Tuesday early evening here in California’s Central Valley — fine day again.
And way to the East, another non-fine day as House Republicans buffed themselves into a corner of nothingness. Asshole, thug-bully Gym Jordan tried in vain to make the speaker count but went down like a turd in a sewer full of shit sucking-rushing to the sea of uselessness.
Laugh it off K-Mc, it’s only America’s, and maybe the world’s future at stake here:
It was another chaotic day in the House of Representatives: It started without a speaker, and with the next vote coming tomorrow, it's ending without one as well. My latest, on the sense of resigned déjà vu permeated the House chamber on Tuesday.https://t.co/GK43kxZsUT
— Grace Segers (@Grace_Segers) October 17, 2023
Ho-hum the bullshit runs deep and wide — Grace Segers in her piece at The New Republic this afternoon captured the sense of stale bullshit in the House air:
Even Republicans supporting Jordan acknowledge that the ongoing chaos has splintered the conference. Representative Byron Donalds, who initially resisted supporting McCarthy in January, said that he had thought Republicans were slowly growing to a point where they could find consensus. “From a professional standpoint, we were getting to a place where members can get the job done,” Donalds told reporters after the first vote. However, he continued, those relationships had been “damaged by the motion to vacate”—the official term for the process that eventually led to McCarthy losing his hard-won gavel. When asked how the temperament was among House Republicans now, Donalds replied: “Not good.”
It was clear by Tuesday that fatigue had set in among Republicans. “We all want to choose a speaker. And I’m tired of this,” Diaz-Balart said. Representative Bryan Steil said that it is “broadly frustrating” that the House was focused on electing a new speaker, rather than working to keep the government funded or send aid to Israel.
That fatigue was apparent during the first vote, when members largely seemed to be going through the motions. Ahead of the first vote, Jordan—who is famous for avoiding jackets like the plague—was dressed with uncharacteristic spiffiness in a blue suit and gold tie. He spent the majority of the first vote looking ahead, a small smile fixed on his face as he fidgeted, or talking to an aide sitting next to him. McCarthy sat in the row directly behind Jordan, monitoring the vote to choose his successor.
The House is a chamber of pageantry as much as it is one of laws. After Jordan received a somewhat lackluster standing ovation from the Republican side, Democrats cheered repeatedly for Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as their nominee. But rather than focusing on Jeffries’ record, Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar spent his nominating speech slamming Jordan as an extremist without a significant legislative record, and an “insurrection insider” who vocally supported the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
“A vote today to make the architect of a nation-wide abortion ban, a vocal election denier, and insurrection insider the speaker of this House would be a terrible message to the country and our allies,” Aguilar said.
Off the floor, Democrats responded to the situation with similar exasperation, in part because of their own antipathy for Jordan. While Jeffries had a relatively good relationship with McCarthy, Jordan lacks any real connection to Democrats.
“I feel like Halloween has come early,” Representative Jim McGovern told me ahead of the first vote. “[Jordan] is like—rock bottom of who they could have picked to be their nominee.”
Such is our state of play right now — shitty the ball game.
In order to close us down here, Republicans seem in step to burn down the house with the House, furnished by the Taking Heads, in musical agreement, though:
Gym the asshole, or not, yet here we are once again…
(Illustration out front: Pablo Picasso’s ‘Harlequin Head‘ (1871), and found here.)