Biden wins on Ukraine as House GOP faces big decision about its future

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Joan McCarter

President Joe Biden and Democrats won big in the House Saturday, when it voted resoundingly in support of Ukraine aid. This could mark a turning point for Republicans, leaving them with a choice: to admit defeat and start governing, or to keep fighting with each other.

For months, both former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and current Speaker Mike Johnson have catered to Donald Trump and the MAGA wing of the House GOP on Ukraine aid, insisting that it could not pass without a harsh immigration and border security bill. Once they got that, they turned it down at Trump’s request. Now there’s Ukraine aid and no border deal—a big loss for far-right Republicans and Trump.

This could signal that the fever has finally broken among the governing bloc of the GOP … or not. What it has done is unleash a torrent of anger against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and the extremist Freedom Caucus by some non-MAGA members.

Before the vote, Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas slammed his colleagues, saying, “I guess their reasoning is they want Russia to win so badly that they want to oust the speaker over it, I mean that’s a strange position to take … I think they want to be in the minority too, I think that’s an obvious reality.”

Even Biden impeachment zealot Rep. James Comer denounced Greene’s efforts to oust Johnson in an interview on Fox News.

“Now Mike Johnson walked into a bad situation,” Comer said. “It’s gotten a lot worse since he’s been here. But changing speakers is not the right business model.”

Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas completely unleashed his anger toward his MAGA colleagues on Sunday, calling them “scumbags” who “used to walk around in white hoods at night. Now they’re walking around with white hoods in the daytime,” during an interview on CNN.

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But Greene and her accomplices are showing no signs of backing down.

“There is more support,” for her efforts, Greene said Monday. “It's growing. I've said from the beginning, I'm going to be responsible with this ... I do not support Mike Johnson. He's already a lame duck. If we have the vote today in our conference he would not be speaker today.”

Greene’s cosponsor Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky said Friday, "We want Mike Johnson to resign. We don't want to go speaker-less. So the goal is to show him, through co-sponsorship, how much support he's lost and hopefully he'll get the message and give us a notice so that we have time ... to replace him.”

That’s a tacit acknowledgement that they’d lose on the House floor if they tried to force Johnson out, since enough Democrats would vote to keep him now that he’s finally done the right thing. So it’s really up to the rest of the Republicans to decide. Will they squash Greene and her team once and for all? Will they accept that anything they accomplish in the remainder of this election year will have to involve Democrats and finally stop with the ridiculous messaging nonsense? (Fat chance.)

Meanwhile, most of Biden’s major priorities have been successful, including the securing of a debt limit deal with McCarthy. Despite the maniacs’ best effort, the government did not shut down and was funded at adequate levels. Now Ukraine will finally get the critical aid it needs to stave off Russia once the Senate passes the bill on Tuesday.

On top of all that, the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas collapsed, and the Biden impeachment is dead in the water.

House Democrats hold Johnson’s fate in their hands, and everyone knows it—including the majority of Republicans. Has the fever broken in the GOP? Not as long as Trump is alive and kicking, though his political days might be numbered.

There are likely still big fights to come over next year’s budget, and it’s going to be up to the House GOP to figure out how to salvage something out of its tiny majority before the election.

Donate now to take the House back from Republicans! Chipping in $3 apiece to help flip these 16 vulnerable Republican seats scan help take back the House in 2024!

Republicans get Ukraine demands met, so of course they change their minds

Mike Johnson owes everything to Democrats, and it could cost him his gavel

The House GOP can’t even go on vacation without fighting

Posted on March 25, 2024 by Joan McCarter

It wasn’t pretty—particularly on the House side—but Congress got the government funded, but the bruising battle to do that doesn’t end beleaguered House Speaker Mike Johnson’s headaches. In fact, it could put him in an even tougher position with his fractious caucus when they return from their two-week recess, on April 9. Hanging over him are his party’s very slim majority and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s threat to oust him if he brings a Ukraine aid bill to the floor for a vote.

Colorado GOP Rep. Ken Buck is gone as of Friday, and happy as a clam to be out of it. "No rearview mirror," Buck said in his exit interview on ABC's "This Week" Sunday. "Happy to move on." He added that leadership has “serious problems with setting priorities,” including the ongoing ridiculous impeachment efforts of President Joe Biden and a bunch of cabinet secretaries. “We have a very tragic circumstance in Ukraine. We have spiraling debt, all kinds of out-of-control problems, and we focus on messaging bills that get us nowhere,” he said.

Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican, is hot on Buck’s heels. His surprise announcement Friday that he’s starting his retirement from Congress early, on April 19, will leave Johnson with only one vote to spare—and looking over his shoulder if he puts a Ukraine aid bill on the floor.

Greene has said such a bill would be her trigger to activate her motion to vacate the chair, which would force a vote on removing Johnson from the speakership. A few other Republicans, including Freedom Caucus Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina, are playing coy. Just to rub Johnson’s nose in it a little more, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie taunted Johnson with this X (formerly Twitter) poll:

Do you approve of the job Mike Johnson is doing as Speaker of the House?
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) March 23, 2024

More than ever, Johnson is going to need Democratic votes to hang onto the speaker’s gavel and get anything accomplished. That basically puts Democrats in control of the Ukraine debate. It also puts Johnson in even more of a bind. Having to rely on Democrats for protection and to pass critical bills will create only more turmoil for him with his Republican detractors.

On top of all that, there are vacancies in top seats on committees. In another surprise announcement on Friday, Appropriations Committee Chair Kay Granger of Texas stepped down. Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, currently the chair of the powerful Rules Committee, immediately announced he wanted the Appropriations job, and he’ll likely get it.

Cole, an ally of the current leadership, could do both jobs but that would probably serve to further enrage the Freedom Caucus and their allies. Reps. Roy, Norman, and Massie are all on the Rules Committee—the deciding voting bloc that has proven to be a massive headache for Johnson already. They could raise hell and demand that another one of their own get the chairman’s seat, another brewing flashpoint for Johnson.

All this while Johnson has to worry about Buck’s parting shot. He warned in an interview with Axios, on March 12, “I think it's the next three people that leave that they're going to be worried about.” One of them—Gallagher—is on his way out, and all the turmoil ahead makes Buck’s prediction even more likely.

Marjorie Taylor Greene threatens to oust new House speaker for ... reasons

With vacations on the line, House finally manages to fund the government

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House Democrats tell Republicans to pound sand

Posted on October 3, 2023 by Kerry Eleveld

The party that controls the House of Representatives is the party charged with making it work—or governing, as some might put it. And House Democrats staunchly told Republicans Tuesday they must sink or swim on their own.

The Speaker of the House is chosen by the Majority Party. In this Congress, it is the responsibility of House Republicans to choose a nominee & elect the Speaker on the Floor. At this time there is no justification for a departure from this tradition. The House will be in order.
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) October 3, 2023

Specifically, as Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy faced a potential ouster by MAGA misfits in his own party, Democrats told him to pound sand. They wouldn’t bail him out—not even the moderate Democratic members of the so-called Problem Solvers Caucus.

NEW: Centrist Dems in bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, which just met, told Rs in the group they won't be saving McCarthy, per sources – McCarthy’s last potential line of defense and another sign that Democrats will be unified in their decision not to bail the speaker out.
— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) October 3, 2023

According to CNN's Melanie Zanona, centrist Democrats told Republicans in their bipartisan group early on Tuesday that they wouldn't rescue McCarthy.

McCarthy needed a total of 214 votes to save his job as speaker—meaning he couldn’t lose more than a handful of his own members, or else he would need Democrats to help make up the difference.

But instead of helping McCarthy out of the corner he negotiated himself into when he seized the gavel by putting himself one disgruntled misfit away from being vacated, Democrats called on moderate Republicans to reject the MAGA extremists who constantly threaten to sink the economy, the country, and democracy itself with stunts like allowing a catastrophic debt default and rooting for government shutdowns.

“We are ready, willing and able to work together with our Republican colleagues, but it is on them to join us,” Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Tuesday after an hours-long meeting with his caucus.

As former Republican Rep. David Jolly of Florida told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, McCarthy repeatedly proved to Democrats that he couldn’t be a trusted partner by breaking his promises, routinely demonizing Democrats, launching an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, and refusing to participate in the Jan. 6 investigation last Congress when he was the minority leader.

“He did everything to remind Democrats that Kevin McCarthy, though he walks around with a smile, is really no different than the leading hard-right Republicans like Jim Jordan,” Jolly said.

The cohesive Democratic stand against rescuing Republicans from the MAGA hostage takers who run their caucus and terrorize the country is both good politics for Democrats and good governance for the country.

First and foremost, MAGA maniacs shouldn't be in charge of any legislative chamber when they have demonstrated zero interest in doing The People’s business of governing.

Second, and equally as important, Americans must be allowed to witness and experience the dysfunction of a Republican Party in thrall to MAGA maniacs. This is what voters get if they put the Republican Party in charge of anything—even if they cast their vote for a supposedly sane Republican.

Remember, former Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi governed the 117th Congress with a razor-thin House majority too. But Pelosi kept the lights on and passed a historic amount of legislation, directing tens of billions of dollars to bills addressing COVID relief, infrastructure improvements, American manufacturing, and battling climate change.

As former Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock of Virginia, a onetime rising GOP star, told MSNBC of the spectacle on the House floor, "This is a very sad day for the institution. This is what MAGA has done, both to the country and to the institution."

Comstock said she was sad for the Republican Party, and added, "but I'm even more sad for the institution and for the country."

Wild ride ahead as Matt Gaetz gets his chance to oust McCarthy

Posted on October 3, 2023 by Joan McCarter

UPDATE: Tuesday, Oct 3, 2023 · 3:32:51 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

“We are not voting in any way that would help save Speaker McCarthy … Nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy, and why should we?” — House Progressives Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) after the Democratic Caucus meeting pic.twitter.com/QG1jc3Velv
— The Recount (@therecount) October 3, 2023

UPDATE: Tuesday, Oct 3, 2023 · 3:31:29 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

All of the reporting this morning from the Democrats’ meeting is of a unified conference that isn’t going to sit this out, and is not going to support McCarthy. The reasons: “McCarthy’s actions on Jan 6, his trip to Mar a Lago, his attempt to discredit the Jan 6 Cmte, his reneging on debt limit deal and his actions this weekend are all the reasons.”

UPDATE: Tuesday, Oct 3, 2023 · 3:27:59 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Rep. Abigail Spanberger, Virginia, is one of the vulnerable Frontline Democrats, and often speaks for them. She’s definitely not going to help McCarthy.

“He’s a man who cannot be trusted. He’s a man who has excused the inexcusable time and time and time again. He is in this circumstance because he was willing to give up and negotiate anything to become speaker. So I think anyone who thinks it might be some sort of strategy for Frontliners to try and help McCarthy is kind of fundamentally misunderstanding the fact that to us, nothing is more important than our principles.’

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz finally made good on his threats Monday afternoon, quietly filing his motion to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The rules of Congress say that the issue has to be dealt with within two days, though there are a few ways that can go.

McCarthy was typically, inexplicably confident Tuesday morning going into a closed-door meeting of his whole conference, telling reporters he was ready to have the motion come up Tuesday and following through in the meeting by informing members the vote will happen in the first vote series early Tuesday afternoon.

This is the first time since 1910 that the motion will be considered on the floor. It’s been threatened a few times since but never deployed, in part because it’s hard to pull off. It’s a simple majority vote, and the numbers are everything today—how many of Gaetz’s hard-liner supporters will vote with him, how many members are on the floor at the time, and where the Democrats land.

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House Democrats also met Tuesday morning to decide whether they give McCarty any help on this one. McCarthy reached out to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Monday night but would not negotiate for his support. "They haven't asked for anything. I'm not going to provide anything," he said early Tuesday. McCarthy insists that the issue is not about him but about the institution, and that that should be enough for Democrats to help him out. “I think this is a question to the institution itself. I know in the past, the other leaders together believed that this should never be in play.”

In an MSNBC appearance Tuesday morning, Jeffries had no comment beyond saying, "We are in the midst of a Republican civil war and it is undermining the ability of the congress to solve problems on behalf of hardworking taxpayers.” Jeffries might ask for his members to vote—or abstain from voting—as a bloc, or tell them to vote their conscience. If it’s the latter, McCarthy should worry because Democrats have an extensive list of reasons why the man can’t be trusted, from his vote to overturn the 2020 election, to his reneging on the debt ceiling deal he made with President Joe Biden, to his capitulation to hard-liners on Biden’s impeachment. The capper happened Sunday, after Democrats saved his bacon by giving him the votes to avert a government shutdown. McCarthy went on “Face the Nation” and told host Margaret Brennan that Democrats “tried to do everything” to force a shutdown of the federal government.

So how will this go Tuesday afternoon? There are a few possibilities. They could put Gaetz’s motion immediately to a vote. From there, it’s up or down on McCarthy by a simple majority of those present and voting. Either he wins, or he loses. Or there could first be a motion to table Gaetz’s resolution, or to refer it to a committee that will bury it. If the motion to table passes, McCarthy survives. If it fails, they then vote on Gaetz’s motion, and we’re back to the simple majority to save him or boot him. He can afford to lose only four votes if every House member is present and voting.

As of Tuesday morning, Gaetz had three likely supporters: Reps. Bob Good of Virginia, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, and Eli Crane of Arizona. There were a handful known to be leaning toward booting McCarthy: Reps. Matt Rosendale of Montana, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, and Andy Biggs of Arizona.

You can follow along with all the action this afternoon in live coverage at Daily Kos.

Chaos reigns in House as hard-liners plot McCarthy ouster

The Gaetz-McCarthy feud gets even nastier as shutdown looms

Will Democrats save Kevin McCarthy’s job?

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Joan McCarter

The day after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s astonishing capitulation that allowed Democrats to once more save the day and keep the government funded, Rep. Matt Gaetz was in front of the cameras promising that he would move to oust McCarthy this week. It’s not clear how much support the Florida man has among the other hard-liners in the Republican conference, but it could be a dozen or more, according to House conservatives. That means McCarthy’s fate is absolutely in Democrats’ hands. He can survive only if Democrats help him, and as of now, they’re not inclined to do that.

President Joe Biden isn’t going to go out of his way to help, telling reporters that it’s up to House Democratic leadership to decide if they want to bail McCarthy out again. Biden then turned the screws on McCarthy with a direct statement telling McCarthy to step up on funding for Ukraine, which was left out of the stopgap government funding bill.

While the majority of Congress has been steadfast in their support for Ukraine, the bipartisan bill has no funding to continue it. We can't allow this to be interrupted. I expect the Speaker to keep his word and secure the passage of support for Ukraine at this critical moment.
— President Biden (@POTUS) October 1, 2023

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries remains noncommittal. Last week, he told reporters his team hadn’t “given any thought to how to handle a hypothetical motion to vacate, because we are entirely focused on making sure that we avoid this extreme MAGA Republican shutdown.” On Sunday, Minority Whip Katherine Clark sent a letter to all House Democrats, putting them on notice that as soon as Gaetz drops his motion on the floor, there will be a “Caucus wide discussion on how to address the motion to best meet the needs of the American people,” and telling them to keep their schedules flexible so they “may be present for these important votes should they occur.”

It’s likely many Democrats will take their lead from House Speaker-emerita Nancy Pelosi, who has reportedly warned Jeffries and other Democrats against helping McCarthy, saying he can’t be trusted. Her advice has been to make the Republicans figure this out on their own. Democrats will, however, have to do something, even if it’s doing nothing.

Here’s how it works: Once Gaetz makes the motion to vacate, leadership has two days to schedule a vote on it. The motion to vacate is a privileged resolution, which means that it doesn’t have to go through the Rules Committee to be scheduled, and that it has to be considered once it’s put on the floor. There is an option, called the “Question of consideration,” that could be used to kill the vote. Any member can call for it, and if a majority votes to kill Gaetz’s motion, that’s how they’d do it.

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At that point, Democrats would have the option of helping Republicans by voting for the question and killing the motion to vacate, not voting or voting “present,” or voting against the question and with Gaetz. The problem for Republican leadership with this option is that it doesn’t stop Gaetz from coming back again and again with his motion to vacate. Because of that, Republican leadership might just decide to go ahead with the vote on McCarty’s ouster.

So here’s where the potential dealmaking with Democrats comes in, and so far, Democrats are playing it pretty smart. Gaetz has reached out to members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and at least one of them—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—says she’d “absolutely” vote for the motion to vacate.

However, she continued, there’s room for negotiation for Democratic help bailing McCarthy out. “I certainly don’t think that we would expect to see that unless there’s a real conversation between the Republican and Democratic caucuses and Republican Democratic leadership about what that would mean, but I don’t think we give up votes for free,” she said.

Another progressive, Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, told CNN that McCarthy has to be held to account for “pushing an extreme agenda and enabling extremists in his party” and therefore, “by refusing to support a motion to vacate, we are endorsing this extremism, and that is something that the residents in my district will not stand for. The American people are tired of the fact that the GOP is incapable of governing.”

That’s leverage—with enough of the progressives saying they’ll help Gaetz, McCarthy will need to negotiate. He’s opened the door on cutting a deal, saying, “I think this is about the institution. I think it's too important.” He’s also suggested that he’d consider changing the rules package to try to keep Gaetz from bringing the motion repeatedly.

Opening up the rules package could mean some significant changes to help the Democrats, including giving them additional seats on the powerful Rules Committee, where the Republicans have an outsized majority. They could argue for rules that allow more power-sharing.

That’s a start, since McCarthy has opened the door. But it’s not sufficient. Democrats should hold out for the maximum they can: funding for Ukraine, adherence to the budget agreement McCarthy and Biden agreed to earlier in the year, and ceasing the ridiculous Biden impeachment.

House Democrats saved the day on Saturday when 209 of them voted to keep the government operating. Just 126 Republicans stepped up to join them. Those competing numbers have to be thrown in McCarthy’s face every chance Democrats’ get—it’s leverage they have to use to the maximum.

Chaos reigns in House as hard-liners plot McCarthy ouster

Posted on September 29, 2023 by Joan McCarter

There can never be too much chaos for Rep. Matt Gaetz and his malignant cohorts. With this weekend’s government shutdown now seeming inevitable, the Florida Republican and some of his unnamed compatriots are plotting to try to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as early as next week, according to The Washington Post.

A shutdown isn’t enough disruption, nor is their trainwreck of an impeachment inquiry inquiry, so these hard-liners want to make the House an even more ridiculously dysfunctional place. There’s a real underpants-gnome vibe to the endeavor, with phase two of the plot—whom they’ll replace McCarthy with—currently a mystery. The only name seriously floated to the Post is Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota, who told the Post, “I fully support Speaker McCarthy. He knows that and I know that. … I have zero interest in palace intrigue. End of discussion.”

The other question is whether they’re capable of pulling it off. The House procedure is called a “motion to vacate,” and it has been voted on only once in American history—and it failed. In 1910, Speaker Joseph Cannon survived the vote, though his leadership was weakened. Later, in 1997, rebels plotting against then-Speaker Newt Gingrich talked about using it, but they never filed the motion. The only other time the motion has been filed was in 2015, when then-Rep. Mark Meadows (yeah, that Mark Meadows) filed it against then-Speaker John Boehner, but it was never deployed. Boehner ultimately resigned.

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A successful motion to vacate is clearly not an easy thing to pull off. Is this the crew that will make history and be the first to succeed? It’s just possible that McCarthy and team are hapless enough that it could happen. But what the hard-liners should worry about are the potential consequences: empowered Democrats.

McCarthy has brushed off any suggestion of getting help from Democrats to save his speakership, and in turn, Democrats aren’t in a hurry to rush to his defense. "I cannot imagine him paying the price that it would take for us to bail him out," Rep. Jared Huffman of California told Axios.

That price would be steep. "We want to get disaster aid out, we want to continue our support for Ukraine, and we want them to end this sham of an impeachment inquiry," Minority Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts told Politico last week. "If Kevin McCarthy chooses to ... get back to work for the American people, to do the right thing, we're going to be there to, you know, meet and compromise with him."

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is playing it very cool. He rejected “the notion that any of us would be dealing with inside parlor games when we’re trying to stop the extreme MAGA Republicans,” according to Axios. “I haven’t given it any thought,” he added.

McCarthy needs 217 votes out of his current 221-seat majority to save his speakership. (There are two vacancies in the House.) Presuming Gaetz can count, he won’t bring the motion to vacate unless he’s got four Republican members on his side willing to abandon McCarthy so the ploy can potentially succeed. However, Gaetz can’t and shouldn’t count on Democrats to help him—they can sit this one out by voting “present,” or they can vote to keep McCarthy.

That puts a lot of power into the hands of the 212 Democrats and the “Biden 18”—the freshmen Republicans in districts President Joe Biden won in 2020. If just four of them play their cards right—and cross the aisle on a vote—they could find themselves in a fairly comfortable position with Speaker Hakeem Jeffries. At the very least, they wouldn’t be blamed for the next government shutdown.

It’s a long shot that any of this ends with a Democratic speaker, but the only thing that’s predictable amid the chaos in the House is the unpredictable.

Here’s what the ‘pissing match’ between Gaetz and McCarthy costs

New day, same chaos: House GOP argues with itself in face of shutdown

Democrats could bail out flailing McCarthy, for a price

Posted on September 27, 2023 by Joan McCarter

It’s only a matter of time before tensions in the House Republican conference boil over into a physical brawl. For now, they’re just verbal fights, like Freedom Caucus guy Eli Crane of Arizona fundraising by calling his colleagues who don’t want to shut down the government “squishes,” and those other members taking exception to it.

Others have been threatening to help primary members like freshman Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, who threatens them back, saying (according to CNN’s chyron) that they’re “stuck on stupid.”

GOP Rep. Mike Lawler on Republicans warning against working with Democrats: “Bring it. Give me a break. I’m in a district that Joe Biden won by 10 points...I was elected to be an adult, to be serious, to be sober and to govern." pic.twitter.com/KxcQv0mPGa
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) September 27, 2023

Some of these would-be moderates are threatening to work with Democrats. “If you got five to 10 holdouts, you’ve got to have a bipartisan bill, just by definition with a four-seat majority. So, I know we got to reach across the aisle and make this work,” Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said after a Wednesday conference meeting.

So far, House Democrats appear happy to watch the melee from the sidelines, not feeling any particular need to make life easier for Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who reneged on the budget deal he had agreed to with President Joe Biden. “Every Democrat on the [Appropriations] committee felt betrayed” by McCarthy, Rep. David Trone of Maryland said recently.

The Democrats have power, though McCarthy isn’t acknowledging that. He needs them to solve the shutdown impasse because he simply doesn’t have Republican votes to do it. After he surely gets their help rescuing the government, he’ll need help saving his own political skin and fighting off a hard-liner attempt to oust him.

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“The only person concerned about Kevin McCarthy keeping his job is Kevin McCarthy,” House Minority Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts told Politico. “House Democrats are having one conversation: how to deliver for the American people. That means preventing a reckless shutdown and stopping devastating cuts to the programs they rely on.”

Once the nihilist Republicans get what they want and force a shutdown, what should Democrats extract from McCarthy—and from the so-called moderate Republicans who are looking for their help—to fix it? That’s precisely what Democratic leadership should be mulling right now. Especially if Republicans move to oust McCarthy.

Democrats should start with a big ask from those Republicans who want their help: a power-sharing agreement with Democrats that puts Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries in the speaker’s chair. After all, he consistently won more votes for speaker than McCarthy did through the 15-round vote marathon. The Republicans’ tiny margin of just five votes, and at least half a dozen ready to kick McCarthy out at any given moment, make McCarthy’s continued tenure iffy at best. Jeffries in the chair could give the majority of the Republican conference some occasional wins, something they won’t get from McCarthy.

There’s also the question of who else among the Republicans would want the job. The answer is no one. Jeffries is the obvious choice.

Assuming that Jeffries doesn’t want (or get) the job and that McCarthy comes to him for help in saving the government and keeping his speakership, what should Democrats demand then?

An end to the Biden impeachment farce.
McCarthy has to abide by the budget agreement he made with Biden to resolve the debt ceiling.
McCarthy fully funds disaster relief and provides aid to Ukraine.
McCarthy puts legislation in place to prevent another government shutdown next year on the floor.

Those should be the minimum demands. Doing those things would allow Congress and the government to operate at a functional level for the next year. It’s not too much to ask in a rational world. On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine McCarthy, still in thrall of the Freedom Caucus, stepping up to that level of basic competence.

Shutdown watch: McCarthy all but hands the gavel to Gaetz

House hard-liners brag about 'chaos' as government shutdown looms

Motion to vacate: Should Democrats help or laugh?

Posted on September 19, 2023 by Joan McCarter

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is in a Catch-22, and he has only himself to blame for it. He’s got until the end of next week to figure out how to keep the government from shutting down—and save his own political skin. So far, he has proven incapable of doing either and created a dynamic in which one of two things is inevitable: a shutdown or a vote calling for his ouster as speaker. At this point, it seems both are likely.

The solution for averting a shutdown is pretty simple: McCarthy has to accept the reality that the Senate and the White House are in Democratic hands, and there is no way that the demands the hard-liners are making on funding will be enacted. If he doesn’t find a compromise and get Democrats in the House to help him pass a stopgap funding bill by the end of next week, the government shuts down and Republicans will get the blame. Because he’s in charge (at least nominally), McCarthy will get the lion’s share of it.

If he does get Democratic help and manage to keep the nation from looking like a banana republic, the nihilists will try to oust him via Rep. Matt Gaetz’s motion to vacate the chair. Someone wanted to make that threat abundantly clear, leaving a copy of that resolution in a restroom near the House chamber, where a reporter would be likely to find it—and did find it.

“The thing that would force the motion to vacate is if Kevin has to rely on Democrat votes to pass a CR,” Freedom Caucus Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado told Punchbowl News Tuesday. “I don’t think it has legs until Kevin relies on Democrats.” On the other hand, he said, “I don’t see how we can pass the bill [a CR] without Democrat votes.”

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Wheeee!

Where does that leave Democrats? In a position to let McCarthy dangle.

Since the last time House Republicans took the nation to the brink of disaster on the debt ceiling, a group of conservative Democrats in the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus offered to help out by providing enough votes to protect McCarthy from a move to boot him.

That offer is off the table now, Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips told reporters, thanks to McCarthy’s capitulation to the worst people in his conference and his greenlighting a toxic impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden. There’s no condoning or rewarding that, even from the most conservative of Democrats.

As of now, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is meeting with his various Democratic groups, including the Problem Solvers, and seeing what it is they want. But that will not include capitulating to Republicans. “Leader Jeffries has been very clear,” Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar reiterated Tuesday morning. “They have to get rid of these ideological riders [on appropriations,] they have to fund the government at existing … levels and we need to meet the needs of the Ukrainian people fighting for freedom and the urgent disasters that we have had across this country.”

That’s where Democrats are and that’s where they need to stay so that McCarthy comes to them. They need to leave him stranded and friendless unless and until they extract concessions, like a commitment to realistically fund the government and put any impeachment nonsense on the back burner. McCarthy has a lot more to lose than Democrats do.

Greene throws tantrum over Gaetz stealing her impeachment thunder

Gaetz attacks McCarthy in wild House speech

What do you do if you're associated with one of the biggest election fraud scandals in recent memory? If you're Republican Mark Harris, you try running for office again! On this week's episode of "The Downballot," we revisit the absolutely wild story of Harris' 2018 campaign for Congress, when one of his consultants orchestrated a conspiracy to illegally collect blank absentee ballots from voters and then had his team fill them out before "casting" them. Officials wound up tossing the results of this almost-stolen election, but now Harris is back with a new bid for the House—and he won't shut up about his last race, even blaming Democrats for the debacle.

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McCarthy talks tough, rebels yawn

Posted on September 14, 2023 by Joan McCarter

In a closed-door meeting Thursday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an F-bomb-filled tirade, daring hardliners to just try to oust him. “If you think you scare me because you want to file a motion to vacate, move the f—ing motion,” McCarthy said, according to the three Republicans who immediately ran and told Politico. Odds the three are McCarthy allies? Very high. The motion in question is what Rep. Matt Gaetz is threatening, calling for a vote in the House to remove McCarthy from the seat.

For his part, Gaetz was unimpressed. “Sounds like @SpeakerMcCarthy is having a total normal one - not rattled at all,” he tweeted. “Truth is Kevin controls his own fate. … Pull yourself together, Kevin!”

McCarthy also tried to convince the extremists that they have to relent and agree to a stopgap funding bill before the end of the month, averting a government shutdown. That didn’t work so well, either. Freedom Caucus Rep. Chip Roy of Texas went on Glenn Beck’s show and was mad that McCarthy is trying to work the conference to avoid a shutdown. “My point is force an actual trajectory change and a shift or get out of the damn game,” he said.

Not content just to swear at fellow Republicans, McCarthy also threatened to take away their weekends, Politico reports. He reiterated what he said in the meeting afterward. "When we come back (Monday), we're not going [to] leave,” he told reporters. “We're going to get this done. Nobody wins in a government shutdown. Nobody wins in a government shutdown."

That message might have worked better if he didn’t have a history of bailing on hard votes. This week, which consisted of barely three days, was the first one back in session for the House since July 27, when they left town early after failing to pass the agriculture appropriations bill.

The House was supposed to have passed the annual defense appropriations bill this week, but the Freedom Caucus and others shut that down, too. They refused to vote for the procedural motion bringing the bill to the floor, effectively blocking anything of import from being done in the House and complicating McCarthy’s plans to avert a shutdown in 16 days and a few hours.

What’s his plan now? Who knows. Cue the sad trombone:

McCarthy with the understatement of the month as Congress speeds toward a federal shutdown asked if he has a plan for next week McCarthy, almost whispering, replied: “I had a plan for this week. It didn’t turn out exactly as I planned”
— Meredith Lee Hill (@meredithllee) September 14, 2023

Sign the petition: No to shutdowns, no to Biden impeachment, no to Republicans.

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It’s time for Democrats to force McCarthy to reap what he has sown

Posted on September 13, 2023 by Joan McCarter

Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been “leading” the House on borrowed time. The Freedom Caucus and allied members have made it clear that he serves at their pleasure. This week, chaos agent and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz tried to shorten McCarthy’s leash, threatening to force a vote on ousting him.

Now Axios poses the question of “How Democrats could save Kevin McCarthy.” The better question for Democrats is, “Why would you bother?” The assumption—always—is that Democrats will step up to try to make things work, to help clean up messes, and to prop McCarthy up in this fight. That they’ll help save his bacon.

So why would Democrats help him and vote against Gaetz’s motion to oust McCarthy? Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee gives one justification: “If we vacated the chair, I don’t see a better speaker. So I don’t foresee that happening.” That’s a given. There isn’t a better speaker option.

That’s the kind of thinking that McCarthy is counting on from Democrats to help him. But there isn’t really a worse option, not one who’s a viable candidate. There are a lot of truly horrible people in the GOP conference, like Paul Gosar or Marjorie Taylor Greene, but they’re never going to be elected. Worrying about someone worse in the job is pointless.

And why would Democrats help McCarthy when he regularly gives them the middle finger? He just did it again on Tuesday by moving forward on a wholly illegitimate impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden. It was the same earlier in the year when some Democrats were trying to reach across the aisle to protect McCarthy in the debt ceiling fight: His staff said that effort was “garbage” and that he had “zero interest” in it.

The other argument is that he’s got to be propped up to avoid chaos. One anonymous Democrat told Axios, “No love for Kevin. But [there is] concern about more chaos, and who might take his place if he is booted.”

Spoiler alert: Right now the House is in chaos. More of it is inevitable, and there’s nothing House Democrats can do about it. Don’t fight it, embrace it. Let them defeat themselves. The No. 1 rule: When Republicans are drowning, throw them an anchor.

Sign the petition: Denounce the baseless impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden.

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