The Steep Date gonna get tired of this pretty soon. Seriously. Part of the Gland Old Party's unwritten platform – that is, the only platform they have - is to diminish the efficiency of the whole gummint, to demoralize the workforce, and to drive decent, effective people out. Once done, the only people left who will still hunt for gummint jobs will be grifter/grafters, 2-bit hustlers and shameless coat-tailers. Imagine an entire 2.8 million person workforce of George(?)Santos(?).
Although I should be inured to it by now, I find this type of McArdle-style pundit response to be the most galling. It’s not even Both Sides. They cast the Democrats in vaguely the same role as the mother in the grocery store who is on her phone while her toddler rips items from the shelves: “can’t you DO something about him?”
No one quite addresses why The Party of Personal Responsibility seems to need the Democrats to give them a juice box and tell them it’s nap time.
Governing a country that doesn't believe in civics classes is proving to be a real challenge.
I really enjoy it when you do the relatively straight political reporting. You're good at it! Would that the New York Times featured your column rather than something from a skink dick motherfucker like Brett Stephens.*
* We had a couple guys in to work on our forklifts. We have a lot of forklifts so these guys are like a regular fixture back on the dock. One day last week I was crossing through the dock and I heard one of the guys say to the other" Like that skink dick motherfucker knows how to fix a forklift-"
Ever since then I've been looking for an excuse to call somebody a "skink dick motherfucker" .Now, I'm not exactly sure what a skink dick motherfucker is- I'm pretty sure that Brett Stephens qualifies.
Likely the most obscene media fantasy is the variants on the requirement of the Dems to support the RepubliQans not just by submitting to them but to also help them act better when they misbehave (a/k/a the GOP’s new normal).
As for the Dems (rudely!) screwing Kraven Kevin, well, that would still end up with McCarthy kicked out. He’d be seen as a Dem tool and lose the clinically insane caucus. Then, getting Dem support would prove difficult given the conflict between what each party wants.
But before that, thanks to Kraven Kevin’s submission to crazies, he’d still get booted, and the Dems would still want to fuck back.
That said, in the great scheme, this doesn’t matter. The Rs in the House will just keep acting insanely, alienating ever more voters (🤞🏻). And the media will a new shiny object to focus instead of, providing fact-based reporting and honest framing.
The fact that the media is completely buying into the narrative that McCarthy's defenestration is the DEMOCRATS' fault fills me with despair. As does the notion that if Democrats would just let Republicans exercise power, everything would be just fine. But casting our minds back a mere 7 years ago when Republicans had the House, the Senate, and the White House (and a slim Supreme Court majority), we find that when Republicans had ALL the power they accomplished . . .
. . . one massive round of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
That's it. That is all they accomplished. They couldn't even get rid of ObamaCare, the one issue they all ran on.
This all could have been avoided if only 5 Republicans voted for Jeffries back in January. You know, to keep things functional. Don't they read McArdle?
BTW, McHenry is a piece of shit from way back. Not surprised he would start to exhibit his shittiness at first opportunity.
I'ma be Little Miss Sunshine here and point out that there's this idea, been around about 30 years, that you could force massive concessions out of the Democrats, either by shutting down the government or maybe even just threatening to shut down the government. Originated with Newt Gingrich, tried most recently by Donald Trump, who shut the government down to try to force some funding for his stupid wall.
And this thing has NEVER worked. Didn't get Trump money for his stupid wall, didn't get Gingrich whatever the fuck he was after at the time. And the bit o' sunshine is that there seems to be actual learning going on, and many Republicans - after ONLY 30 YEARS of trying - have figured out this is a stupid thing to do and it doesn't get you anything anyway. Why, I've even heard Republican members of Congress say as much, standing right in front of a TV camera! I thing I once thought I would never live to see. Turns out they are educable, if a bit slow.
And that, as far as I can tell, is what the fight is about (I think? Who knows?) It's a fight between the slow-learners and the no-learners. "C'mon, let's shut it all down, it'll be GREAT!" shout the no-learners, and the slow-learners fume and call the no-learners stupid, even though they're not so bright themselves.
Roy this is so good, so insightful and so fucking A hilarious. The Republican meltdown, tragic as it is for the state of the nation, is also satire of the highest caliber, freaky-weird WTF is happening as Lost and gut-bustingly sardonically funny as Avenue 5 (if you haven't seen it, you should - a brilliant Armando Iannucci joint). As usual, we are laughing through the tears. Between you, Jeff Tiedrich and Heather Cox Richardson, I don't feel like I'm OD'g on The Crazy Pills (most days). x
All true, but it took the national media about 4 attoseconds* to pivot to “Here are the issues Dems lose to Reps: crime, immigrants and schools.” Also too, inflation.
*an attosecond is one-thousands of a femtosecond and there are as many attoseconds in a second as there have been seconds since the birth of the universe, according to the Nobel Committee. It is useful in measuring the movement of electrons and the attention span of the average American.
Charlie Sykes (I know, I know) published this list yesterday of why it was absurd to suppose the Dems would come to Kevin's aid. As Theda Skocpol says in a good Politco interview today, in the end nobody trusted McCarthy.
After the 2020 election, McCarthy rushed to secure his right-flank by joining with election denialists, endorsing a bogus legal challenge to the outcome. Even after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, he voted against certifying the election.
McCarthy initially said that Trump was responsible for the riot, but days later rushed to pay obeisance in Mar-a-Lago, giving the seditionist former president a thumbs up and a political lifeline.
When Liz Cheney appealed to the conscience of her fellow Republicans, McCarthy purged her from leadership and then orchestrated her primary defeat.
He repeatedly tried to undermine and sabotage attempts to investigate the January 6 Insurrection, reversing his support for a bipartisan commission under pressure from MAL.
During his 15-vote bid for the speakership, McCarthy laid the seeds of his ouster, as he made one concession after another to the radicals in his caucus. He publicly embraced and empowered fringe figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene. Maybe he thought that would buy him protection from the fever swamps. He was wrong.
McCarthy aggressively courted right-wing media types like Tucker Carlson, and gave 1/6 security footage exclusively to the soon-to-be-fired Fox News host.
In his dealing with Democrats, he repeatedly reversed course and broke his word. He backed the microchips manufacturing bill last year but then whipped his party to vote against it.
As The Wapo reported yesterday: “McCarthy backed out of a spending agreement he made with President Biden as part of a deal to lift the debt limit less than two weeks after Biden signed the law in an attempt to placate the furious conservatives in his conference. Democrats on the House floor on Saturday chanted, ‘Keep your word!’”
As he sought to appease the radicals, he opened an impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden, without holding the floor vote he promised. The result has been a deplorable clown show.
And, while he finally worked with Democrats to keep the government open, he enraged them by refusing to give them 72 hours to read the short-term spending bill. “Democrats were given just minutes to read it and vote on it despite asking Republican leadership for more time. (Democrats deployed stalling tactics to get about two hours to read and discuss the bill.)”
“On Sunday, McCarthy went on CBS’s “Face the Nation” and charged Democrats with wanting a shutdown. That infuriated Democrats, who voted nearly unanimously for the government spending bill when fewer than half of Republicans did.” At their caucus meeting Tuesday, Democrats played a tape of McCarthy’s remarks, which clearly helped to seal his fate.
McArdle, McLaughlin, McCarthy: A sinister pattern emerges.
But seriously, re Baseball jerk: Yes, if there's one constant in American politics, it's that Republicans never get to exercise political power. That's why everything--wealth distribution, SCOTUS, voting rights--is so fucking great.
Given my current hobby of Wondering What The Fuck The Republican Party Is Doing this roundup of reaction shots is interesting. Not a whisper of a hint that the Republican Party has some agency here too, pally. For example, did you know that no one has a right to be a member of a political party (other than maybe protected classes defined by law, but even they don't have carte blanch to set fire to the furniture) and yet yobbos like Trump and Gaetz determined to turn the Party into a cult classic beloved by thousands of people remain members in good standing? The Party has been clear for over a century that their policy is government should do and control as little as possible. It seems to have been adopted by the Party bureaucracy for their own bylaws as well.
The Steep Date gonna get tired of this pretty soon. Seriously. Part of the Gland Old Party's unwritten platform – that is, the only platform they have - is to diminish the efficiency of the whole gummint, to demoralize the workforce, and to drive decent, effective people out. Once done, the only people left who will still hunt for gummint jobs will be grifter/grafters, 2-bit hustlers and shameless coat-tailers. Imagine an entire 2.8 million person workforce of George(?)Santos(?).
Although I should be inured to it by now, I find this type of McArdle-style pundit response to be the most galling. It’s not even Both Sides. They cast the Democrats in vaguely the same role as the mother in the grocery store who is on her phone while her toddler rips items from the shelves: “can’t you DO something about him?”
No one quite addresses why The Party of Personal Responsibility seems to need the Democrats to give them a juice box and tell them it’s nap time.
"we (for some value of we)"
Awaiting confirmation from MathsGuy that this is a 2-marker.
"McArdlean misdirection"
gets 2 marks no matter what MathsGuy sez.
Governing a country that doesn't believe in civics classes is proving to be a real challenge.
I really enjoy it when you do the relatively straight political reporting. You're good at it! Would that the New York Times featured your column rather than something from a skink dick motherfucker like Brett Stephens.*
* We had a couple guys in to work on our forklifts. We have a lot of forklifts so these guys are like a regular fixture back on the dock. One day last week I was crossing through the dock and I heard one of the guys say to the other" Like that skink dick motherfucker knows how to fix a forklift-"
Ever since then I've been looking for an excuse to call somebody a "skink dick motherfucker" .Now, I'm not exactly sure what a skink dick motherfucker is- I'm pretty sure that Brett Stephens qualifies.
Well!
Likely the most obscene media fantasy is the variants on the requirement of the Dems to support the RepubliQans not just by submitting to them but to also help them act better when they misbehave (a/k/a the GOP’s new normal).
As for the Dems (rudely!) screwing Kraven Kevin, well, that would still end up with McCarthy kicked out. He’d be seen as a Dem tool and lose the clinically insane caucus. Then, getting Dem support would prove difficult given the conflict between what each party wants.
But before that, thanks to Kraven Kevin’s submission to crazies, he’d still get booted, and the Dems would still want to fuck back.
That said, in the great scheme, this doesn’t matter. The Rs in the House will just keep acting insanely, alienating ever more voters (🤞🏻). And the media will a new shiny object to focus instead of, providing fact-based reporting and honest framing.
The fact that the media is completely buying into the narrative that McCarthy's defenestration is the DEMOCRATS' fault fills me with despair. As does the notion that if Democrats would just let Republicans exercise power, everything would be just fine. But casting our minds back a mere 7 years ago when Republicans had the House, the Senate, and the White House (and a slim Supreme Court majority), we find that when Republicans had ALL the power they accomplished . . .
. . . one massive round of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
That's it. That is all they accomplished. They couldn't even get rid of ObamaCare, the one issue they all ran on.
" Good taste Republicans "? As opposed to " less filling Republicans "?
This all could have been avoided if only 5 Republicans voted for Jeffries back in January. You know, to keep things functional. Don't they read McArdle?
BTW, McHenry is a piece of shit from way back. Not surprised he would start to exhibit his shittiness at first opportunity.
See: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2005/10/01/getting-ahead-in-the-gop/
I'ma be Little Miss Sunshine here and point out that there's this idea, been around about 30 years, that you could force massive concessions out of the Democrats, either by shutting down the government or maybe even just threatening to shut down the government. Originated with Newt Gingrich, tried most recently by Donald Trump, who shut the government down to try to force some funding for his stupid wall.
And this thing has NEVER worked. Didn't get Trump money for his stupid wall, didn't get Gingrich whatever the fuck he was after at the time. And the bit o' sunshine is that there seems to be actual learning going on, and many Republicans - after ONLY 30 YEARS of trying - have figured out this is a stupid thing to do and it doesn't get you anything anyway. Why, I've even heard Republican members of Congress say as much, standing right in front of a TV camera! I thing I once thought I would never live to see. Turns out they are educable, if a bit slow.
And that, as far as I can tell, is what the fight is about (I think? Who knows?) It's a fight between the slow-learners and the no-learners. "C'mon, let's shut it all down, it'll be GREAT!" shout the no-learners, and the slow-learners fume and call the no-learners stupid, even though they're not so bright themselves.
Roy this is so good, so insightful and so fucking A hilarious. The Republican meltdown, tragic as it is for the state of the nation, is also satire of the highest caliber, freaky-weird WTF is happening as Lost and gut-bustingly sardonically funny as Avenue 5 (if you haven't seen it, you should - a brilliant Armando Iannucci joint). As usual, we are laughing through the tears. Between you, Jeff Tiedrich and Heather Cox Richardson, I don't feel like I'm OD'g on The Crazy Pills (most days). x
Ari Fleischer is still around? Is he a zombie? Yet I hate McGardle even more.
All true, but it took the national media about 4 attoseconds* to pivot to “Here are the issues Dems lose to Reps: crime, immigrants and schools.” Also too, inflation.
*an attosecond is one-thousands of a femtosecond and there are as many attoseconds in a second as there have been seconds since the birth of the universe, according to the Nobel Committee. It is useful in measuring the movement of electrons and the attention span of the average American.
The idea that Republicans would do anything to save anyone, even themselves, is really hard to swallow.
Charlie Sykes (I know, I know) published this list yesterday of why it was absurd to suppose the Dems would come to Kevin's aid. As Theda Skocpol says in a good Politco interview today, in the end nobody trusted McCarthy.
After the 2020 election, McCarthy rushed to secure his right-flank by joining with election denialists, endorsing a bogus legal challenge to the outcome. Even after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, he voted against certifying the election.
McCarthy initially said that Trump was responsible for the riot, but days later rushed to pay obeisance in Mar-a-Lago, giving the seditionist former president a thumbs up and a political lifeline.
When Liz Cheney appealed to the conscience of her fellow Republicans, McCarthy purged her from leadership and then orchestrated her primary defeat.
He repeatedly tried to undermine and sabotage attempts to investigate the January 6 Insurrection, reversing his support for a bipartisan commission under pressure from MAL.
During his 15-vote bid for the speakership, McCarthy laid the seeds of his ouster, as he made one concession after another to the radicals in his caucus. He publicly embraced and empowered fringe figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene. Maybe he thought that would buy him protection from the fever swamps. He was wrong.
McCarthy aggressively courted right-wing media types like Tucker Carlson, and gave 1/6 security footage exclusively to the soon-to-be-fired Fox News host.
In his dealing with Democrats, he repeatedly reversed course and broke his word. He backed the microchips manufacturing bill last year but then whipped his party to vote against it.
As The Wapo reported yesterday: “McCarthy backed out of a spending agreement he made with President Biden as part of a deal to lift the debt limit less than two weeks after Biden signed the law in an attempt to placate the furious conservatives in his conference. Democrats on the House floor on Saturday chanted, ‘Keep your word!’”
As he sought to appease the radicals, he opened an impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden, without holding the floor vote he promised. The result has been a deplorable clown show.
And, while he finally worked with Democrats to keep the government open, he enraged them by refusing to give them 72 hours to read the short-term spending bill. “Democrats were given just minutes to read it and vote on it despite asking Republican leadership for more time. (Democrats deployed stalling tactics to get about two hours to read and discuss the bill.)”
“On Sunday, McCarthy went on CBS’s “Face the Nation” and charged Democrats with wanting a shutdown. That infuriated Democrats, who voted nearly unanimously for the government spending bill when fewer than half of Republicans did.” At their caucus meeting Tuesday, Democrats played a tape of McCarthy’s remarks, which clearly helped to seal his fate.
McArdle, McLaughlin, McCarthy: A sinister pattern emerges.
But seriously, re Baseball jerk: Yes, if there's one constant in American politics, it's that Republicans never get to exercise political power. That's why everything--wealth distribution, SCOTUS, voting rights--is so fucking great.
Given my current hobby of Wondering What The Fuck The Republican Party Is Doing this roundup of reaction shots is interesting. Not a whisper of a hint that the Republican Party has some agency here too, pally. For example, did you know that no one has a right to be a member of a political party (other than maybe protected classes defined by law, but even they don't have carte blanch to set fire to the furniture) and yet yobbos like Trump and Gaetz determined to turn the Party into a cult classic beloved by thousands of people remain members in good standing? The Party has been clear for over a century that their policy is government should do and control as little as possible. It seems to have been adopted by the Party bureaucracy for their own bylaws as well.