The Great Ongoing Revolving Speakership of the 118th Congress {Mike Johnson is new speaker as of 2023-10-25}

We now know how afraid the Republicans are of the iRS finding out they cheat on their taxes- a massive cut to the iRS was included in the GOP “deal”.

Trump is not being mentioned in this discussion. He cannot be left out.

He’s been oddly quiet since the deal was announced. That doesn’t necessarily mean he approves; he was quiet right after McCarthy’s ouster as well. But a messy government shutdown and/or Speaker battle would hurt him while he’s trying to sail smoothly through Iowa and New Hampshire.

If we see a barrage of ALL-CAPS vomit against the deal in the coming week, then a sufficient number of Republicans will side with him. Johnson is a huge MAGA man and has already endorsed Trump (the entire Republican leadership in the House has); Democrats will be loath to save him. (Although the next step would likely be someone worse.)

My guess is that with more compromise-necessary votes to come, Johnson has to get this bill through and he’ll make quiet promises to Democrats that we’ll never hear about until somebody writes a book two years from now. He has no choice. MTG has already announced she won’t vote for it. She won’t be alone. The Democrats will have to be let into the corral just like the debt ceiling bill.

And this will have to be true for every future spending bill because the Freedom Caucus won’t forgive another “betrayal.” Unless Trump tells them to. How wildly ironic would that be? Trump coming down on the side of sane governance and bipartisanship because it’s in his best interest. Historians will laugh themselves silly.

Not doubting you, but I don’t see the connection. Can’t he just blame Biden for the shutdown? MAGAts will believe him.

He would blame Biden, unquestionably.

His problem is a political conundrum. He’s got the MAGA house he wanted. If things go south do they become RINOs? Does he back the FC and trash government? What headlines and news coverage does he want to pre-empt since he wants it all to be about him?

Trump is a deranged senile clown, but he’s savvy about his image because that’s his most prized possession. You can be sure that he and whatever staffers he still trusts have already gamed this out to be sure nothing touches him.

I thought the Republicans were opposed to de funding the police.

OK, I do know better than that.

DIfferent police for different sorts of criminals. Economic specialization; it’s a thing.

They did defund the capitol police, iirc.

IDK I don’t think anything has happened that is all that unexpected since McCarthy’s ouster.

And IMO the point still stands that if the Dems were ever going to save a GOP speaker they should have saved the (comparatively) most reasonable one.

I’m really not a fan of the trajectory where once the GOP caucus gets so chaotic it appears to be at a breaking point, the crisis is so severe that the dems have to basically give in for nothing in return to save them from themselves. It enable the GOP to get more and more chaotic and insane because there are never actually any consequences. And again if the dems are going to step in and try to save them they should try to save the most reasonable version of the GOP they can.

This would both be greatly surprising to me and also would absolutely not be a reason the Dems should actually go for it.

All true.

The problem is the lack of an effective way to direct consequences so they fall on the FC traitors and not the ordinary citizens of the USA.

A bit like the current discussion in the “why boycott elections” thread, the solution to the degree there is one is to understand that the only way to long term gains for reasonable people is to accept short term pain to those same reasonable people by letting the wackos do harm and then eventually be punished electorally for the harm they do.

But that’s a high price to have to pay.

That doesn’t take into account what a lot of people in this very thread mentioned - that perhaps with McCarthy gone, and the evidence of the huge chaos seating him in the first place entailed along with the fact that he was himself ousted, that there was a brief hope that some sort of compromise candidate could be found. And then the Republicans starting shooting themselves over and over and over again, to the point that the most likely candidates were ousted, and then it devolved into crazy town, and finally a relative unknown.

Sure, in 20/20 hindsight, the rot seems to have sunk far too deep for any such thing to be plausible, but at the time McCarthy was ousted, it wasn’t an unreasonable option. But here we are NOW, and having seen what happened after McCarthy, it may be worthwhile to preserve (not SUPPORT, but preserve) someone capable of at least keeping the lights on, rather than looking at weeks or months of having no speaker, and no business being conducted, which in lights of actions in Russia and the middle East, should be discouraged.

And this is where I disagree and agree with you. YES, the Republicans should suffer for their chaos, but once again, the Democrats are forced to be the adults in the room. They aren’t trying to save the Republicans from themselves, but they’re trying to (however poorly) keep the government working to serve the interests of the citizens, our international partners (and their donors!). Letting the Republicans fall, however a worthy goal, comes at great costs to everyone else they’re beholden too.

And I think it’s -quite- clear that to members of the Chaos Caucus that the Democrats -WILL- do this. That’s why they can non-stop pander to their base - they don’t need Republican money, they get most of theirs from small donors, who LOVE every time they gum up the government machinery in the service of their ‘ideals’. The Republicans are unable or at least unwilling to purge this group, so here we are. Paraphrasing your statement to reflect my intent, “the most reasonable version of the GOP” is the dog that the tail (the Freedom Caucus) has been waving for over a year now.

McCarthy has a strange district. He won 67% to 32%, but in 2020 the Dem won 76% to 23%. However, it appears to have been redistricted in between.

California lost an elector so it was a big re-districting. The borders may not be even close.

Plus the district numbering has also changed. Whatever district Kev had his political base in has been not just rebordered but renumbered from 22nd to 23rd to 20th during his time in office. What was 20th in 2020 is indeed nowhere near what is 20th today.

Sidebar: I greatly prefer the Westminster practice of names for electoral districts. When the member for Upper Tooting gets defeated for re-election, it means something! Not just a number.

This is the problem though. There will always be a next time. And the GOP will continue to know that they don’t ever need to solve their own problems because the result of their own problems is the democrats giving them even more concessions. Already the Democrats are apparently agreeing to cut the IRS funding even more than they have because they need to be the “adults in the room”. What is the point where they would actually have to allow the GOP to fail rather than continue to give in because of a (manufactured) crisis? Or will they just have to eventually agree to the entire GOP agenda wholesale because the GOP is willing to kill the baby and they aren’t.

A big mistake.

The GOP now apparently has a one vote majority.

I don’t disagree exactly, but I’m at the point that I don’t see a better solution, and apparently, neither does the (D) team. I personally have lines that I wouldn’t cross in terms of compromise, but I can’t speak for 200+ Democrat Congresscritters.

For that matter, AIUI (and I could be wrong) the cuts to the IRS were part of the additional 80 billion to the IRS over the next 10 years. No, not a good thing, since we know the tax criminals out there are a large part of the problem, but it’s not (Again, AIUI) a cut of their core operating funds. Just less of a (much needed, granted!) boost to their enforcement abilities.

In a sane universe, the moment that important critical services became unavailable to our elderly, veterans, and other members of society, the people would speak against the MAGA idiots and the Republican enablers, but we’re well past that. Far too many of the above would, as has been said in many threads, cut off their noses to spite their faces. Or freeze in the winter, barely warmed by a literal burning dumpster fire, with a rat roasting above it, as long as the people they hate have neither the fire nor the rat.

This is an intrinsic peril of representative governments - give a popular leader than convinces a sufficiently motivated segment to support them come hell or high water, and you can easily elect a government that abandons all responsibility to the governed. The amount of nihilism in the current MAGA party is terrifying, and many of them were literally elected on the promise of burning it all down.

Again, in a sane universe, the media would be working to prevent this - by pointing out all the consequences of said suicide pacts. But the ones that would need to SEE this are instead being told it’s all the Democrat’s fault anyway by their own complicit and criminal news sources.

But we’re obviously in the mirror universe, not the sane universe. Best of luck, and prepare for the agonizers.

Is this true WRT to helping Johnson survive a motion to vacate? I haven’t seen that the dems actually are prepared to do that?

In any case, while shutdowns are very bad, if the GOP is being completely unreasonable, it might be the cost of doing business. Ultimately this is what voters chose. If the GOP will absolutely not see reason and we get a shutdown (assuming its the type of shutdown we’ve seen in the past where it does eventually end), the next recourse is for voters to vote them out. Obviously the shrinking number of swing districts hurts this, but I think it’s still a viable path.

AFAIK California strictly numbers districts from north to south, based on the northernmost point of each district. There’s no attempt to keep a district number in the same area (beyond being roughly near the same latitude), so the numbering is completely shaken up every decade unless you’re way up in Modoc County and you know you’ll always be in the first district.

Not disagreeing with you (exactly) but explain to me by what means these loyal MAGA voters will find out that the shutdowns, etc., are the Republicans’ fault? And that voting Democrats into office will be good for the country? FAUXnews and other regular sources will tell them (and they will believe it) that it’s the Dems’ fault and specifically Biden’s fault.

To wit: I met a woman here at The Home who sincerely believes that her personal investments are down because Biden is President, and that as soon as she and others vote trumpy back into office, her dividends and balances will rise like a hot air balloon. :roll_eyes: To quote her: “The economy was the best it’s ever been when trump was president and now it sucks!” Ignorant, yes. But firm in her conviction.