That's 435 seats (2 vacant). From 2001 to 2021, the Senate spent an average of 164 days in session each year, and the House spent an average of 149 days in session (source https://ballotpedia.org/117th_Congress_legislative_calendar). The annual salary of a rank-and-file Member of Congress is $174,000 (source: https://www.congressionalinstitute.org/2019/02/21/how-much-do-members-of-congress-get-paid-2/)
So each day of this clusterbuck, each member of congress is getting just over $1,167. Multiply that by 433 (the number of filled seats in Congress) and we spend $505,651 or half-a-million dollars each day for congress to twiddle their thumbs. It cost the US taxpayer more than 2 million dollars to elect McCarthy, and now we're going to pay to find a replacement.
While the republicans have the majority, it is fractured by extremists and moderates. The democrats won't vote for an extremist republican, so most likely 212 (Dem) + 18 moderates = 230 Nay, even if 172 others + 31 extremists say yea, the vote fails. But if the 31 extremists say nay to a moderate, it's going to take democrats reaching across the aisle, and then Gaetz plays the ouster card again.
We have a continuation resolution to keep the Government going for 45 days, or until Nov. 14. If The Freedom Caucus keeps the speaker position churning, the government may shut down because they are too busy playing "who gets the gavel?". The far right is pushing to cut funding for the F.B.I. and the Justice Department (source https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/us/politics/trump-house-budget-fbi-republicans.html) because this could help save Trump. But even if they got what they wanted now, I don't see New York stopping their trial, and I don't see Georgia just rolling over. Trump's bacon is being held to the fire. All the Freedom Caucus is doing is creating Chaos. I could hope their supporters would see this as an expensive Hail Mary, but I doubt it; they will probably get re-elected and this circus will continue.
Moderate Republicans can obviously completely avoid Gaetz's and Greene's bullshit if they commit to consistently working across the aisle.
The House GOP saying that working with Democrats is career ending is what gives the Freedom Caucus its power to hold the GOP hostage.
Love your write up! Don't really like the mental imagery of 'Trump's bacon' though. Lol
Bluntly, I don’t think he’d accept the job, because it involves a hell of a lot more actual work than the comically small amount of actual job-related stuff he did while being president, and it’s not something he can skate by on. If he is elected to the speakership and then just doesn’t show up… the House can’t do anything. Which, sure, might be the point, but it would also be extremely obvious that they’re just throwing rocks in the gears, and it’d be essentially impossible to convince anyone with more than a couple brain cells that it’s because of Democrats - and translated into the context of the American electorate, that means it’s a toss-up.
Nah, there's just about 18 fewer moderate Republicans in Congress than that. It's a fascist party with a few paleoconservatives like Cheney and opportunistic corporate raiders like Romney looking moderate in comparison by virtue of not frothing at the mouth while actually still being far right.
The only moderate conservatives in Congress are Democrats.