We’ve been laughing at the Republicans’ shortcomings all week, albeit in regard to very serious matters… like McCarthy’s— and his allies’— willingness to hand over the tools of destruction (including his own destruction) to fascists and nihilists in his own conference. I mean, they want to end Social Security and Medicare and they think they have the means to do that now. Ha, ha, ha? So I’m happy to report that we can now laugh at them, for less fraught reasons, first and foremost the near brawl that broke out on the House floor between a drunken redneck from Alabama, Mike Rogers, who feared McCarthy was about to trade his gavel away (House Armed Services Committee) for a vote from one of the fascists and attention-craving, self-righteous brat and polymorphous pervert Matt Gaetz.
The Calhoun County political hack has been in Congress since 2003, having previously served in the state legislature since 1994 and has never worked an honest job in his entire life. He was as serious about McCarthy becoming speaker as he is about whether the Alabama Crimson Tide or Auburn Tigers wins the Iron Bowl. Last night he was getting drunker and drunker as the voting proceeded and when he saw Kevin McCarthy pleading with Gaetz— and presumably Rep BoBo (Q-CO)— to just end this thing, Roger leaped to his feat and ran down the aisle and lunged at Gaetz, screaming profanities and threatening to end his political career.
When the bulky Rogers muscled in behind diminutive Patrick McHenry (who— having failed to ever get Cawthorn in bed— was trying to pick up Andy Ogles’ teenage son sitting directly behind Gaetz) and started menacing Gaetz (and possibly BoBo), McCarthy ran away back towards his seat, while his pal, Richard Hudson (R-NC), the new head of the NRCC, grabbed Rogers and dragged him away with his hand over his screaming, frothing mouth. Tennessee wing-nut Tim Burchett, who was sitting on the aisle-- so between the lunging Rogers and BoBo and Gaetz-- wanted in on the action too. He told CNN that “People [meaning Rogers, a notorious untreated alcoholic] shouldn’t be drinking, especially when you’re a redneck, on the House floor. I would drop him like a bag of dirt. Nobody’s gonna put their hands on me. Nobody’s gonna threaten me.”
All during the confrontations and Marjorie Traitor Greene was running around with her cell phone asking the various rebels to talk to Señor Trumpanzee, who she had dialed up. Montana neo-Nazi Matt Rosendale threatened her when she waved the phone at him— “Don’t you ever do me like that!”— but she finally got Andy Biggs and BoBo to say hello to the former president.
This is how the NY Times politely <>reported the congressional melee:
The dramatic moment was captured on C-SPAN’s video cameras, which, lacking the typical restraints placed upon them in a House with a speaker, were free to show whatever moments from the floor its operators deemed newsworthy.
Gaetz had emerged as the most outspoken critic of McCarthy, lambasting him in increasingly vitriolic and personal terms. He had mocked how McCarthy has “sold shares of himself” for power and called the Californian the “Lebron James of special interest fund-raising.”
At the same time, Gaetz had reportedly sought a subcommittee chairmanship in the House Armed Services Committee. [As of now, no one seems to know whether or not Gaetz got the subcommittee gavel.]
An Associated Press photographer captured the chaotic moment when Representative Richard Hudson, Republican of North Carolina, pulled Mr. Rogers back from confronting Gaetz.
…McCarthy downplayed the heated conversations that took place after the 14th ballot. “Oh nothing,” he told reporters who asked what happened. “I mean, we ended up with a tie, and he was able to get the others to be able to go present.”
The Independent was more dramatic in their reportage, noting that “Rogers had to be physically restrained after lunging at Gaetz amid chaotic scenes on Capitol Hill. Congressman Richard Hudson, of North Carolina, grabbed Mr Rogers from behind around his face and shoulder and pulled the irate Alabama Congressman away… Gaetz appeared to make fun of the confrontation, flexing his muscle, to the amusement of fellow right-wing Republican Anna Paulina Luna.”
The Republicans have kept trying to pass the whole sordid episode off as an exercise in "healthy democracy." The result, according to Aaron Blake, is anything but healthy: “Well, Crazytown now puts significantly more levers of power in the hands of its most extreme denizens, thanks to the second-smallest GOP majority in the past 90 years and the major concessions McCarthy chose to grant his holdouts during negotiations. They’ll have significant say on the hugely important House Rules Committee. They reportedly will be able to demand budget cuts in order to raise the debt ceiling (which heightens the odds of a debt default). And just one member can move to oust McCarthy if they don’t like what he’s doing— what’s known as a ‘motion to vacate the chair.’ That’s a situation which contributed to Boehner’s resignation and which former speaker Paul Ryan’s team compared to a ‘weapon pointed at [the speaker] all the time.’” The Intercept called the whole thing “a perfect Seinfeld episode: It is a fight about nothing. And that’s what makes it so dangerous. Neither the pro-McCarthy camp nor the anti-McCarthy insurgents have any real policy goals for how to make the government more effective. The goal of the insurgents is to stop the government from working at all. Yet that is true of McCarthy and his supporters as well. The only thing they are really fighting over is personal political power. Nothing more.”
This morning, Dan Pfeiffer forced us back into the seriousness of the otherwise hilarious situation, referring to the week as “an unprecedented level of national embarrassment” and noting that “To buy off the votes of the opposition, McCarthy relinquished all the power and authority of the office. There appears to be nothing he is unwilling to sacrifice for the title of Speaker.”
McCarthy begins his tenure as the weakest legislative leader in American history. He is a national joke. Democrats— myself very much included— enjoyed our laughs at Kevin McCarthy’s expense this past week. And we will laugh again when he can’t do the basics of his job. But we should be aware that a weak Speaker leading a fractured caucus is not really funny. It’s actually quite dangerous. Enjoy the laughs because shit will get real before too long.
A Republican House is a largely irrelevant institution when the Democrats control the House and Senate. They will enact no laws. They have no involvement in judicial and executive confirmations. If there are congressional negotiations, the Speaker will likely get a pity invite because it’s rude not to invite every kid in the class to the party. Sure, they hold trumped-up hearings and issue subpoenas. They will probably even try to impeach Joe Biden at some point. At the end of the day, all of that is partisan performance art designed to keep the base happy and the folks at Fox News busy.
But there are two very notable exceptions: President Biden and the Senate Democrats need the House Republicans to fund the government and lift the debt ceiling.
It's all settled now-- and this is who will be running a branch of the United States government, in all likelihood making Mitch McConnell look like a upstanding, and even sane, citizen of our rapidly disintegrating republic. Next up in Crazytown: what committees does con man George Santos get put on? (He said he would like to be appointed Secretary of the Treasury.) The latest YouGov poll for The Economist shows McCarthy with a 20% job approve rating, while 42% disapprove of how he does his job. Even 32% of Republicans disapprove.
