Elliott, with all due respect because I like your stuff, your analysis looks like so much mental masturbation. To me, they key elment here is 'who are the big lie election deniers?' Their goal is to show that the legislative branch is broken, and they will break it some more to prove it. There is no 'American people' they are trying to serve, they are serving their paymasters and the voters of their little fiefdom -- one of 435. They rail about 'big government', and they are there to throw sand in the works so it grinds to a halt. Act 1: Posture, postulate, and obstruct the speaker election. (At some point, their staff may ask 'when are we going to get paid'.) Act 2: Take their newly won power and obstruct any meaningful governing. Act 3: Continue the political theater with their absurd oversight histrionics. Act 4: Fail to address the debt ceiling in any meaningful way. Act 5: When everything crashes, convince the voters in their fiefdon that they are a hero, and that it was the 'other guys' who did it.
Insideous by design. Create a weak legislative branch, and augur the advent of a strong leader.
Thanks for your comment. I do not think anyone has used the phrase "mental masturbation" in the blog comment section before.
I would be more convinced that resistance to McCarthy is driven by election denialism if there weren't so many election deniers backing him! Eg, Marjorie Taylor Greene (and even, to some extent, McCarthy himself).
I do think the strategy "create a weak legislative branch, and augur the advent of a strong leader" defines the goals of a vast majority of House GOP members. And that is important in its own right! Maybe I'll write a post on that. But I do not think it's animating the current speaker battle.
Yeah, well, I think the 20 MAGAns are acting out of their stated goals to 1. make this chaotic circus go on as long as they can because they think this is "showing the American people that this works." Huh? 2. show that they learned from the GOP majority how a minority can prevent the majority from doing anything at all. Is that what they meant by "this works?" 3. prevent any deficit spending, on the grounds that they can then prevent spending on programs they disapprove of and on the grounds that they think the federal budget works like a household budget. (! Ignorance and stubborn refusal to learn = grounds for a fitness test to serve in Congress. ) 4. please their donors. https://www.commondreams.org/news/mccarthy-super-pac-speaker-talks?fbclid=IwAR0F3PuqNZO750xWbc1MHOmGXHrMOVtvYHSZNXqSIPHtOYq3CM34gL2TwCM
Ultimately, this is another battle in the war over the narrative. Fox vs. MSM. With ignoramus priests like Jerome Powell running the fed and destroying the planet because they can't give up their dogma and see reality, what can we expect. Ignorance rules and kills us all, plant, beast, bird, air, water, human.
Great post. I'm about to forward it. But, if you want a whole book full of analyses of speakership votes in terms of nominate scores, check out our book on the subject: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691118123/fighting-for-the-speakership.
Great! I’ll add a link to it.
Elliott, with all due respect because I like your stuff, your analysis looks like so much mental masturbation. To me, they key elment here is 'who are the big lie election deniers?' Their goal is to show that the legislative branch is broken, and they will break it some more to prove it. There is no 'American people' they are trying to serve, they are serving their paymasters and the voters of their little fiefdom -- one of 435. They rail about 'big government', and they are there to throw sand in the works so it grinds to a halt. Act 1: Posture, postulate, and obstruct the speaker election. (At some point, their staff may ask 'when are we going to get paid'.) Act 2: Take their newly won power and obstruct any meaningful governing. Act 3: Continue the political theater with their absurd oversight histrionics. Act 4: Fail to address the debt ceiling in any meaningful way. Act 5: When everything crashes, convince the voters in their fiefdon that they are a hero, and that it was the 'other guys' who did it.
Insideous by design. Create a weak legislative branch, and augur the advent of a strong leader.
Hi Seth,
Thanks for your comment. I do not think anyone has used the phrase "mental masturbation" in the blog comment section before.
I would be more convinced that resistance to McCarthy is driven by election denialism if there weren't so many election deniers backing him! Eg, Marjorie Taylor Greene (and even, to some extent, McCarthy himself).
I do think the strategy "create a weak legislative branch, and augur the advent of a strong leader" defines the goals of a vast majority of House GOP members. And that is important in its own right! Maybe I'll write a post on that. But I do not think it's animating the current speaker battle.
Yeah, well, I think the 20 MAGAns are acting out of their stated goals to 1. make this chaotic circus go on as long as they can because they think this is "showing the American people that this works." Huh? 2. show that they learned from the GOP majority how a minority can prevent the majority from doing anything at all. Is that what they meant by "this works?" 3. prevent any deficit spending, on the grounds that they can then prevent spending on programs they disapprove of and on the grounds that they think the federal budget works like a household budget. (! Ignorance and stubborn refusal to learn = grounds for a fitness test to serve in Congress. ) 4. please their donors. https://www.commondreams.org/news/mccarthy-super-pac-speaker-talks?fbclid=IwAR0F3PuqNZO750xWbc1MHOmGXHrMOVtvYHSZNXqSIPHtOYq3CM34gL2TwCM
Ultimately, this is another battle in the war over the narrative. Fox vs. MSM. With ignoramus priests like Jerome Powell running the fed and destroying the planet because they can't give up their dogma and see reality, what can we expect. Ignorance rules and kills us all, plant, beast, bird, air, water, human.